The Teaching of Arabic and Islamic Identity in Pakistan

1. Historical Background

Arabic entered South Asia with the coming of the Muslims to this part of the world. The Sind and the Punjab were conquered the first in 711-712 and the second in 1026 A.D – but the Arabs came to India as merchants ever since historical records exist. Thus Arabic derived a number of words, generally referring to goods imported from India, and there were settlements of Muslims in Sri Lanka (Sirandip), the Maldives and the Malabar coast (Nadwi 1972: 69-71 & 259-301). Thus a number of works were produced in Arabic by Muslim scholars of the Carnatic (Koken 1974) and Tamil written in the Arabic script is still called Arwi. Indeed, while north India was more under the cultural influence of Persian, South India derived much inspiration either from indigenous Dravidian roots or from Arabic. Thus schools called Pallikoodam taught Arwi and the Quran in South India from very early times (Alim 1993: 54). By the late thirteenth century Alauddin Khilji and Malik Kafur (1290-1316) laid the foundation of Muslim (non-Arab) rule in the South but the Arabic influence lingered on and even now Muslims demand instruction in Arwi as it is an identity symbol for them (Alim 1993: 125).

According to historians Persian was the official language from 1030 A.D i.e from the beginning of the Ghaznawid rule in the Punjab (Saleem 1980: 92). However, it may have been used earlier too because Abu Ishaq al Istakhri tells us in 951 A.D that ‘the people of Multan wear trousers, and most of them speak Persian and Sindi, as in Munsura’ (Istakhri 951: 29). However, Ibn Haukal tells us that ‘the language of Mansura, Multan, and those parts is Arabic and Sindian. In Makran they use Persian and Makrani’ (Haukal 1193: 39). One does not know quite what to make of the statements of these Arab writers but it is likely that some members of the elite, the kind of people who meet foreigners socially, must have picked up Arabic and Persian. Indeed, on the evidence of certain Arabic sources, the historian Athar Mubarakpuri, concludes that some Hindus rulers knew Arabic or at least some verses which they could quote on appropriate occasions (Mubarakpuri 1989: 315-316). Some Arab families, settled in Sind and Multan during the Arab conquest, must also have retained their mother tongue and, of course, Muslim children must have been taught the Quran, and grown ups advanced subjects, probably in Arabic. However, at some period Arabic must have been the official language of what is now southern Pakistan. We are told that:

Walid next abolished the Greek language and character from the public office of finance, and substituted the Arabic, -- thus still further freeing the Arabs from the trammels which these foreign systems had interposed (Kami 1768: 461)¹.

As Walid was caliph between 705-715, this suggests that Greek was used even till the 8th century. Greek entered this part of the world even before Alexander’s conquest of this area before 327 B.C and was used here ‘for at least a century and a half even upto 44 A.D. When Appolonius of Tyana encountered it during his journey to Taxila (Woodcock 1966: 130). If this statement is true, Greek remained in use in this part of the world longer than most accounts would have us believe (for the language of the Indus valley upto 1000 A.D see Rahman 1996). Although the Turkish conquerors of the Punjab, and later the rest of north India, used Persian as the official language, Arabic was used in more domains – especially those connected with ceremonial, liturgical and religious symbolism – than it is now. For instance, upto the reign of Humayun inscriptions were mostly in Arabic. A survey of such inscriptions in north India states that:

Persian started gaining ground at the end of the 13th century. Scattered examples of Persian inscriptions dating from the 12th and the 13th centuries are also found in other parts of India. But the first Persian inscription in the states under survey dates from Muharram, 687 (the month began on 6^th February, 1288). By the time of Akbar, Arabic became reserved for the Quranic and other religious inscriptions only (Parhar 1985: 1).

Whether Arabic was actually the medium of instruction at any level is not clear. According to Sufi it was ‘no doubt, the chief medium of classical study’ (1941: 34) before the 13th century but Sufi presents no evidence of its being no nor is it clear as to what ‘classical study’ was. It is, however, clear that Arabic was an important part, possibly the major part, of the curriculum in pre-Mughal times.

1.1 Pre-British Curricula in Arabic

By the time of Sultan Balban (reigned 1266-1287), the outline of the course in Arabic studies – part of which is still in place in South Asian madrassas – is discernible. Among the books of grammar were: Misba, Kafiya, Lubbul Albab and Irshad while the chief text in literture, or rather belles leters, was the Muqamat al Hariri (Sufi 1941: 17). The Muqamat was written by Abu Muhammad al-Qasim al-Hariri of Basra (1054-1122). He composed these prose pieces, embellished by verses as was the fashion of the day, as a model of elegant prose. The writings revolve around the adventures of a character called Abu Zaid of Seroug. This character deceives people into giving him charity, indeed makes deception a fine art. The narrator, Hareth ibn Hammam, who is also deceived by him, comes to admire his wit and linguistic abilities. Indeed, the Maqamat was written as a model of elegant Arabic prose style. The sheer power of rhetoric is such that none can resist Abou Zaid’s chicanery. Theodore Preston, explaining this power writes:

It was not uncommon for a destitute stranger to enter the learned circle where the choicest wits of a province were assembled, and, as soon as an opportunity was offered, compel them all to acknowledge his superiority to themselves, and win their bounty by some feat of marvelous improvisation, or a lucid decision on some perplexing difficulty in grammar or rhetoric (Preston 1850: xi).

