I have written a number of articles on why it is difficult to do research in Pakistan. This is not one of those kind of articles. This is a personal account and I beg the readers’ indulgence before inflicting it upon them. The reason I am writing this account of how I wrote my last book, Language, Ideology and Power: Language-Learning Among the Muslims of Pakistan and North India (Karachi: Oxford University Press 2002), is because I thought a subjective narrative in story form would enable the readers to understand the problems of a researcher better than a quasi-scientific and objective article.
I had almost given up in despair when I finished writing my book Language and Politics in Pakistan (Oxford University Press, 1996 and reprinted several times). I had reached the bitter conclusion that, while everybody in every seminar will bemoan the lack of research in the country, nobody will ever actually import research material, pay for trips to archives abroad or provide research assistants to the genuine research scholar. While I read things at random relishing, for a change, my release from a cycle of unremitting work I found that I had many archival references on the teaching of languages in South Asia. Soon I realized that this could become a book. It would be a historical work as it would really be a history of the policies and practices of teaching and learning languages in this part of the world. However, as I knew that my access to India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal etc would be limited, I decided to limit myself only to the languages of the Muslims of north India and Pakistan. Why north India? Because some of the most significant developments, such as the teaching of Urdu, took place there. So now the outline of the area of research was clear.
However, it was not to be plain history in chronological order. I wanted to connect language-learning with power as well as ideology. The argument is that most people learn languages to acquire power. Thus, if Persian is used in the domains of power (administration, governance, judiciary, media, commerce, education etc) they learn Persian; if English replaces Persian, they learn English. Moreover, powerful elites teach those languages which will support the societal arrangements which sustain their power. The textbooks of languages support ideologies which sustain the value systems and point of view of the powerful. Thus, the learning of languages is connected both with power and ideology. Moreover, I differentiated between the ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ of languages. The term ‘teaching’ is reserved for the supply side; ‘learning’ is the demand side. In some cases, the supply is missing but the demand is there for some reason or the other. With this in mind I decided to look at the reading material of ordinary people in Punjabi, Pashto, Balochi, Brahvi and so on. These languages are mostly learned by people themselves though the arrangements for teaching them (the supply) are very inadequate or officially non-existent.
All this was quite clear but how was I to undertake this huge research venture? Just to find out what other books, papers, theses, reports etc had been written on language-teaching in South Asia was a daunting task. There was no consolidated data base as there is in any good Western university. The internet could supply some names but there was no inter-library loan system to obtain the titles. So, what was one to do? I did the only thing I could think of. While running around from library to library in search of what was available I applied for a Fulbright Fellowship. To my joy and amazement I got the Fulbright award for 1995-1996. As I had no contacts in American universities I opted for the University of Texas at Austin only because some of my wife’s relatives lived there. Basically all I needed was a good library and as I had visited UT Austin in 1983 for research, I knew it was a rich university so it would give me all I needed.
And, indeed, it did. In one academic year I had piles upon piles of material which I would need for my book. I came back in the summer of 1996 and set about organizing the treasure trove I had brought along. Now another stroke of good luck came my way. Dr. Tariq Banuri, the Executive Director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad, offered me a job. The salary was tempting but, of course, I did not want to leave the Quaid-i-Azam University. So I had to decline. Upon this he asked me whether I would accept the equivalent of one-day’s engagement at the SDPI. In practice it meant giving research papers to be published by the SDPI. This I accepted because I was doing research anyway. Tariq gave me the flexibility to choose the timings of my visits to the SDPI so I was as free as before and I had a little extra income. This income was not meant for this book but, if one has money, one can always afford to do reseach. So, I hired a reseach assistant. This was Ashfaq Sadiq---an immensely resourceful man who found a number of documents for me. In three years I submitted thirteen papers to the SDPI (regular full time fellows were supposed to give two per year but they had other duties too). At the same time I collected much information for this book. I also collected articles which I had published earlier and some papers which I did for SDPI and put them together in a book entitled Language, Education and Culture (Oxford University Press, 1999).
