By
Tariq Rahman Ph. D
National Distinguished Professor
and
Professor and Director, Chair on Quaid-i-Azam
and Freedom Movement
National Institute of Pakistan Studies
Quaid-i-Azam University
Islamabad
This paper examines the threat to federalism in Pakistan. It focuses upon a particular aspect of it---the role of language as a symbol of ethnic identity. It begins with the Bengali language movement (1948 and 1951) which asserted itself against the perceived domination of the West Pakistani ruling elite over what was East Pakistan at that time. In West Pakistan itself language was used to mobilize Sindhi, Pashtun and Siraiki identities. All of these movements offered resistance to the hegemony of the centre. In Sindh’s case, however, the resistance was more to the Urdu-speaking immigrants (Mohajirs) who had came to dominate the urban areas of that province. In Balochistan, militancy took predominance over language as a means of resistance because of the lack of a viable educated intelligentsia in the province.
Language constructs identity and, therefore, helps to ‘imagine’ an ethnic community. Hence it clashes with the competing federalist construction of the transcendent national Pakistani identity. In short, to understand federalism in Pakistan it is necessary to see the role of language in the politics of Pakistan.
The PONM believes that ‘the 1973 constitution had not only failed to establish a true federation but even its structure has been twisted with more than a dozen amendments’ (The Nation 15 Nov 2000 Business Recorder 21 Nov 2002). It has been agitating for maximum rights, powers and autonomy to the provinces. In this context the PONM leaders have been opposing the construction of the Kalabagh Dam and urging the military to go back to the ‘barracks’ (News 24 May 2000; Business Recorder 6 August 2000).
The PONM represents ethnic politics, something which has been present on the political scene in Pakistan since 1948 when the first phase of the Bengali language movement, the political movement for Bengali ethnicity, asserted itself.
This paper examines the role of language in ethnic politics. The study will be interdisciplinary in the sense that it brings insights from the discipline of language policy and planning to understand political phenomenon. The methodology of research is basically historical and language movement are traced out, however briefly, in a chronological order.
2. Theoretical Framework
Pakistan was only a few years old when its central government was challenged by ethnicity---Bengali ethnicity expressed through the Bengali Language Movement (or Bhasha Ondolan) of 1948 and 1952. How could this have happened? After all Bengal had enthusiastically supported the idea of Pakistan before the partition. The Muslims of Bengal had called themselves Muslims first but now they insisted upon their Bengali identity. The West Pakistani press, official figures, and politicians declared that Hindus and communists had created the language movement; that it was a conspiracy to break up Pakistan. But such an explanation can hardly satisfy any student of recent history. After all ethnicity has not vanished, as liberals fondly imagined, with the coming of modernity (Glazer and Moynihan 1975: 5). Indeed, it is considered a major contemporary phenomenon and one which has the potential to make the world a polarized and insecure place.
This is not only true for the obvious case of Bosnia where ethnicity was dramatized through a savage war but also in Pakistan where it threatens to destroy the state as it exists at present. In this paper we are concerned only with language-based expressions of ethnicity. This rules out the war which led to the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971 and the military action against Baloch tribes in 1958, 1962-66 and 1973-76. Even so there are the Bengali, Sindhi, Balochi, Pasahto, Siraiki, and Punjabi language movements to reckon with. But before we go into the specific cases of these movements, let us look at the relationship between language, ethnicity, and identity.