This was because the Arabs attached tremendous importance to the Arabic language. Even before Islam, poetry was held in great esteem (see pre-Islamic poetry in English translation in Clouston 1986). Later, because the Quran was written in classical Arabic, its language took on a unique religious significance (Preston 1850: x). Indeed, as the Arabs came in contact with foreigners and Arabic began to change, the changes were seen as a catastrophe and even a heresy (Shalaby 1954: 44-47; Ibn-e-Khaldun n.d: 322). Arabic grammar, therefore, was written to guard against this change – ‘corruption’ in the words of Ibn-e-Khaldun – and the first to codify the rules of classical Arabic was Abul-Aswad al Du’ali who did so upon the advice of the Caliph Ali (Ibn-e-Khaldun n.d: 322). Thus, those who were skilled in the use of Arabic were held in special esteem such as only famous scholars are in certain academic circles today. Thus linguistic elegance of the Maqamat became a model from which some of the traditional theological seminaries madrassas have not escaped so far in India and Pakistan.

The Maqamat were often memorized. In India, it appears from Hazrat Nizam-ud-Din Awlia’s discourses (Malfuzat) that he had read the Maqamat under the instruction of Shams-ul-Din Khawarazme and had memorized forty muqam’s (Rizvi 1981: 198). R.P Dewhurst, a British officer who inspected Darul Uloom Deoband, wrote in his report on 29 March 1902, that ‘many of the students are able to compose with facility in the language [Arabic]. Several of them have even committed to memory substantial portions of the Makamat of Hariri’ (quoted from Rizvi 1981 Vol 2: 270). Arabic was part of the traditional course of studies of a Muslim gentleman though only those who wanted to specialise in Islam to function as judges (qazis), theologians (ulema) or clergymen (maulvis) learnt it in greater detail in the Arabic schools and theological seminaries (madrassas). Thus Sher Khan (d. 1545), who wrested away the Mughal empire from Humayun, studied ‘thoroughly the Kafiya with the commentaries of Qadi Shihab al-Din and also some books on other subjects. He read the Gulistan, Bostan and Sikandar Namah, etc’ (Sarwani circa 1586: 9). Abdul Haq of Delhi (1551-1642), a notable religious scholar of his day, learnt the usual treatises on Arabic grammar from his father Shaikh Saif Uddin (d. 1582) and even wrote a treatise in Persian on the Kafiya (Sufi 1951: 57). Shah Waliullah (1702-1760) also read Arabic grammar (Kafiya and Sharh Jami) before proceeding with his studies in Islamic theology (Sufi 70). Courses of reading revolved around these paradigmatic texts but it was in the eighteenth century that a fixed syllabus came into being. The person who is created with having made it was Mulla Nizam Uddin of Sihali (a town near Lucknow) (d. 1748) and it is, therefore, known as Dars-i-Nizami. Arabic was, of course, the focus of teaching in this course because it was meant for people who would use it. It was not a revolutionary syllabus but a conservative one because it further endorsed the canonical texts already in use, some from the thirteenth century (like the Kafiyah). The Kafiya, written by Jamal al-Din bin Abu Umar Uthman, is in rhymed couplets in Arabic. The couplets are mnemonic devices which illustrate the principles of Arabic grammar and appropriate usage in an aphoristic manner. But in India where Arabic is not a mother tongue the book is so obscure that it is taught through a commentary called Sharh Ibn-e-Aqil. The commentary itself, let alone the original, is often the dread of students who memorise most of it. The teacher who is said to have mastered it is generally one who can quote from it freely. Memorization is tantamount to mastery. The memoirs of eminent theologians abound in the recounting of miraculous feats: such as Imam Taq ud Din having learned three of the maqamat of al-Hariri in less than a day (Shahabi n.d: 6).

1.2 The Dars-i-Nizami

The Dars-i-Nizami gradually became a symbol of identity. As this identity took shape in reaction to the reality of British conquest and the introduction of modernity as a consequence, it was seen in the light of a bulwark of defence against the onslaught of modern (hence anti-Islamic) ideas. The British went away but modernity came to stay and Arabic, especially as taught through the Dars-i-Nizami, became a major part of the defence against the modernist threat. This aspect of Arabic will however, be taken up later. At the moment let us look at the way the teaching of Arabic changed as a result of British rule.

