Interesting read.
In the name of Punjabiyyat | TNS - The News on Sunday
“Teri kitab nay mainu majboor kar ditta keh main tainu Punjabi day wich khatt likhaaN. Eih patta nahi Punjabi vi hay keh nahi. Nadeem naal gal baat kar kay Lahore tuN Punjabi Zuban wich ik risaala kaRña Chahi da ay. AssiN saaray rall kay uss day wich likhaaN gay tay aglay panjaaN sãlaaN wich Zuban nu kithay da kithay lay jaaN gay. Eih parcha Nazeer nu keh zaroor kadhay. AssiN saarey Punjabi likhaaN gay. Main ithay saarery adeebaaN nu tayyar kar liya ay. Nazeer nu eih Khat PaRha daiña tay ohnu kehna Punjabi da risaala jaldi kadh. Ohday editor day board wich main apna naa day diyãN ga..hor kee chahi da ay ohnu” (Your book has made me write to you in Punjabi. I don’t know what I am writing in is Punjabi or not but that’s all what I know. Ask Nadeem [Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi] and plan publication of a Punjabi journal from Lahore. All of us will write for it and in next five years we will bring Punjabi language to a new level. Please insist and make sure that Nazir [Nazir Ahmad Chaudhri of Naya Idara, Publisher] brings out this magazine. All writers here have agreed to contribute. Please read this letter to Nazir and ask him to start this Punjabi magazine as soon as possible. He can use my name in the editorial board, what else he needs?)
This brings us to the question of positioning those Punjabis who are writing in Urdu. Urdu is the language that is awfully closer to Punjabi. After Partition, it’s Urdu that flourished at the expense of the native languages of the people of the new republic. This hegemonic institutionalisation created a mindset symbolised by academics like Fateh Muhammad Malik and his ilk who not only dismiss Punjabi and other native languages with disgust and hatred but also ridicule one of most respected vice-chancellors of the Punjab University Sir Pirtaul Chandra Chatterji who had officially asked his students and the people of the Punjab to read and write in their mother tongue more than hundred years back.
These Urdu egoistic monopolists historically never raised a single word in support of the native languages for obvious reason of their Sarkaari bread and butter. It shows their intellectual insecurity and inborn self hate. Contrastingly, almost all those writers from the Punjab who opted to write in English always supported the cause of Punjabi language.
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