Identity is a highly elusive category. A person defines himself or herself in terms of gender; family role (son, daughter, wife, etc); occupation (weaver of Julaha); tribe or class (Mughal, Pathan, Arain, Sheikh, etc) class or some other self-defining category label. Such labeling is part of self-perception as well as perception by others. But sometimes the perception of others might be different from one’s own. They may see one as a ‘Paki’ (Pakistani) whereas one thinks of oneself as an Indian, Bangladeshi, or Asian. They may see one as coloured or black whereas one sees oneself as a fair complexioned Pathan, Chitrali, Kashmiri, or Parsi. The official census-makers of the colonial bureaucracies, says Benedict Anderson, ‘classified people---by race (e.g. Chinese) whereas they (the natives) classified themselves by rank and status’ (Anderson 1983: 167). Moreover, one defines oneself differently under different circumstances. In a Pakistan tribal conflict one calls oneself a Mahsud or Wazir whereas among non-Pakhtuns one is merely a Pakhtun. In the context of a Pakistan-India cricket match one is a Pakistani whereas in an anti-imperialist situation one is Asian. In short then, identity is mutable and variable. It is a complicated set of features some of which are salient in some circumstances. Which ones are emphasized, knowingly or otherwise, depends upon complex social and political factors.
Studies of pre-modern communities suggest that language has not been their major symbol of identity (Smith 1986: 27). Many pre-modern ‘rural persons, far from being attached emotionally to their mother tongue, do not even know its proper name’ (Brass 1991: 70). Most of them, indeed, used local names for their languages and had local self-perceptions of identity in Pakistan. For instance the very term Punjab is from Persian (five rivers) and for ages many people living in the area roughly defined as the Punjab had local names for their languages: Dogri, Majhi, Jangali, Pahari, etc. In any case identity was familial and larger groups were seen as extensions of one family as Fox argues about the Rajput clans of Northern India (Fox 1971). These kinship structures are called biradaris (brotherhoods) just as the oldest such collectivities were called phratries in ancient Greece (Smith 1986: 48).
These identities could not be changed easily in small face-to-face communities but when a change could increase one’s prestige or share of goods or services, it was desired. In some cases the Rajput identity was taken up by many adventures in North India to raise their prestige (Fox 1971: 37-8). Similarly in Bengal during the census of 1872 ‘the number of Shaikhs and the three categories [Syed, Mughal, Pathan] increased phenomenally, while the occupational ‘caste’ groups registered a sharp decline’ (Ahmad 1981: 115). The occupational castes---such as weaver (Julaha) or barber (nai)---were looked down upon and there were ego-shattering sayings about them (see examples in Risley 1908: Appendix) whereas the identity labels of the Muslim conquerors and rulers were prestigious. Hence people appropriated them if they could.
The advent of British rule and modernity in India made language an important symbol of identity. Modernity increased the possibility of interaction and, according to the’ interactionist theory’ of identity, ‘it is the interaction of people that creates a sense of identity’ (Reetz 1993: 119). And this interaction, whether through the oral or the printed word, is through language. Hence language becomes a major determiner of identity after religion. Thus language is chosen as a symbol of group identity by leaders from a modernizing community who covet power in order to create a pressure group. Once they mobilize people in the name of ethnicity, defined in cultural and linguistic terms, they come in possession of power which may be used to obtain a larger share of goods and services from the state. This suggests that language-based ethnicity is a modern phenomenon which is meant to pursue political power. This is the instrumentalist theory of ethnicity found in the work of many scholars (Deutsch 1953; Hechter 1975; Yinger 1981; Williams 1984) and Brass (1974) uses it to explain the Urdu-Hindi controversy and the creation of the Muslims as an interest group in India before the partition. The other point of view, called the primordialist theory of ethnicity, argues that it is felt as shared paternity, bio-kinship, commonality of descent, and blood-relationship (Shils 1957; Geertz 1963; Connor 1993). And that people have deep, extra-rational, primordial bonds or sentiments for their language, religion or other aspects of identity. Because of these deep feelings they resist being assimilated in the impersonal culture of modern life and form ethnic groups. This can be called the extra-rational or sentimental dimension of ethnicity. Let us see now whether the language movements of Pakistan are motivated by rational, or extra-rational motives or whether they are merely inspired by enemy agents.
Pakistan has many languages but we
are concerned with the major languages which are related to ethnic politics.