2. Arabic Teaching Upon the British Arrival

When the British arrived they found the following kinds of schools in India:

1. Quran schools

2. Quran and Persian schools

3. Arabic and Persian schools

4. Arabic schools

5. Persian schools

The Quran schools merely taught the Arabic alphabet and the Quran without understanding. The Quran and Persian schools also taught a little Persian in addition to this. The Arabic and Persian schools taught both Arabic and Persian but not at a very advanced level. The Arabic schools, on the other hand, taught mostly Arabic using either the Dars-i-Nizami texts or other texts of a similar kind. The Persian schools, which trained students for being employed as clerks, letter writers, accountants, physicians and teachers, taught mostly Persian. The number of Arabic schools was always less because Arabic did not lead to jobs in the apparatus of the Mughal and even the British (till 1837) state to the extent Persian did. The Quran schools were the most numerous. In the Punjab, according to British sources, they ‘are started by a Mianji [a local teacher] in a village’ and have, on the average, about 20 pupils each (PEI 1909: 322-323). The same was true for the rest of north India.

One does not know what most British officers felt about the teaching of Arabic but those who wrote official reports were generally not sympathetic. Henry Stewart Reid, reporting on the teaching of languages in the schools of parts of U.P in the middle of the nineteenth century, says that those who read the Quran only memorise it in the Quran and Persian schools. Thus, he opines, ‘the boys reading therein might otherwise be employed in acquiring a store of useful knowledge’ (Reid 1852: 41). He was not sympathetic even to those who read Arabic with understanding because he mentions elsewhere in the same report that ‘Arabic learning had declined and good teachers of it were hard to come by’ – a state of affairs which he views with some satisfaction (ibid, 39). Because of this decline, writing in Arabic decreased. While a number of people had written in the language earlier (as evidenced by the entries in Nuzhat al-Khawatir which records their names), this number declined in the British period as the teaching of Arabic declined.

2.1 Arabic Teaching and Colonialism

The role of Arabic among Indian Muslims was not confined to teaching. The question was larger than just the teaching of the language; it was one of change in world view. According to a report:

The older system stands for an education based upon religion, for the acceptance of authority, for respect of persons and institutions; the newer system stands for rational teaching, for liberal views, and for the spirit of development and evolution and each system has much to learn from the other (PEI 1929: 235).

The central concern here is that of world view and power. The older world view, based upon the acceptance of traditional institutions and values, reinforced the power of the traditional elite. Indeed, the purpose of language-teaching -–as indeed of all education – was moral. It was to produce, in Gail Minault’s words, ‘an adult who was competent but modest, aware of his place in the social and administrative hierarchy, but able to speak when it was appropriate and learn from experience (Minault 1998: 20). The new world view, consisting of Western rationalism and liberal ideas, reinforced the moral and intellectual authority of the British and the Anglicized Indian elite which they had brought into being. Hence the question of which language was taught and how (as a sacred duty as in the case of memorising the Quran or reading it without comprehension) was really part of world view and power (on memorization also see Eickelman 1978).

By the middle of the century the Anglicist policy of education (dated from 1835) had already been in force for 15 years and the tide had turned much against Arabic. In 1780, when the British created the first educational institution in India, the Calcutta Madrassah, the policy was Orientalist i.e continuation of traditional Persian and Arabic education for the Muslims and Sanskrit for the Hindus in order to conciliate their elites and prevent an uprising against British rule. This does not mean that the traditional system of education was not disrupted because of the colonial impact. It was disrupted because, whereas the older system was personalised and flexible, the colonial one was not. In the older system boys went to the homes of teachers generally reading specific books with those who were reputed as being masters of them. The British opened institutions and the old forms of patronage to the individual teachers dried up. Thus the new system, though concentrating on predominantly traditional courses to begin with, brought about a far-reaching change in education – it became institution-based and bureaucratized (Eickelman 1978; Mottahedeh 1985).

2.2 Colonial Changes in the Curricula of Arabic

At the Calcutta Madrassah Arabic was taught. The course was traditional in that Arabic grammar was taught through traditional books, many of them part of the Dars-i-Nizami, and the literature part included works other than the Maqamat (Sufi 1941: 92-92). However, gradually the traditional syllabus would become the preserve of the madrassa-based religious elite while the teaching of Arabic was modified by the state

The change is clearly evidenced by the syllabi of the newly created universities – those of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay – after 1857. In Calcutta the Arabic texts for the matriculation examination of 1857 was The Alf Laila wal Lail (One Thousand Nights and a Night) and Nafhat ul Yaman. For the B.A course more material from these books as well as Ikhwan us Safa, Maqamat and other prose works were prescribed. The poetical works of Ibn Farid and other books of Arabic verse were also prescribed (Sufi 1941: 112). The syllabi of Bombay and Madras differ only in details. Basically, the traditional pattern of concentrating more on old books of grammar had been broken. The emphasis on prose and poetry was new. As a consequence of this emphasis a number of new texts were produced. Maulana Zulfiqar Ali, an alumnus of Delhi College, specialised in Arabic literature and wrote commentaries and Urdu translations of Divan-e-Hamasa, Divan-e-Mutanabbi, Sab’a Mu’allaqa and Qasida-e-Bant Sa’ad (Rizvi 1980: 163). Moreover, the texts themselves were, as it were, more imaginative and pleasurable than the traditional language texts. The Alf Laila, for instance, is known as a highly delectable collection of tales which has hilarious, aesthetic and erotic passages of the kind which not only madrassas but even ordinary schools would not countenance in contemporary Pakistan and north India.

