Daily Times

I ended my second article in the ongoing series on the Punjabi language’s potential for boosting regional and global trade with the plea that it is only if rational thinking based on mutual benefit prevails in the corridors of power and amongst the trading and entrpreneurial classes that Punjabi can be used as an asset. So, here follow my main arguments in support of Punjabi as a medium for trade and commerce. If India and Pakistan decide to adhere to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Charter, which commits them and other member states to work towards the elimination of poverty and other egregious indicators of underdevelopment, it should not be difficult to appreciate that they will have to replace confrontation with cooperation. Cooperation of course would mean solving common problems with regards to the environment, land erosion, waterlogging, fair sharing of river waters and so on, but also entering friendly trade relations. Without producing wealth, prosperity will not be possible.

Since the overwhelming bulk of India-Pakistan trade will be carried out via the land route, the Wagah-Attari, Hussainiwala and other borders in Punjab would be the main routes for such trade because the old road systems and railway tracks that were laid down for a united Punjab exist even now and can be put to use again. The BBC announced on October 1, 2007 that a truck carrying goods from East Punjab crossed the Wagah-Attari border and entered West Punjab for the first time in 60 years. This was once an ancient trade route that linked India to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Analysts believe that trade between the two countries could reach $ 10 billion a year if both sides ease restrictions.

Punjabis would be involved in such trade in a major way: workers, farmers, truck drivers, petty officials and so on. What do they share most among themselves if not the Punjabi language? However, this natural reservior became dormant after 1947 and, after the 1965 war, all communications ceased between Punjabis and they became strangers to each other. Let me share my own personal shock about this. On March 4, 2013, exactly 66 years to the day on which the first violent clashes took place in Amritsar in 1947, I gave a talk on the partition of Punjab at the Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. The talk was in English but afterwards, when I intermingled with the students who had come to listen to me, I switched over to Punjabi. This surprised them a lot. Almost in chorus they said, “Sir tussi tey barri sohni Punjabi boldey ho” (Sir you speak such beautiful Punjabi). Obviously, they had no idea that just 50 kilometres away was the capital of undivided and present day Punjab and that the Lahori and Amritsari Punjabi dialect was identical (even after the partition). The same sort of response I have had when speaking to younger generations of Indian Punjabis elswhere in India. It has resulted in great curiosity and natural empathy. I have seen this magic at work in international conferences and in my travels worldwide as well. Whenever two Punjabis come across each other, a natural empathy connects them. Later, of course, if they start discussing politics, the nationalist narratives they have been groomed in come into play but the first encounters almost always have a magnetic pull towards one another.

Even at the apex of power and politics, Punjabi plays a miraculous role. The first major breakthough in India-Pakistan dialogue took place when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the late former Indian Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral (the former a refugee from a village in Amritsar district and the latter from Jhelum city) met at the SAARC Summit at Male in 1997. As is famously reported, after the formalities, when both talked to each other, they instinctively began to speak in Punjabi. Thus, the first step towards normalisation was taken. Later, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee visited Lahore in February 1997 and brought along a large contingent of prominent Indian Punjabis with a Lahore or West Punjab connection. Both sides fully appreciate that the Punjabis have a special role to play in the process of normalisation. Among them were matinee idol Dev Anand, famous singer Mahinder Kapoor and well-known journalist Kuldip Nayar.

The truth is that whenever the two governments have let Punjabis meet and socialise, the impact of such an interaction has almost invariably been positive. Free mixing at cricket matches — 1955 in Lahore, 2004 in Lahore, 2005 in Mohali and so on — has resulted in the outpouring of genuine warmth and hospitality. Of course an ugly incident at a recent kabaddi match between the two countries in Indian Punjab has resulted in ventilation of the vilest Punjabi invectives, but I wonder if this would not happen if two teams belonging to the same country were involved in a dispute over the fairness of the umpires’ decisions.

Punjabi has historically been the language of the people while the state and its functionaries have, in the last 1,000 years or more, conducted their affairs in foreign tongues, most notably in Persian, Urdu and English. On the other hand, Punjabi was the medium through which the message of love, tolerance and mutual acceptance was bequeathed by our Sufi saints, the Gorakhnathi yogis, the Bhakti sages and the early Sikh gurus. The oral tradition also resulted in historical tales and romantic epics being recited and sung by bards and wandering medicants so that Heer Ranjha, Sohni Mahiwal, Puran Bhagat, Alif Laila and so on are a shared culture of Punjabis of all religious persuasions.

On the other hand, from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Hindi and Urdu became the mediums of Hindu and Islamic revivals and Punjabi written in Gurmukhi script became the medium of Sikh revival. The oral tradition of little cultures that had blurred religious differences were eclipsed by the high cultures of chaste Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism, dependent on different scripts and languages. Such developments prepared the grounds for separatism and estrangement between these three communities and culminated in the horrors of the 1947 partition of Punjab.

(To be continued)

The writer is a visiting professor, LUMS, Pakistan, professor emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University, and honorary senior fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Latest publications: Winner of the Best Non-Fiction Book award at the Karachi Literature Festival: The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed, Oxford, 2012; and Pakistan: The Garrison State, Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), Oxford, 2013. He can be reached at: billumian@gmail.com