ARTICLE: Why they learnt Pushto
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By Dr Ali Jan
The study of the literary history of Pushto in the colonial period is often a neglected field. Pushto or Pukhto, like many other oriental languages, prospered under the British rule. During that phase most of the existing written literature was produced as a result of English influence. Here I shall attempt to chronicle the important events of Pushto renaissance under the Raj.
Historical background
Around the year 1800, the entire Pushto-speaking belt (from the southern and eastern Afghanistan to the right bank of the river Indus in the present North-Western Frontier Province and Balochistan formed a part of the Kingdom of Afghanistan.
The British East India Company, which was established for spice trading under a royal charter given by Queen Elizabeth I in 1600 AD, eventually launched the British rule in India. Following the 1857 Indian mutiny, by an Act of Parliament the British Crown officially took over the administration of India in 1858 - establishing the British ‘Raj’.
Besides the British, other imperial powers, like Russian, Persian and the French were aspiring to exert their influence over Afghanistan. Earlier on, an internal power struggle between the Afghan rulers - complicated by the Sikh invasions - had enabled a British expansion westwards, and the East India Company succeeded in establishing itself at Peshawar in 1849, which was the once winter capital of Afghanistan. Here the British rule continued for the next hundred years.
In their attempt to annex regions beyond the Khyber many Anglo-Afghan battles were fought, but the colonial empire could not match its earlier successes in India. Taking advantage of the feuds within the reigning Afghan dynasties, the British did succeed however, in making them sign the Peace Treaty of Gandamak in 1879. A 1200 kilometres long Durand Line was drawn in 1893, thus dividing the Pushto speaking homeland (described above) into the Afghan and British Indian halves. This demarcation later gave rise to the North-Western Frontier Province of British India in 1901, which hitherto was a part of Punjab.
It was a two-pronged arrangement, one which helped the colonists to consolidate their imperial control over the British Indian side of the border, and in addition, across the Durand Line, they were able to maintain indirect influence over Afghanistan through their ‘Forward Policy’.
Then followed nearly half a century of colonial rule in the Frontier. An uneasy truce prevailed with Afghanistan until the British Empire finally ended in 1947 with the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan.
Interest in Pushto
Pushto, or the vernacular language of the majority Afghans, drew the attention of those in the services of East India Company as early as in the first half of the 19th century.
Amongst the first arrivals to learn Pushto were the European missionaries who came to spread the message of the Holy Bible in this part of the world. The earliest texts in Pushto to get printed were translations of Bible passages and other religious material by the Serampur Baptist Mission Press in 1818.
Next were the British civil and military officials who learned Pushto for administrative purposes to achieve self-sufficiency in interacting with the Pathans - or Pushtoons or Pakhtoons as they are often called - and to acquire knowledge of the people who spoke it.
George W. Gilbertson in the preface to The First Pukkhtoo Book (1901) writes:
“He (a Pathan) is withal a proud man, prone to meet scorn with scorn, and ever ready to return blow for blow. That we cannot address him in his own language, and deal with him direct without the help of middlemen, he attributes to either of the two reasons, incapacity to learn his language, or indifference to him, his people and his affairs.”
Further on he writes: “…his is not the race to be despised and crushed by brute-force, although, perchance, this is the only force of which he has conscious knowledge. Rather should we unremittingly strive towards knowing the man as he is, by learning his language; towards making ourselves familiar with him and his surroundings; towards eradicating, slowly but surely, his ignorance and his waywardness, by a treatment, stern but well-considered, just, and in harmony with the religious beliefs, traditions, and customs of his country; withal towards a policy of clemency, encouragement, and protection; of paternal approbation; not of discouragement and extermination.”
While recounting the effect of a Pushto speaking Englishman on a Pathan tribesman, S.S. Thorburn notes in Bannu: or Our Afghan Frontier (1876), “The delight of a hill Pathan in being addressed by a Sahib in his mother tongue Pushto is always genuine and irrepressible; his whole face, which ordinarily wears a fixed touch-me-if-you-dare almost defiant expression, breaks into one broad grin as he wonderingly asks you, ‘Eh, you talk Pushto, how did you learn it?’ It is just the sort of question a Highlander would ask if a Southerner addressed him in Gaelic. The gain in personal influence, besides other advantages, which an ability to converse directly with the people gives an Englishman amongst Pathans is so obvious that I need not dilate on it.”
These were the main reasons, which accounted for the colonial interest in Pushto. According to Dr Sher Zaman Taizi, a renowned researcher and formerly affiliated with BBC Afghan Education in A Matter of Identity (1997): “During the second half of the 19th century, Pushto Munshi Fazil and Adeeb Fazil classes were included in the syllabi of the Punjab University on the recommendation of the Allama Mir Ahmad Shah Rizwani.”
The institution of examinations was deemed necessary and in early 1873, examination in colloquial Pushto was made mandatory for all civil officials serving in those districts where Pushto was spoken. Moreover, interpretership courses designed specially for military officers under guidance of regimental ‘munshis’ - or language teachers - were introduced that were highly recommended and encouraged, for instance, by higher salaries and other positive incentives.
Literary contributions
There was a long lapse in literary developments during the 18th and early 19th century until the arrival of the British in this region. The early Pushto literature of the colonial period consisted of grammar books and collections of oral poetry and tales. They were written in a self-serving manner in order to provide samples of the language and to make it possible for the British officials to learn Pushto. They dealt with grammar and commonly spoken idioms and phrases. Their authors were often British administrators-turned-writers who compiled them under guidance from native Afghan scholars of those times.
The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1838 published the first scientific study of vocabulary by Major Robert Leech of Bombay Engineers - a distinguished oriental scholar - that mentioned Teerhai, and the Dir dialects (Pushto spoken in Dir and Tirah regions of the Frontier.) He was “one of the first European officers who entered and one of the last who left Afghanistan during the time of British occupation of that country.” His untimely death in 1845, at the age of 33, cut short a promising career.
A German professor, Dr Bernhard Dorn who lived in St Petersburg, which at the time was the Russian capital, worked on Grammatische \bersicht or Grammatical Overview> (1840) and later compiled: A Chrestomathy of the Pushtu or Afghan Language (1847) A chrestomathy is a collection of selected literary passages, often by one author and especially from a foreign language. Professor Dorn was also among the founding members of the National Russian Library, St Petersburg.
Isidor Loewenthal, an orthodox Jew in Poland, born in Germany and just graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey, became an Evangelist missionary in Peshawar under the auspices of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. Here he translated the New Testament in Pushto and embarked upon compiling a Pushto dictionary before he died at age 37. His grave is in the Christian Cemetery Peshawar. His tombstone bears the following inscription:
“Rev Isidor Loewenthal, of the American Presbyterian Mission who translated the New Testament into Pushtoo…was shot by his Chokeydar, April 27, 1864.”
Dr Henry Walter Bellew, a surgeon in the Bengal Army wrote the first book by any British on Pushto grammar, A Grammar of the Pooshtoo Language. Priced at rupees five, it was published by the Baptist Mission Press, Calcutta, in 1854.