Arabic was slowly phased out, often with the open or tacit support of the Muslims, from state institutions in British India. In 1873, Nobin Chandra Rai, a member of the Punjab University Senate said:

It is quite unnecessary, and a water of educational funds, to give more encouragement to the study of Persian and Arabic in Government Schools and Colleges, inasmuch as the people have every means of studying these languages in their own institutions (Home 1873: 89).

In the 1870s Arabic (like Sanskrit) began only in class 7. Students came to the classical languages with knowledge of Persian and Urdu. Already by this date, at least in state institutions, Arabic was a marginalised subject which the students did not master. The Muslims generally did not complain about this though there are instances of people doing so. One such complaint, recorded in the proceedings of the Punjab University, is that of Mohammad Latif, editor of the journal of the Anjuman-e-Punjab, who wanted an improvement in the standards of learning Arabic (Home 1883). Even in the madrassas, or at least those of them which were influenced or controlled by the state, there was much discussion on teaching Arabic. In the madrassas of Bengal, where Bengali and Urdu were also taught in addition to the usual Persian and Urdu, it was considered too much of a burden for small children and it was proposed in 1940 that it should begin from class 5 rather than class 3 (MEC 1941: 78-79). However, Muslim reformers who emphasized the Muslim identity of Indian Muslims, or sought to reinforce it through symbolic means, made it a point to teach Arabic. Thus, whereas most private reformer’s schools taught the Quran (without understanding), Abdul Haq, a highly religious reformer from the Punjab, set us a boys’ school in 1908 and a Girls school (Madrasat ul-Banat) in 1926 at Jalandhar in both of which he taught the Arabic language and literature in addition to the usual subjects (Minault 1998: 251-252). Modern Indian universities, like the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, started teaching Arabic on modern lines to train interpreters. Even the traditional madrassas sometimes genuflected in the direction of modernity. In its 1980 session, the Darul Uloom of Deoband, the foremost Islamic seminary in South Asia, declared that ‘it is necessary to popularize the Arabic language on a public plane’ and that arrangements should be made for teaching it through modern linguistic methods (Rizvi 1980: 381).

By the end of British rule, Arabic was taught in two different ways. The state schools and universities offered it as an optional subject. It was generally taken by students as an easy option which increased one’s marks in the overall examination. Even at the M.A level a pass degree in Arabic did not generally reflect one’s ability to read and write the language. It was also taught in the madrassas but here the texts were so anachronistic and difficult and such was the emphasis on rote learning that students emerged with as little ability to use it as a living language as their counterparts in the universities. This, however, may be changing in India, at least on a limited scale.

3. Arabic-Teaching in Pakistan

Because Islam was the major identity symbol of the Pakistan movement, the rulers of Pakistan, however secular and westernized, could not ignore it once the new state was established. Precisely because of its symbolic significance Islam continued to be used as a symbol of national integration in the face of the threat from Bengali ethnicity. Arabic, being an Islamic language, was often considered an antidote to ethnicity, especially Bengali ethnicity. Hence one reason why it was proposed as the official language of Pakistan, even as late as in October 1971, was because of its political neutrality and assumed integrative potential (Shaheen 1971). It was also considred, along with Persian, a repository ‘of our vast cultural heritage’ and the first educational meeting of the new state gave it a place, albeit a vaguely defined one, in Pakistan’s educational system (PEC 1947: 12). But, while the secular elite used Islam for political purposes, there were people who subordinated politics to its demands. For them Pakistan was not obtained for Muslims so as to save them from Hindu domination and competition for resources and power, it was obtained to create an Islamic state and society. Thus the tension between the religious and secular was part of the politics of Pakistan from the beginning. Arabic, being a symbol of Islam, was part of this ongoing debate also.

