Rasul Gamzatov, I think is the brightest star in the galaxy of the literary world. The writer, in his book My Dagestan, writes that once when he was in Paris, he met a painter who also belonged to Dagestan. They had a lengthy conversation with each other. On his return to Dagestan, he was able to locate the painter’s relatives and came to know that his mother was still alive. When he met them, they were all eager to know about their son and family member in Paris. The painter’s mother asked him, “Did my son talk to you in Avar (mother tongue of the region)?” He replied, “No, we talked to each other with the help of an interpreter. I was speaking Russian and your son was speaking French.” His mother covered her face under a black veil just like a woman here covers her face on learning about the death of her son. “You are mistaken Rasul,” and then after a long pause the mother said, “Then my son has died. He cannot be my son. None of my sons can forget the language that I, an Avar mother, taught them to speak.”
Whenever I read this story I feel that the metaphorical death of the painter from Dagestan was more of a suicide. If his mother were alive, I would have shown her a land where a mother does not mourn or wail in grief over the suicide of her son but slays him with her own hands and then rejoices and dances a frantic celebratory dance over his dead body. Punjab is that land and the slayer is none other than a Punjabi mother who is sick and ailing; somehow even a little education inflicts her with this sickness, which becomes more and more potent with further and higher education. The day comes when she is totally in the grip of this infliction. She is marred with an inferiority complex, and is fearful and phobic about her mother tongue, ancestral traditions, culture and heritage. Unfortunately, her children become the target of her neurotic phobia. She thinks that if her children speak Punjabi, they will be viewed as backward and uncultured and that is humiliating and crushing for her.
My own family has borne the brunt of this kind of sickness. When I came to Sweden, members of my family pressurised me to call them to Sweden too, and I did call them. Most of them landed here directly from villages and had no exposure to the urban life of big cities. Punjabi was spoken at home and their children learnt to speak it too. The scene changed when my niece, who was a college graduate, came to Stockholm after her marriage. She broke the tradition and started talking in Urdu. Since the rest of the family had no knowledge of the language, hence no one would answer her in Urdu. Eventually, she gave up Urdu and reverted back to Punjabi, but later started speaking Urdu to her children. We tried our best to convince her to speak Punjabi with her children but to no avail. The result was that some other women in the family got caught in the ‘copy cat syndrome’ and started to speak Urdu with their children. Some of them did not even know Urdu properly, so it was comic to hear them speak broken Urdu mixed with Punjabi. As a result there were two groups of children: Urdu speaking and Punjabi speaking. Punjabi speaking children stayed closer to the elderly but the Urdu speaking drifted away. Older persons in the family wanted to get closer and shower their affections on these children too but, sadly, language became a barrier between them. Even though these children were able to communicate amongst themselves, they had trouble communicating with other children of the family who spoke Punjabi.
With the passage of time, these children became alienated as they were not able to converse or connect with other family members in Sweden or relatives in Pakistan. In frustration, they went a step further and gave up Urdu too and started talking only in Swedish. Now, even if others talk to them in Urdu or Punjabi, they answer in Swedish. The result is that not only their ties to their roots and culture are broken, they also have no communication with their mothers, who have no or very little knowledge of the Swedish language. In fact, these mothers have fallen victim to their own designs and are the worst losers of all. They have lost their children!
This is the doing of a mother who is enslaved and is inflicted with an inferiority complex, is ashamed of the Punjabi language and Punjabi culture. In front of those who speak Punjabi she proudly announces, “You know, my children do not know Punjabi, they only speak Urdu or Hindi.” There is alienation from their loved ones and roots; this is the gift this kind of mother gives to her children and that to me is a heartbreaking tragedy!
Freedom is life! Freedom is precious and a blessing for all of us. Punjabis have been enslaved for so long that they shy away from freedom. Even though the British colonisers and rulers left Punjab a very long time ago, the ‘Punjabis’ are immersed in the British colonial system and its values. In fact, Urdu and Hindi were pillars of strength for the colonisers and now Punjabis have become their patrons and supporters. They have abandoned and pushed their own mother tongue into oblivion. Who does not know that it is very easy to speak or express our thoughts/ideas in our own mother tongue, rather than in a language that is foreign? It takes years and years to learn a language, and the result is never satisfactory: native speakers will always mock our accent, mimic our ways and call us names. Sometimes they will even look down on us. Lack of confidence and fear of making mistakes while speaking a foreign language is crippling.
Since the sole aim of the British was to enslave and subjugate Punjabis, they designed a system and adopted a language policy to control Punjabis and cripple their psyche. Replacing their mother tongue with Hindi and Urdu was the first step in that direction and the next was to support and facilitate the use of English in place of any other language. Even after the departure of the colonial rulers, the same policies have been followed by the ruling parties. The result is uprooted faceless Punjabis!
What a woman! Glory to this painter’s mother from Dagestan! When she found out that her son had cut ties with his roots, she felt that he had abandoned the path of freedom and had placed his neck in the noose of enslavement. She not only refused to acknowledge him as her son but also declared that he had died. She knew that in a way a man who is bonded or enslaved is no better than a dead man. Punjabis — what kind of people are we that we take pride and celebrate when we place the noose of enslavement around the necks of our own children and push them on to the path of death and annihilation? What is the matter with us?
The writer is a serving justice in Sweden