These are as follows:
Box 1 |
|
|
Pakistani Languages |
|
|
Language |
Percentage of Speakers |
|
Punjabi |
44.15 per cent |
|
Pashto |
15.42 per cent |
|
Sindhi |
14.10 per cent |
|
Siraiki |
10.53 per cent |
|
Urdu |
7.57 per cent |
|
Balochi |
3.57 per cent |
|
Others |
4.66 per cent |
|
Source: Census 2001: 107 |
|
The number of speakers does not denote the strength or domains of use of a language. For instance, Urdu is indeed the most widely understood language and perhaps the major medium of interaction in the urban areas of the country, Even ethnic activists agree that it could be a useful link language between different ethnic groups. However, it has been resisted because it has been patronized, often in insensitive ways, by the ruling elite of the centre.
The story of this patronization is given in detail in several books (see Rahman 1996) but it always fell short of what the more ardent supporters of Urdu demanded (for their position see Abdullah 1976). In the beginning, since a very powerful section of the bureaucracy spoke Urdu as a mother-tongue (being Mohajirs), there was an element of cultural hegemony about the privileging of Urdu. The Mohajir elite’s position, stated or implied, was that they were more cultured than the speakers of the indigenous languages of Pakistan. Hence it was only natural that Urdu should be used in place of the ‘lesser’ languages. This position, with which we are familiar through the works of linguists who oppose the arrogance of monolingual English speakers (see the following authors who have reported cases of such arrogance in other contexts Skutnabb-Kangas 2000; Crystal 2000: 84-88; Nettle and Romaine 2000) created much resentment against Urdu and, indeed, may be said to have infused the element of personal reaction to or antagonism against the speakers of Urdu in the first twenty years of Pakistan’s existence.
The main reason for opposition to Urdu was, however, not merely linguistic nor even cultural. It was because Urdu was the symbol of the central rule of the Punjabi ruling elite that it was opposed in the provinces. The use of Urdu as an ethnic symbol is given in detail in Rahman (1996) but a brief recapitulation of major language movements may be useful.
East Bengal, now called Bangladesh, is a good example of changes in identity in response to social, economic, and political circumstances, The upper class Muslims (ashraf) of Bengal, in common with the Muslims of the other parts of India, identified with Urdu and despised the Bengali identity before the advent of the British. The Bengali identity was considered basically Hindu and the Muslim peasants who could speak only Bengali were despised and learned to despise themselves. Their identity was a social stigma. As the Hindus modernized earlier and filled the apparatus of the state the Muslims feel behind (Hunter 1871: 141) and their leaders created a pressure group ‘the Muslims’ which was distinct from Hindus. The language they identified with was Urdu, which the Ashraf already owned and which was the language of the Muslims of Northern India (Edn. Comm: B 1884: 213). However, education made it possible for a large number of Bengali-educated Muslims to enter the middle class and they were sympathetic to Bengali (Helal 1985: 71). Thus, in 1937 at the Lucknow session of the Muslim League the Bengalis protested against Urdu becoming the lingua franca of all Indian Muslims (Pioneer, 17 October 1937). In 1947 when Dr Ziauddin Ahmad, Vice Chancellor of the Muslim University of Aligarh, declared that Urdu would be the national language of Pakistan, the Bengali linguist Dr Shahidullah replied that this ‘would be tantamount to political slavery’ (Shahidullah 1947).
When the fear of Hindu domination was removed after 1947, the Bengali-educated proto-elite opposed Urdu more openly and forcefully. As rulers of East Bengal were the ashraf and the Muslim league leadership in West Pakistan too considered Urdu a symbol of national integration, the Bengali language movement was suppressed and on 21 February 1952 some activists of the movement were killed by the police in Dhaka (Ellis 1952); Helal 1985: 428-30; Umar 1970). This date became a symbol of resistance against the West Pakistani ruling elite which happened to be Punjabi-dominated. Eventually, in 1971, the Bengali nationalism created in response to perceived West Pakistani domination and internal colonialism gave birth to Bangladesh (Alam 1991; Gulati 1988: 20-36).