3.1 Arabic and Ethnic Politics

To take the proposal to use Arabic to counter ethnicity first. In April 1950, Zahid Hussain, Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, said that Arabic should be the national language of Pakistan during his presidential address at a meeting of the Halqa-e-Arabad-e-Zauq, a literary organization. He was opposed by many people, notably Abdul Haq of the Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu (Pakistan Times 16 Apr 1950). Later, the general body of the Halqa disapproved Zahid Hussain’s view adopting a resolution that ‘Urdu alone can and should become the official language of Pakistan as well as its lingua franca’ (Pakistan Times 24 Apr 1950). On 22 January 1951 the East Bengal Muslim League Council recommended to the central government that Arabic be adopted as the state language of Pakistan. This was, in reality, an attempt by many Bengali members to protest against the centre’s policy of patronising Urdu. Indeed, the members said clearly that they would not waive the claims of their language for any language except Arabic because it symbolised Islamic solidarity (Pakistan Times 23 Jan 1951). This decision was criticised, among others, by the Buddhist League (ibid, 12 February 1951). On 10 February 1951 the Agha Khan, a well known political figure and spiritual head of the Ismaili community, pleaded the case of Arabic as national language of Pakistan at the opening session of the Motamar-e-Alam-i-Islami at Karachi. Among other things he also said that Urdu was not used till the British period and that it was associated with the downfall and decadence of the Indian Muslims (Pakistan Times 13 February 1951). He also gave many positive arguments in favour of Arabic. Among other things he said that Arabic was known not only to the Arabs but also to the educated Muslims of Africa. ‘Arabic as a universal language of the Muslim world will unite, Urdu will divide and isolate (Agha Khan 1978: 28). Later on Dr. U.M. Daudpota, a famous Arabic scholar from Sindh, also gave similar arguments. Among other things he pointed out that adopting either Urdu or Bengali or both as state languages would be tantamount to discrimination against the speakers of other languages. Since other people would not be able to compete with those whose mother tongue is Urdu ‘all central services will be monopolized by Urdu-speaking people'’(Daudpota 1978: 31-32)². These and other arguments advanced for Arabic have been summed up by H.M. Matin, one of its enthusiastic supporters. They are: the religious necessity and symbolic significance; integration of all the provinces of Pakistan in the name of Islamic brotherhood and equal difficulty in acquiring the language; privileged access to the Arab, and Muslim, world as a whole and hence the possibility of leading this world etc. etc (Matin 1954; for similar arguments see Yusuf 1969). The issue was never seriously taken up again though there have been people advocating that Arabic should be the national language of Pakistan even after the separation of East Pakistan (for such views see Nadwi 1974, Faruki 1973). Just before the creation of Bangladesh, Ahmad E.H. Jaffer said that he would start a movement for the acceptance of Arabic as the national language of united Pakistan (Morning News 2 May 1971). A few people responded enthusiastically in the press but the movement never took off.

The government of Pakistan, however, realised the impracticability of using Arabic as an official or national language because nobody, not even the religious scholars, could actually use it. It expressed a resolve that the universities should be provided facilities to teach Arabic along with other foreign languages (PEC 1947: 51). Speech-makers exhorted educational experts not to prepare policies which would adversely affect the position of Arabic (ABE 1950: 7), but the fact was that Arabic was merely a symbol; a pious cliché. The ruling elite and the public in general did not take any interest in acquiring it. Although students of Islamic history, philosophy and law were advised to learn the rudiments of the language – indeed that was one of the recommendations of a committee set up to report on the University of Karachi – it remained entirely ignored as a language of scholarship (UKE 1957: 34 & 36).

The government did, however, try to use the Arabic script for writing Bengali as a way of countering Bengali ethnicity. In the second meeting of the Advisory Board of Education the government’s ideas were put forward by Fazlur Rahman, the minister of Education, as follows:

…..the Arabic script will be a potent means of promoting cultural homogeneity and unity of national outlook. As I have said before, our aim is to produce traditions of Islam. In achieving this aim our first effort should be to carry the Islamic world with us and one means of doing this is through the adoption of the Arabic script (ABE 1949: 9).

Some people even claimed that the Arabic script had indeed been used to write Bengali earlier. A.M.A. Hamid, a parliamentarian, said he had seen letters and old documents of Bengali in it. Thus, if Bengali were written in the Arabic script it would be the revival of an old practice and not a new innovation (LAD-P 27 March 1951: 473). The religious right, which opposed the Bengali language movement, demanded that Arabic and not Urdu should be the national language not only of Pakistan but of all Muslim countries (Khan 1952). In East Bengal, the East Pakistan Muslim League Council passed a resolution on 21 January 1951 to make Arabic the national language of Pakistan. The Central Legislature Assembly and 65 Bengali members of the East Pakistan Legislative Assembly too supported this resolution (Mushtaq 1997: 10). In West Pakistan some ulema, including Maulana Zafar Ahmad Ansari, too were sympathetic to the idea (Ansari. Int. 1998). Needless to say this demand came from a very small minority and the government paid no attention to it. In Janaury 1951 the Jamiat-e-Hizb Ullah, a religious party, held a get-together in Sylhat presided over by Maulana Idrees. Along with it the Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islam also held a similar convocation presided by Syed Salman Nadwi. Both decided that East Pakistan should adopt ‘Pak Bangla’ (Mushtaq 1997: 10). This ‘Pak-Bangla’ was Bengali written in the Arabic script and purged of Sanskritic words.

Maulana Zafar Ahmad Ansari, a respected scholar of Islam, was a strong supporter of the idea that all the languages of Pakistan should be written in the Arabic script. When I interviewed his son, Dr. Ishaq Ahmad Ansari, he told me that there was a movement called ‘Huroof ul Quran Taehrik’ in the nineteen fifties. The aim of this movement was to spread the use of the Quranic script (naskh) for the writing of all Pakistani languages. The activists of the movement took out a weekly from Chittagong and were most active in East Pakistan. Indeed, the major reason why Maulana Ansari supported it, and why the movement was born in the first place, was political – the unity of script was supposed to lead to national integration. Also, it was felt that the Bengali script, being a derivative of the Brahmi family of scripts, was associated with the Hindu identity and hence had to be Islamized. Later, Maulana Ansari was among those who advised Ayub Khan to introduce the Arabic rather than the Roman script for writing all the languages of Pakistan. As a result many Urdu textbooks were also printed in the Arabic (naskh) rather than the usual Persian (nastaleeq) script afterwards (Ansari Int. 1998).

