Are We Killing Our Languages?
Baloch writers have often expressed the fear that their languages might be dying as children study other languages in schools. Sindhis have complained about the policies of Ayub Khan which, they claim, had reduced the use of Sindhi at least in the urban areas of Sindh. The Pashtuns, sensitive as they are about Pashto, have complained that Pashto is not given as much importance as it deserves. Even Punjabis, although in a majority in Pakistan, have raised their voice ever since the 1950s for using Punjabi in basic schooling and in the media. The question is whether we are all collaborating, wilfully or unknowingly, in ‘killing’ our indigenous languages?
In the technical jargon of sociolinguistics the concept of ‘language death’ has been much debated. Some people seem to suggest, by the use of the term ‘death’, as if language is like a living being which has a natural cycle of life, adulthood and death. Others argue that a language dies when it is no longer used by its speakers. These speakers have shifted to another language hence the phenomenon can be called ‘language shift’. It can also be called ‘language suicide’ but not ‘death’. Still others, like the well known scholar and language-rights supporter Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, calls it ‘murder’ or ‘linguicide’. She also calls it ‘linguistic genocide’. Her arguments are that powerful cultures or the nation-state creates conditions because of which the use of certain languages is prohibited. Mostly, however, it is not prohibited by law but one is made ashamed of the language and avoids using it. Most often, the language does not help in acquiring good jobs and schools do not teach it. Thus, market factors being against it, children do not want to study it and their parents are reluctant to teach it to them. For all these reasons the number of users of a language decreases. However, as somebody creates these conditions and the speakers accept them, there is an agency which ‘kills’ the language. That is why, argues Dr. Skutnabb-Kangas, this is ‘language genocide’---it is not simply ‘death’.
In her excellent book Skutnabb-Kangas entitled Linguistic Genocide in Education (2000), the author has related how several languages were suppressed by force. In Australia the British settlers made schools which banned the use of the Aboriginal languages. In the United States, Canada and Latin America the white settlers tried to educate the children in schools where they were not allowed to use their own languages. In Norway and Sweden the Sami languages were looked down upon and discouraged. She narrates many tales of children being beaten, stopped from meeting their parents and called stupid for speaking their languages. In short, the schools were the agents of linguicide and they did it by making children ashamed of their languages, their parents and their culture in general. That is why the Representative from Berin to the World Conference on Linguistic Rights held in Barcelona in June 1996 said: ‘The punishment of a child for speaking their language is the beginning of the destruction of that language’.
Is this happening in Pakistan today? Well, let us survey the scene dispassionately. The first thing which strikes us is that only English is used in the highest domains of power i.e governance, bureaucracy, judiciary, media, commerce, military, research etc. Urdu is also used in these domains but generally at the lower or second-best levels. In Sindh some Sindhi is used at the lower level in some domains of power. The Madrassas and some primary schools use Pashto too but there are very few and constitute a very small domain of power in the educational sector. All the other languages are not used in the domains of power. This means that they cannot make their users enter the domains of power (unless, of course, they know other languages such as English and Urdu). This exclusion ensures that conditions are ready to wipe them out if sheer numbers do not save them from this fate. It also ensures that children do not want to learn them or, at least, their parents do not want to teach them these languages. This is amply proved by the fact that children from the most powerful and affluent classes do not even want their children to be burdened by Urdu let alone other languages. Moreover, whenever language activists have introduced Baluchi, Brahvi and Pashto the schools of well off elitist children have never done so. Even other parents, mindful of overburdening their children, have resisted their own languages. Such are the conditions which the market forces, which favour English and Urdu in that order, have created in Pakistan.
The worst possible thing, however, is the culture shame which exists in relation to our indigenous languages. In the hierarchy of languages the highest place is occupied by English. This is followed by Urdu and then come the indigenous traditional mother-tongues of the people. Both English and Urdu are identity symbols of markers of ‘good’ breeding, class and sophistication. They open the doors of drawing room. They are recognized as ‘cultural capital’. This means that skills in English (and possibly Urdu in some contexts) can be used to secure better marks in interviews, better marriage proposals, better business deals, better promotions than other skills. One may know as good physics as another person but if one has a rustic, Punjabi or Pathan pronunciation of English then one has less chances of securing a job than somebody whose English is good. Indeed, very often people with less objective knowledge of a subject can get into elitist positions on the strength of their cultural capital.
What this implies is that the cultural capital of the majority of our people is not recognized at all. Indeed, it is not accepted as ‘capital’; it becomes a handicap. One’s speech, one’s clothes, one’s taste, one’s knowledge of traditional matters, songs, sayings etc becomes nought. It is not only that all such things are not taken as knowledge at all; it is that they are held in contempt. While the Sindhis, the Pashtuns and the Baloch have resisted these tendencies and have built up pride in their languages and identity, the Punjabi middle class has completely succumbed to the dominant English and Urdu oriented culture. The Punjabi middle class very often disowns its language and does not speak it to their children. Very often educated Punjabis do not know, and cannot even read, the classics of Punjabi literature. However, common people with rudimentary education do buy stories and popular books (called chapbooks) in Punjabi.
There is, to be sure, culture shame about Punjabi in Pakistani Punjab. There is some culture shame even about Urdu among the Anglicized elite. However, Punjabi is so large a language that it cannot be killed at least in its spoken form. Moreover, there is so much being written in it both at the popular level in the Urdu script in Pakistani Punjab as well as the Gurmukhi script in the Indian Punjab that even its literature will not die though very few people will read it. Urdu too is a very big language and is too deeply enterenched in Pakistan, India and the South Asian diaspora to die. Indeed, on the strength of sheer numbers alone, none of our major indigenous languages is really threatened. Those which are such as Ormuri, Domaaki and Phalura etc are minor languages.
It would, however, be a pity if even these minor languages disappear. This would mean the extinction of a certain world view; a certain culture; a dictinctive way of life. In a sense this is like losing a biological species. One does not want the triumphant chariot of globalization to make the world a uniform, Mac Donaldized, Coca-Colaized entity. That is why, while it is fine to add to one’s repertoire of languages to gain better jobs and prestige, we must not replace our languages by others. This, however, can only be ensured by the state with its resources and control over schooling, the media and, above all, jobs. The state can help in preserving our linguistic rights and can help eradicate the culture shame which many of us have about using our mother-tongues in public.
Dr. Tariq Rahman