Teaching Sindhi in Sindh
By Dr Tariq Rahman
The language controversy, which has plagued Sindh since the early fifties, has again reared its head in this troubled province. The immediate reason is that the Sindh chief minister is said to have agreed to introduce easy (salees) Sindhi in intermediate (HSSC-level) examinations for non-Sindhi students; i.e. those whose mother tongue is not Sindhi. As the English and the Urdu press is against this measure, let me provide the background of the teaching of Sindhi in Sindh.
Sindhi, called ‘Hindi’ by Arab writers, existed in Sindh and was even used in official business as early as the 8th century soon after the Muslim conquest. It was written in variants of the Brahmi as well as the Arabic script (variants of naskh). There are books from the 16th century in Sindhi in variants of naskh which Dr Nabi Bakhsh Baloch has collected and published as Sindhi Boli Jo Agatho Manzoom Zakheero (1993).
Most of these books in Sindhi were concerned with the rituals and beliefs of Islam. I call them Shariah ‘guidebooks’ and the paradigmatic text, Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi’s Bahishti Zevar, is an example. All major languages of South Asia have these Shariah guidebooks as well as books with folk-Islamic themes such as Nur Namas, Karbala Namas and Hashar Namas. In Sindh, however, there is some evidence that Sindhi was actually taught in madrassas when Persian was the formal medium of instruction.
The British removed Persian but in Sindh, unlike the Punjab and NWFP, they replaced it with the actual vernacular of the people — Sindhi. Moreover, they standardised a variant of naskh creating the modern Sindhi script which is used today. This was because the big feudal lords were Muslims and the British did not wish to antagonise them. They did not, however, want to alienate the Hindus either so they gave them the option of uniting Sindhi in their own script. This did not work as the language of the workplace was Muslim Sindhi and the Hindu Sindhi died. Muslim Sindhi became a fairly strong vernacular for legislation, correspondence, journalism and teaching. This was the condition when Pakistan was created.
After independence, Sindh’s cities were flooded by Urdu-speaking mohajirs. Migrants understandably flock to where the jobs are and Karachi was a port city, a business centre and soon became the federal capital. But the Sindhis cannot be blamed either because they lost their major cities to mohajir cultural domination and, as the federal government promoted Urdu to counter Bengali ethnicity, Sindhi was relegated to a secondary status. As one-unit and Ayub Khan’s martial law opposed the concept of different ethnic groups and languages in one country, Sindhi kept suffering throughout the sixties. Meanwhile, both the Sindhi and the mohajir middle classes kept growing and everybody wanted jobs. The clash for power was coming to a head and it was in linguistic terms that it was to be expressed.
On December 21, 1970, the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, Hyderabad announced that mohajir students would be examined in Sindhi in the Secondary School Certificate (matriculation) examination in 1972. The mohajirs protested because they thought they would lose marks. The Sindhis felt the mohajirs looked down on their language and did not want to assimilate. Both communities clashed in January 1971 which was a bloody month for Karachi and Hyderabad.
This drama was repeated in 1972 when the PPP in Sindh, now in power, passed the Sindh (Teaching, Promotion and use of Sindhi Language) Bill of 1972 on July 7. The mohajirs felt that Sindhi would now be used in offices, courts, schools and the legislature, and they would be disempowered. The Sindhis felt it was only fair to restore Sindhi to its former position. They argued that since Urdu was the national language, the mohajirs had no right whatsoever to complain. The mohajirs, for their part, feared that Urdu would be dominated by English at the centre while the Sindh government would use Sindhi — where would they go for jobs? Anyway, the two communities clashed and it was only by July 16 that they agreed to share power. The mohajirs were given a twelve-year reprieve to learn Sindhi (for details see my book Language and Politics in Pakistan, OUP, 1996).
In 1973, the teaching of Sindhi started from class 4 but when this batch reached class 9 the mohajirs protested that their children would fail. After this standards were brought down and Sindhi was taught to mohajirs only in name. Employees who took up the learning of Sindhi in 1973-74 also lost their enthusiasm after some time. In short, the teaching of Sindhi to the mohajirs remains a dream.
Now let us look at the recent order to teach Sindhi. From the Sindhi point of view, it is in keeping with the agreement of 1972 which said non-Sindhis will learn Sindhi in Sindh. If the mohajirs study Sindhi, it will remove one cause of alienation from the Sindhi-speaking majority. However, the mohajirs regard the learning of Sindhi as an extra burden. The truth is that nobody wants to learn an extra language — barring linguists and scholars — only to please neighbours.
People learn a language when they gain prestige, power and money through it. If the Government of Pakistan had created a truly multilingual state, the mohajirs would have learnt Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashto and Balochi out of their own self-interest. This would have awarded due respect to people’s mother tongues and made it impossible to scorn and avoid them by hiding in federal institutions, elitist private schools, armed-forces-administered schools or madrassas. But we do not have a multilingual policy and people do not want only one province resorting to one.
Therefore, this bill will antagonise the mohajirs, further alienating them from Sindhis, as such bills did in 1970 and 1972. The solution is to sit down and work out a compromise not only for Sindh but the whole country. And in this compromise the people’s languages — Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi, etc — should be the languages used in jobs, examinations and the public and corporate services.
Urdu can function as the language of wider communication since it already works in that role and English can be an international language, a library language and a language of scholarship and research to be acquired by experts and be generally known at other academic levels. Then everyone will learn the indigenous languages of this country, not only the mohajirs of Sindh. But when this is done, there should be no exemption of the elite or even foreigners. If someone lives in Pakistan, he or she must learn and respect the languages of our people.