Because of the idea of changing the script of Bengali being in the air, the government felt encouraged to embark upon an experiment to reduce the force of ethnicity by the use of the Arabic script for writing Bengali in East Bengal. Thus, 20 centres were set up in East Bengal to reach Bengali to adults in the Arabic script. In April 1950, about 600 people received instruction in these centres. According to another report 37 unaided private centres too ‘have been started by the local people’ for the same purpose (LAD 11 Oct 1950: 421-422). These ‘local people’ must have been in a minority (Probably Biharis or from the religious right) because the experiment was resented by many Bengalis and they opposed it at different fora. In the National Assembly too members from East Bengal opposed it on the grounds that all old literature of Bengal, written in the Bengali script, would become a sealed book for the younger generation (LAD-P 2 March 1951: 471-472). Meanwhile a small minority kept up the demand for Arabic in the press and questions were asked in the central legislature about it. E.H. Jaffar, for instance, asked whether Arabic would be compulsory in centrally administered schools and received no for an answer (LAD-P 25 March 1953: 665). However, in the document entitled ‘The Language of the Republic’, which made Bengali one of the national language of Pakistan in addition to Urdu, it was promised that provisions would be made for teaching Arabic in secondary schools (LAD-P 14 March 1954: 83). The teaching, however, was to be optional at both the school and the higher level. Maulana Zafar Ahmad Ansari is said to have contributed to this development with reference to Arabic (Ansari. Int. 1998).

A number of people made private efforts to promote the teaching of Arabic in the nineteen fifties. Mohammad Hussain al Azmi, Secretary of Motamer Aalmi Islami, formed an association in 1949 for the teaching of Arabic. Zahid Hussain of the State Bank, and Maulana Zafar Ahmad Ansari among others were associated with the Jamiat ul Arabia, a Karachi-based association for teaching Arabic. Kamal Faruqi, who wrote much in the press in support of Arabic also, formed an association called the ‘Society for the Advancement of Arabic’, again for teaching the language. All these private efforts showed a shift from Persian to Arabic as far as the teaching of the classical languages of Indian Muslims were concerned (this information is from Ansari Int. 1998). A number of Arab teachers also came to Pakistan on the invitation of Pakistanis who wanted to promote Arabic. Two Egyptian academics, for instance, were associated with the University of Peshawar and several from Syria were teaching Arabic in various seminaries (Shahabi n.d: 193).

3.2 Arabic and Ayub Khan’s Modernism

In the 1960s, possibly because of Ayub Khan’s repression of religious revivalism, anti-government feelings were expressed by supporting Urdu and Arabic. Thus some members of the National Assembly protested against Arabic being optional. They wanted it to be compulsory (LAD-P 25 Jan 1964: 1764). In an opinion poll of Bengali-medium students from East Bengal it emerged that between 61 to 66 percent students of classes 5 to 10 did, indeed, want Arabic as a compulsory subject. Arabic, however, remained an elective subject from class 6 in non-elitist state schools. The elitist English-medium schools did not have it at all though they did start teaching Islamic studies and Urdu in 1906 (LAD-P 1 June 1966: 234). The Commission on National Education, which Ayub Khan had set up, had nothing to say about Arabic except that Islamic scholars must acquire ‘a thorough knowledge of it’ while, at the same time, be conversant with modern knowledge. The regime’s aim was to enable a modernist interpretation of Islam to replace the conservative and revivalist interpretations which opposed Ayub’s reforms in Muslim personal law and other matters (CNE 1959: 214). Dr. S.M. Yusuf, Professor of Arabic at the University of Karachi, called Arabic studies in the universities ‘dehydrated’ because Arabic sources are not taught (Yusuf 1969). The government too acknowledged that the universities are not seen to provide ‘the same measure of training in the religious disciplines and knowledge of the Arabic language as the Madrassah scheme of education’ but the governments’ idea of integrating the two systems did not appeal to the madrassas (CSPW 1966: 142). The state did, however, go for cosmetic measures with an eye on pleasing the Arab world. Among such steps was the publication of an Arabic quarterly called Alwai from Beirut (LAD-P 13 May 1968: 451).