The conditions of East Bengal parallel those of Sindh. Like Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the leader of Bangladesh, G. M. Syed, the nationalist leader of Sindh, also advocated the creation of the independent state of Sindhu Desh (Amin 198: 147).
Here too Sindhi has been the medium of instruction in government schools as well as that of the judiciary and the administration at the lower levels just as Bengali was in East Bengal. Thus the ruling elite’s policy of favouring Urdu, which is the mother tongue of the Mohajirs of the cities of Sindh, is strongly resented. The Mohajirs, a non-assimilationist minority proud of their urban Mughal culture of which Urdu is a symbol, resist all attempts at promoting Sindhi. In 1970 when the Sindh University and the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education made Sindhi compulsory for Mohajirs, they protested and there were riots in January-February 1970 in the cities of Sindh (details in Dawn, Hilal-e-Pakistan, Pakistan Times, etc). In 1972 when the provincial PPP tried to pass a bill to increase the use of Sindhi and make Mohajirs learn it, there were riots again (Ahmed 1992; LAD-P 28 August 1972: 504-508). The situation nowadays is that since 1984 the Mohajirs see themselves as an ethnic group like the Sindhis and claim power in Sindh on the basis of this distinct identity. In other words the question is really which community will rule Sindh---Sindhis or Mohajirs? This makes Sindh a potential battle ground for a vicious civil war.
Balochistan is a multilingual province because some parts of Afghanistan were included in it in British days. Thus besides Balochi and Brahvi, Pashto too is fairly widely spoken in Balochistan. As the Balochi-speaking and Brahvi-speaking people define themselves as Baloch, they insist on common origin rather than language as a marker of identity. There is, however, a Balochi language movement since 1951 which aims at preserving the Baloch cultural identity. Balochi identity is expressed by coining words of Baloch origin (Jahani 1989: 233) and, indeed, by writing in a language which has little official patronage.
In Balochistan as well as in the NWFP, Pashto serves as an identity symbol. It was the moral code of the Pathans, Pashtoonwali, which was such a symbol in pre-modern times. The efforts of Khan Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988), the anti-British Pakhtun nationalist leader, made Pashto such a symbol (Ghaffar 1969: 88-9 and Ghaffar 1929 a and b; Sabir 1986 and files of the Pashto magazine Pakhtun). In Afghanistan Pashto was used by the Afghan state to keep non-Pashto-speaking minorities within the Afghan nation-state (Miran 1977). Earlier, Persian was the language of culture and prestige and was used by the Persian-speaking population of northern Afghanistan and the ruling Pashtun elite. After the 1930s, the ruling elite promoted Pashto as a means of creating nationalism and unity among tribes which were divisive and understood only the extended kinship system and tribal loyalty. Thus Pashto was the new symbol, like the national flag and other centralizing icons, to create the Afghan nation out of mere tribes.
In both cases Pashto was used for political purposes under modern political conditions. However, because of the Afghan claim to Pashtunistan, the ruling elite was mistrustful of Pashto despite the fact that the Pakhtun nationalist NAP (National Awami Party) chose Urdu as the official language of the Frontier in its brief rule in 1972 (Amin 1988: 125; Nawai Waqt, 12 May 1972). It is only recently that the Pakhtun elite has been co-opted by Pakistan’s ruling elite and the threat of the secession of the NWFP has disappeared. Pashto still remains an identity marker and part of Pakhtun nationalism as expressed politically by the Awami National Party which continues to challenge the domination of the Centre.