The author is a linguistic historian
For details about the history of the teaching of Sindhi, see the author’s book Language, Ideology and Power (Oxford University Press, 2002)
The language controversy, which has plagued Sindh since the early fifties, has again reared its head in this troubled province. The immediate reason is that the Sindh chief minister is said to have agreed to introduce easy (salees) Sindhi in intermediate (HSSC-level) examinations for non-Sindhi students; i.e. those whose mother tongue is not Sindhi. As the English and the Urdu press is against this measure, let me provide the background of the teaching of Sindhi in Sindh.
Sindhi, called ‘Hindi’ by Arab writers, existed in Sindh and was even used in official business as early as the 8th century soon after the Muslim conquest. It was written in variants of the Brahmi as well as the Arabic script (variants of naskh). There are books from the 16th century in Sindhi in variants of naskh which Dr Nabi Bakhsh Baloch has collected and published as Sindhi Boli Jo Agatho Manzoom Zakheero (1993).
Most of these books in Sindhi were concerned with the rituals and beliefs of Islam. I call them Shariah ‘guidebooks’ and the paradigmatic text, Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi’s Bahishti Zevar, is an example. All major languages of South Asia have these Shariah guidebooks as well as books with folk-Islamic themes such as Nur Namas, Karbala Namas and Hashar Namas. In Sindh, however, there is some evidence that Sindhi was actually taught in madrassas when Persian was the formal medium of instruction.
The British removed Persian but in Sindh, unlike the Punjab and NWFP, they replaced it with the actual vernacular of the people — Sindhi. Moreover, they standardised a variant of naskh creating the modern Sindhi script which is used today. This was because the big feudal lords were Muslims and the British did not wish to antagonise them. They did not, however, want to alienate the Hindus either so they gave them the option of uniting Sindhi in their own script. This did not work as the language of the workplace was Muslim Sindhi and the Hindu Sindhi died. Muslim Sindhi became a fairly strong vernacular for legislation, correspondence, journalism and teaching. This was the condition when Pakistan was created.
After independence, Sindh’s cities were flooded by Urdu-speaking mohajirs. Migrants understandably flock to where the jobs are and Karachi was a port city, a business centre and soon became the federal capital. But the Sindhis cannot be blamed either because they lost their major cities to mohajir cultural domination and, as the federal government promoted Urdu to counter Bengali ethnicity, Sindhi was relegated to a secondary status. As one-unit and Ayub Khan’s martial law opposed the concept of different ethnic groups and languages in one country, Sindhi kept suffering throughout the sixties. Meanwhile, both the Sindhi and the mohajir middle classes kept growing and everybody wanted jobs. The clash for power was coming to a head and it was in linguistic terms that it was to be expressed.
On December 21, 1970, the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, Hyderabad announced that mohajir students would be examined in Sindhi in the Secondary School Certificate (matriculation) examination in 1972. The mohajirs protested because they thought they would lose marks. The Sindhis felt the mohajirs looked down on their language and did not want to assimilate. Both communities clashed in January 1971 which was a bloody month for Karachi and Hyderabad.
This drama was repeated in 1972 when the PPP in Sindh, now in power, passed the Sindh (Teaching, Promotion and use of Sindhi Language) Bill of 1972 on July 7. The mohajirs felt that Sindhi would now be used in offices, courts, schools and the legislature, and they would be disempowered. The Sindhis felt it was only fair to restore Sindhi to its former position. They argued that since Urdu was the national language, the mohajirs had no right whatsoever to complain. The mohajirs, for their part, feared that Urdu would be dominated by English at the centre while the Sindh government would use Sindhi — where would they go for jobs? Anyway, the two communities clashed and it was only by July 16 that they agreed to share power. The mohajirs were given a twelve-year reprieve to learn Sindhi (for details see my book Language and Politics in Pakistan, OUP, 1996).
In 1973, the teaching of Sindhi started from class 4 but when this batch reached class 9 the mohajirs protested that their children would fail. After this standards were brought down and Sindhi was taught to mohajirs only in name. Employees who took up the learning of Sindhi in 1973-74 also lost their enthusiasm after some time. In short, the teaching of Sindhi to the mohajirs remains a dream.
Now let us look at the recent order to teach Sindhi. From the Sindhi point of view, it is in keeping with the agreement of 1972 which said non-Sindhis will learn Sindhi in Sindh. If the mohajirs study Sindhi, it will remove one cause of alienation from the Sindhi-speaking majority. However, the mohajirs regard the learning of Sindhi as an extra burden. The truth is that nobody wants to learn an extra language — barring linguists and scholars — only to please neighbours.
People learn a language when they gain prestige, power and money through it. If the Government of Pakistan had created a truly multilingual state, the mohajirs would have learnt Sindhi, Punjabi, Pashto and Balochi out of their own self-interest. This would have awarded due respect to people’s mother tongues and made it impossible to scorn and avoid them by hiding in federal institutions, elitist private schools, armed-forces-administered schools or madrassas. But we do not have a multilingual policy and people do not want only one province resorting to one.
Therefore, this bill will antagonise the mohajirs, further alienating them from Sindhis, as such bills did in 1970 and 1972. The solution is to sit down and work out a compromise not only for Sindh but the whole country. And in this compromise the people’s languages — Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi, etc — should be the languages used in jobs, examinations and the public and corporate services.
Urdu can function as the language of wider communication since it already works in that role and English can be an international language, a library language and a language of scholarship and research to be acquired by experts and be generally known at other academic levels. Then everyone will learn the indigenous languages of this country, not only the mohajirs of Sindh. But when this is done, there should be no exemption of the elite or even foreigners. If someone lives in Pakistan, he or she must learn and respect the languages of our people.
The author is a linguistic historian
For details about the history of the teaching of Sindhi, see the author’s book Language, Ideology and Power (Oxford University Press, 2002)
-The News International
posted by zaicha | Saturday, December 10, 2005
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