3.3 Arabic and the State

In the proposals for the new education policy, circulated by the Chairman, Air Marshal Nur Khan, it was said that the madrassas perpetuate old-fashioned teaching of Arabic (PNEP 1969: 11). However, because of the fear of resistance from the madrassas, no radical change was made either during Yahya’s or during his successor, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s rule. During the latter’s rule, however, the Arab world became a major employer of overseas Pakistanis. Although most Pakistanis were labourers, not even literate in Urdu, there was some interest in Arabic for utilitarian rather than purely religious reasons (Malik 1996: 271). For religious, or symbolic, reasons the 1973 constitution made the state committed to encourage and facilitate the learning of the Arabic language’ (Article 31 in ‘The Principles of Policy’ of the Constitution). The government, somewhat surprisingly, employed teachers qualified from the madrassas for teaching it when it was introduced as an optional subject in classes 6 to 8th in the state schools (Malik, 271). The government also opened classes of Arabic in twelve branches of the Pakistan National Centres in 1974 (LAD-P 15 April 1975: 535; see editorial in Jang 3 March 1974). It also published books and documentaries in Arabic to project Pakistan and Bhutto (LAD-P 5 Feb 1975: 65). A number of Egyptian teachers of Arabic were invited to Pakistan and an agreement was signed with the Arab League for Economic Cultural & Scientific Organization (ALECSO) for help in developing the curricula in Arabic and establishing a centre for training its teachers (LAD-P 3 June 1975: 160). A number of institutions – notable among them the National Institute of Modern Language (NIML) and the Peoples’ Open University (later known as the Allama Iqbal Open University) – developed courses in modern Arabic. Dr. Tufail Hashmi, Head of the Arabic and Islamic Studies department at AIOU, told the present writer in an interview (25 February 1999) that the first programme of the department was course on easy Arabic on the T.V and radio. This elementary course was very popular attracting between 10 to 15,000 students per semester. The NIML began with a diploma and other courses for people, including defence forces officials, who would need to understand modern, spoken and written, Arabic. The aim was to create interpreters of the language for official purposes. However, the NIML went on to introduce M.A in Arabic in the late seventies (LAD-P 24 June 1976: 135). An agreement was signed between the Open University and the Saudi Arabian government to support institutions for the support of Arabic (ibid). Thus, the total spent on the teaching of Arabic in 1975-76 was as follows:

Open University 5,47,000

University of Sindh 85,815

University of Karachi 94,126

University of Punjab 2,37,088

University of Bahawalpur 50,000

University of Peshawar 2,40,000

(Source: LAD-P 24 June 19876: 135).

The ulema too made efforts to increase the role of Arabic in the country. The Central Institute for the promotion of Arabic and the Translation of the Quran (Markazi Idara Farogh-e-Arabi Tarjuma Quran), for instance, promoted its teaching in ways which supplemented the governments’ efforts (Jang 24 Oct 1974). Also, in a conference for the promotion of the language, they recommended that a university be established for this purpose with the help of the Arabs; that Arabic should be a compulsory subject at the secondary and even higher levels; and that the existing universities be given the task of establishing different specialisations in the language (Nadwi 1975: 56-58). Later, during Zia ul Haq’s period too, the ulema emphasized the teaching of Arabic and the Quran (Consolidated 1982).

For all he did for Arabic, Bhutto was not keen to strengthen the Islamic lobby. He only meant to conciliate it so that it would not oppose him. However, the Islamists joined hands with his opponents to remove him from power. General Zia ul Haq, who benefited from this situation by imposing martial law, played up the Islamic symbol to gain the support of the Islamists. In the National Education Policy of 1979 Arabic was explicitly, and emphatically, connected with the ideology of Pakistan and with Islam (NEP 1979: 48). Among other steps of a symbolic nature, one of the aims of the new policy was to make '‘arrangements for teaching of Arabic’ in all schools and colleges’ (NEP 1978: VIII). The pragmatic reasons remained, of course, as a representative of the Task Force on Education pointed out in 1982:

A further factor (for learning Arabic – besides of its religious character) and one specially relevant to the working class Pakistani, is the economic opportunity represented by the nearby Arabian Gulf (Talal 1982).

And, indeed, the new education policy did recommend the setting up of a ‘functional course [in Arabic] for illiterates, particularly those intending to serve in the Middle East’ (NEP 1979: 49). Thirty Arabic language centres, co-ordinated by the Allama Iqbal Open University, were to be established at a cost of Rs 44.32 million in all the big cities and even in the small towns of Pakistan where most of the emigrant workers to the Arab world lived (NEP 1979: 57). These centres were supposed to offer elementary, secondary, advanced and functional courses, all of six months duration. The last one was meant for illiterates intending to emigrate to the Middle East (NEP 1979: 57). Arab countries promised books and teachers for these centres. The demand for Arabic teachers rose and in 1982, while there were only 2,500 teachers, the demand was for 6,000 (Talal 1982: 11). By 1986, however, this gap had been filled (Malik 1996: 273). Most of these teachers, according to both Jamal Malik and Dr Hashmi (Interview above), had been trained by the Open University. They were not the graduates of the madrassas. However, the Task Force did concede that ‘teachers may be had, for both the teaching of Arabic and Islamiyat at the middle level, from among the graduates of the various Deeni Madaris; (Talal 1982: 5). Among other things Zia ul Haq launched a T.V programme called Iqra (Arabic for read) from Pakistan Television. An Arabic-Urdu dictionary too was to be published (Action 1984: Chapter 9). He also got the Open University to create the Al-Lisan Ul Arabi programme (Hashmi. Int. 1999) and financed a number of publications in Arabic, the list of which was presented to the parliament, during the 1980s (LAD-P 14 April 1982: 30; NEP 1978: 12). Above all, in 1982 Zia ul Haq made Arabic compulsory for all non-elitist state schools i.e government Urdu and Sindhi-medium schools from class 6th to 10th (Malik 1996: 271). Moreover, the International Islamic University, whose working languages were Arabic and English, was established in Islamabad.