The southern part of the Punjab is under developed and the leaders of this area blame the Punjabi ruling elite for this underdevelopment. From the nineteen sixties they call their language Siraiki and have standardized it for purposes of writing (Rasoolpuri 1976: 7-8; Shackle 1983). The language had been written even in the nineteenth century but different writers used different orthographic symbols of the Urdu script. The choice of the term Siraiki in the 1960s meant that the people of southern Punjab could identify with one identity symbol instead of calling their language by local names such as Multani, Derewali, Riasati, and so on. After the famous conference in Multan in 1975 (Kamal 1975: 19-20) a number of institutions---like the Siraiki Lok Sanjh---have been promoting the language and it is supported by Siraiki ethnic political parties.
While the Siraiki movement is clearly a response to perceived Punjabi domination and internal colonialism, the Punjabi language movement is hard to understand. The Punjabis occupy most of the powerful position in the apparatus of the state: the federal government, legislature, and especially the army and the bureaucracy, and oppose the use of Punjabi even in primary schools. They do so presumably because they have internalized the low status given to Punjabi by all former rulers of the Punjab and feel that this language cannot be used in formal domains. Possibly, they also feel that if the use of Punjabi is allowed in formal domains the speakers of the other languages, which are also ethnic identity symbols, will increase the pressure on the state to give even more importance to their languages. This, they reason, will lead to the increase of ethnicity and the weakening of the federation of Pakistan. But this attitude of the Punjabi elite is precisely why there is such a movement. The activists of the movement claim that the price of Punjabi domination over Pakistan is the denial of the Punjabi ethnic identity. In fact, by teaching only English and Urdu to the Punjabi elite, Punjabi language and culture have been suppressed (Qaiser and Pal 1988; Kammi 1988: 15-44). This culture shame, they feel, should go; Punjabis should learn to be proud of their Punjabi identity. This is only possible if the state uses Punjabi in the domains of power. But if the state does that, the ethno-nationalist argument of using all the other indigenous languages in these domains too would be strengthened. Thus the status quo remains.
We have seen how in all language movements except the Punjabi one, language has been more or less consciously manipulated by leaders for instrumental, rational, goal-seeking reasons: the creation of a pressure group to obtain greater power, goods and services from the state; to redress a situation of internal colonialism which is perceived as being unjust. In the Punjabi language movement, however, the major motivation is sentimental or extra-rational. It is the desire for self-respect; for the acceptance of one’s identity without culture-shame; for psychological fulfillment without adopting the language and behaviour of another culture. We have also seen that language is an identity marker, or creates a community, in the modern world when supra-local solidarities and large communities can be imagined i.e. in the age of printing and the nation (Anderson 1983: 44).
But, if language movements are part of ethnic assertion meant to counter perceived domination and injustice, only linguistic policies will not be helpful. A language will remain ghettoizing and will be resisted even by its own speakers---as mother-tongue schooling was in South Africa (Bunting 1966); the NWFP (Edn. Dept. 1991: 1-4) and Balochistan (author’s interviews in June 1994)---if it is not used in the domains of power and powerful jobs are not available in it or if it is otherwise despised socially. To create a secure country where ethnicity is no longer a threat, a truly federal (or even a confederal) political order may be necessary. That will mean that there will be five national languages in the country with Urdu as a language of inter-provincial and English as international communication. And even more importantly it will mean that the provinces, which may be rearranged along ethnic and linguistic lines, will be genuinely empowered. This may be a step towards Tariq Banuri’s post modernist vision of creating a less conflict prone society based upon decentralization (1990: 98). In such a political system no federating unit would want to opt out of the system because it will be responsible for its fate and will no longer be dominated by the Centre. Only then will ethnicity become a blessing and create a state with a rich and diverse culture.
Note
1. The constituent parties are: the Pakhtoonkha Milli Awami Party, the Pakhtoonkha Qaumi Party (Pashtuns); the Balochistan National Movement, the Balochistan National Party (Balochis); the Sindh Democratic Party, the Jeay Sindh Mahaz (the Sindhi); and the Pakistan Seraiki Party, the Seraiki National Party; the Seraikistan Qaumi Movement (the Siraikis).
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