[LAP] Op-ed: Urdu: from pidgin to creole

[Zubair Torwali]

For your perusal!

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-344575-Urdu-from-pidgin-to-creole
Urdu: from pidgin to creole


Zubair Torwali
<http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintWriterName.aspx?ID=9&URL=Zubair%20Torwali>Friday,
October 09, 2015
>From Print Edition


 19  14  2  0

“Punjabi families no longer speak Punjabi with their children”. This
generalisation we usually hear whenever we talk about the long-standing
issue of language in Pakistan. This is, though, a generalisation and cannot
be applied to the whole of Punjab; however, it is true enough for most of
the urban elite suburbs of Punjab.

Since much of Pakistan’s political power and military might is exercised by
an elite urban feudal class in Punjab, we very often tend to forget the
larger rural Punjabi community which faces the same problems as anyone
living in rural Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or Balochistan. In some aspects
the rural Punjabi lives an even worse life. A trip to the interior of
Punjab will be enough to shatter the myth about the ‘big brother’. In rural
Punjab one comes frequently across with people who can neither speak nor
understand Urdu.

Urdu language historians and our textbooks tell us that the etymology of
the term ‘Urdu’ is Turkish ‘lashkar’ suggesting that Urdu is actually made
of various elements from different languages when the speakers of those
languages came into contact with each other because of trade and military
manoeuvres.

Linguists call such a language ‘contact language’ or pidgin. This is not
unique to Urdu only. When two or more language communities come into
contact for trade they usually need a ‘makeshift’ language, which later
becomes pidgin.

Pidgins are made by social conditions in order to enable communication
between different language communities. Pidgin thus becomes the ‘second
language’ for the communities in contact; it is in addition to their
indigenous languages, which they use for intra-communal communication. This
is very true for Urdu in most of Pakistan. Urdu is now a second language
for many citizens in Pakistan.

When a society is bilingual in their indigenous language and the dominant
language of the ‘nation-state’ we find that each language has its own
functions, and switching from one to the other underlies specific
identifiable patterns. This we notiernce when a Punjabi, Sindhi, Pakhtun or
a speaker of the Dardic languages of north Pakistan speaks Urdu.

A ‘nation-state’ usually needs a national language; and a national culture,
too. After Independence both India and Pakistan faced the issue of how to
build their ‘nations’ out of the multiple ethnicities within the new
countries that would be legitimately different from each other as well.

Prior to Independence, the primary language issues in the Subcontinent were
linguistic diversity, and the relative status of Urdu, Hindi, Bengali,
English and other regional languages. Urdu use was (and is) mostly
associated with Muslims in South Asia, but spoken Urdu is generally
understood by Hindi speakers and vice versa.

In order to claim a unique identity, mostly charged by religion, the
ideologues and demagogues of the two-nation theory stressed the use of
Arabic and Persian lexicon instead of that of Sanskrit in Urdu. On the
other end, the Hindu nationalists began to revive more and more Sanskrit
words in Hindi. These people had applied ethnogenesis. The divergence was
the political need of that time otherwise there is virtually no difference
between Urdu and Hindi except the religious jargons in both the languages.

A ‘nation-building’ project based on a single language and culture is very
often counter-productive. In reality there is no ‘nation-state’ today in
the world. The nation-states are actually multiethnic and multicultural
with different ethnic communities within. Europe and the United States are
presented as examples of nation-states. In today’s America we see the
Navajo, like many other American Indians, asserting their identity and
rejuvenating their language – Navajo.

Pakistan has seen the counter-effects of imposing a single language and
culture on a multiethnic society in the transformation of East Pakistan
into a separate state, Bangladesh. But, as in every case, the
power-wielders always learn the opposite lessons – whether it is the ethnic
unrest or outcomes of using religion for geostrategic purposes.

Instead of getting the right lesson of giving the right status to
multiethnic communities in Pakistan, those with power took the cultural
multiplicity of Pakistan as a threat. They blamed the Bengalis and Indians
for breaking the country, ignoring what they had themselves been doing
since the very idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims of the United
India.

The recent laudable but impracticable judgement by the Lahore-based chief
justice of Pakistan to switch over to Urdu instead of English as the
official language of Pakistan indicates the love our urban Punjabi brothers
have for Urdu. The judgement would have been lovelier if the honourable
judge had mentioned the need to protect the rich linguistic diversity of
Pakistan as well.

As mentioned earlier, our urban Punjabi establishment is shy of their
language and identity. They love Urdu; and regard its exclusion an
incomplete agenda of their ‘nation-building’ project. They recommend Urdu
for us in education and in the public sphere but ironically they educate
their children in elite English medium schools in Pakistan or abroad.

The middle urban class of Punjab is shy of their language. They regard it a
symbol of backwardness; too rustic and often slang as we mostly hear
Punjabi from them when they are in a light mood. They don’t deem Punjabi
‘civilised’ enough to be transmitted to their children, and so avoid its
use at homes. They are actually making creole of a pidgin.

When a pidgin takes the place of the first language (native language) of a
people, it becomes a creole. Urdu is now being made creole in urban Punjab.
The middle class tries to make it creole for their children whereas the
elites give English that status. However, the question that still remains
unanswered is: will such a scheme in education and public work, as –
unfortunately – Pakistan’s 200 million people are not all elite?

The writer heads IBT, an independent organisation dealing with education
and development in Swat.

Email: ztorwali at gmail.com

-- 
*____________*
*Zubair Torwali*

Executive Director
Idara Baraye Taleem-o-Taraqi (IBT)
i.e. [Institute for Education and Development]
 Bahrain Swat.
Freelance columnist
The News, Express Tribune, Daily Times, The Friday Times, Dawn
Cell: +92 311 5000 233
Phone: +92 946 780073
 www.ibtswat.org
twitter: @zubairtorwali
Skype: zubair.torwali.pk
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