An innovative feature of Zia ul Haq’s educational policy was the establishment of 5000 mosque and 5000 mohallah (i.e locality) schools during the five year plan at the rate of about 1000 schools per year. The Arabic script was taught to all students here because reading the Quran, without however understanding it, was compulsory (NEP 1979: 10). In the mosque schools the children were supposed to be taught by a teacher in the local mosque. In the mohalla school an elderly woman taught girls how to recite the Quran at her house (NEP 1979: 14).

In the Islamic University Arabic is taught through easy textbooks which are based on modern rather than the traditional methods of language teaching. Gone are the old textbooks of sarf and nahw, the dread of students, and in their place are textbooks with real life situations, pictures and conversations. These books, published in Saudi Arabia, are emphatically Islamic in content, however. Females are either not shown or shown in roles such as mothers, sisters, students and teachers. All observe purdah and Islamic rituals are emphasized. According to the students and teachers of the university, students learn to speak Arabic in one year whereas in the madrassas and the state schools in South Asia they never learn it at all (full research in April 1999).

4. Conclusion

In the state institutions, however, Arabic remains either an easy option or a compulsion for the learners. For the state, which teachers it compulsorily, it is part of indoctrination – a symbolic reinforcement of the Muslim identity of Pakistanis with a view to mobilizing the religious sentiment in order to prevent their falling prey to ethnic nationalism or losing their antagonism towards India. In short, Arabic is now in the service of the state and no longer remains a living force in the lives of the Muslims of Pakistan. The religious ulema, however, are making efforts to make it a living force so as to emphasize the symbolic connection of Arabic with the Islamic identity as well as to make the original source of Islam accessible to more potential scholars.

Notes

1. The Arabacization of the state under Abdal Malik and Walid I was carried out in whole Ummayad empire. In Damascus the public registers were changed from Greek to Arabic. In Iraq and the Eastern Provinces they were changed from old Persian (Pahlawi) to Arabic (Hitti 1938: 217).

2. Both the Agha Khan’s and Dr. Daudpota’s statements have been quoted from Sind Quarterly VI: 1 (1978). However, the former was an address delivered in 1951 and the latter was written before 1955.

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Books on Arabic Language & Literature Taught in India

Name of the Book Evidence of First Subsequent Use

Use (Year) (Years)

Ajaib ul Ujab 1871 19^th century

Alaf Laila 1857

Diwan ul Hamasah 19^th century

Diwan ul Mutanabbi 1871 19^th century

Diya (Commentary on Misbah) 1838

Fusul-i-Akbari 1748 Till now

Hidayat un Nahw 1748 19^th century

Hidayat us Sarf 1838

Ilm ul Seegha Till now

Irshad 1266-1287 Upto 1582

Jang-i-Nahw 1871

Jang-i-Sarf 1871

Kafiyah 1266-1287 Throughout – till now

Lubbul Albag 1266-1287 No evidence of later use

Maqamat-i-Hariri 1266-1287 Throughout – till now

Misbah 1266-1287 Upto the 19^th century

Mizan 1882 Upto the 19^th century

Munshaib 1748 Throughout – till now

Nahw-e-Meer 1748 Till now

Nafhat u’l Yaman 1871 Till 19^th century

Panjgang 1748 Till 19^th century

Sab’ah Muallaqat 1871 Till 19^th century

Sarf-e-Meer 1748 Till now

Sharh Mullah Jami (commentary on Kafiyah) 1700s Throughout – till now

Sharh Mi’atul Amul 1748 Till now

Sharh Ibn-e-Aqil Till now

Shafiyah 1748 Till 19^th century

Zubdah 1748 Till 19^th century

Significance of Dates

1260-1287 During the reign of Balban

1582 Akbar’s period

1700s Shah Waliullah’s curriculum (1702-1760)

1748 Death of Nizamuddin and establishment of the Dars-e-Nizami

1871s Courses of the Calcutta Madrassah

1838 William Adam’s report on education in the Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.

1857 Courses of the Universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras.

19^th Courses in madrassas; for oriental degrees century established by the British and so on.

Till now Courses of madrasses in Pakistan.

Source: Sufi 1941; for Sher Shah’s syllabus, Imamuddin 1964: 9; also Nadvi 1936: 89-102.

Appendix A

List of the number of these and other schools in the nineteenth century in India:

	Quran Schools & Pupils		Persian Schools & Pupils		Arabic Schools & Pupils
Areas now in UP (1850s)	109	821			11	87
Punjab (1833)			458	4,015
Madras (1902-1907)					58	2,681
Bombay (1902-1907)					66	2,661
India (1914)	8,288	168,406