Meanwhile, knowing that the book needed much more money than I had, I wrote to all the institutions I knew for a grant. Everybody was kind enough to reply but nobody actually coughed up any money. Even my parent department, The National Institute of Pakistan Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University did not help initially. In 1998 I had to go to India to look at the teaching of Urdu there at present. At last, despairing of any other source of help, I ventured out at my own expense. My mother, who was born there and had a sister still living there, wanted to see her and I am glad I took her. This was in February 1998 and in August 2000 my mother died. Thanks to my research she met her sister one last time before she died. I lived in New Delhi and people gave me the documents I needed for my work but the expenses were well nigh unbearable. When I returned, the book’s outline was quite clear but there were two big hurdles. The first was a visit to London to consult the sources in the Oriental and India Office Collection of the British Library in London. The second was to conduct a survey of at least about 1500 students (10th class and equivalent) in the religious seminaries (madrassas), English-medium schools, Urdu-medium schools and Sindhi-medium schools.
Just as I was contemplating what to do my arrangement at SDPI ended in July 1999. The little bit of extra money dried up. There was nothing but darkness in sight as far as the book was concerned. But by now I was too far in ‘blood’, so to speak, to give up. I and my wife decided that come what may the work would continue. Just then I was invited by the University of Aarhus in Denmark to teach a course in September-October 1999. I asked them to permit me to stopover in London. So that was how I arrived at the British Library in the summer of 1999. I stayed with friends and travelled everyday from far off Heathrow area to Central London. Here I pored over the sources till midday. Then followed the lunch break when I and Dr. Riaz, a colleague from QAU, relaxed over a cup of tea or coffee. But London is expensive and I was short both on Norman blood and cash. So my research trip to merry England was not as much fun as such trips are for amply financed scholars.
After this came the survey. At this time I had no reseach assistant but some decent people volunteered to help me. Mostly, however, I went from school to school myself requesting august principals and village schoolmasters to allow me to dish out the forms to boys and girls of 10th classes. Most people cooperated. Indeed, I noticed that the more expensive the school the less cooperative it tended to be. One very famous school in Karachi did not allow my research assistant to conduct the survey at all. Schools in small town not only permitted the survey but also provided tea and biscuits. Madrassas were polite but very often did not actually provide the students. However, they were very generous about the tea however syrupy it might be. As for the cadet colleges and military-administered schools it helped to know somebody personally. That was the ‘open sesame’ otherwise they remained closed. On the whole, however, most of the schools were very helpful and cooperative and the survey progressed from month to month till I had about 2000 filled-in questionnaries lying with me. Out of these a little less than 1500 were actually usable. The others had to be discarded. But finally the book was almost complete. By this time I got a lump sum of Rs. 25,000 (twenty five thousand) from my parent department. The money was very less—as the Urdu proverb has it “Oont ke moon men zeera” (cumin seed in the mouth of a camel) and I had requested it nearly two years back but nevertheless it was very helpful when it came. Moreover, the National Instititute of Pakistan Studies also sent one of its own research assistants to Sindh for my work. This was the only time it was done otherwise I had been to Sindh twice myself. This money and help was the only help given to me specifically for this book. However, one can only be grateful for small mercies.
In June 2000 I sent the huge typescript (over 700 pages) to the office of my publishers---Oxford University Press, Karachi. They took more than three months to give me the good news that their academic referee had found the book worthy of publication. Later I was told that, since the book was on a subject of which there are few academic experts in Pakistan, it had to be sent abroad. That is what delayed the accceptance of it. Then came the proofs which I pored over sometimes for as many as eight hours a day. Then finally came the making of the index which had to be made by hand not by the computer for various reasons. It was back-breaking work and I had no assistant to fall back upon. Now that the book has been released, what surprises me is that I did not give up.
I do not know if I will ever be able to write another book as I would really love to but if I do not, the readers should know what aspect of our system are to blame. The list is long and I do not want to elaborate upon it. However, when I see people getting hefty salaries and research grants for writing measly little reports which nobody reads; when I see the mind-boggling expenditure on the elite of power; when I notice just how money is spent on whims and passing fashions of the day---the iron enters my soul! Such is the sheer pleasure of research that I did not ever imagine I would leave this wonderful avocation when I first made it my own. But such is the frustration caused by lack of funds, lack of research material, lack of assistance and lack of appreciation that I feel like giving up on it myself. Now you know the problems of research in Pakistan?