The Indian political landscape has been marred by divisions on numerous grounds. Of the many fault lines being used by political parties to gain electoral benefits, a pertinent one is ‘language’. The formation of states on a linguistic basis is a reality, and a long-drawn struggle has been fought in regions ranging from Andhra to Assam, and it still continues in different parts of the country.

East Punjab (part of partitioned Punjab that joined India) witnessed a volatile movement for the cause of the Punjabi Suba. The movement led to a further divide between Hindus and Sikhs as the language conflict had communal undertones. Sikhs demanded a state where the official language is Punjabi, written in Gurmukhi script. Hindus, on the other hand, stood for Hindi in the Devanagari script.

The schism became more visible after the formation of the modern-day Punjab state in 1966. In the 1981 census, on the question of language, Lala Jagat Narain, a leading thinker of Punjab and founder of one of the most prominent Hindi newspapers, Punjab Kesari, urged Hindus to register Hindi as their mother tongue. Agitated by such a call, he was assassinated on September 9, 1981, allegedly on the orders of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.¹ The state of Punjab later got engulfed in a wave of Sikh militancy and the communalisation of language was one of the foundations of the entire conflict. But could that have been averted? Did anyone offer an amicable solution to the problem?

A 17-year-old Sikh who had undergone thread ritual at an Arya Samaj ceremony as a child understood the conflict better than many of his contemporaries and saw how it could become a barrier to achieving the goal of a united India. In 1924, Bhagat Singh participated in an essay competition organized by the Punjab Hindi Sahitya Sammelan on the language debate in Punjab.² It was a time of tussle between not two but three languages in Punjab. The languages were Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu.

Bhagat Singh begins his essay by highlighting how language and literature have been a chariot of revolution across the colonized world:

“Perhaps Garibaldi could not have succeeded in mobilizing the army with such ease if Mazzini had not invested his thirty years in his mission of cultural and literary renaissance. The revival of Irish language was attempted with the same enthusiasm along with the renaissance in Ireland. The rulers so much wanted to suppress their language for the ultimate suppression of the Irish people that even kids were punished for the crime of keeping a few verses in Gaelic. The French revolution would have been impossible without the literature of Rousseau and Voltaire. Had Tolstoy, Karl Marx and Maxim Gorky not invested years of their lives in the creation of a new literature, the Russian Revolution would not have taken place, leave alone the propagation and practice of communism.”

Revolutions of all kinds- from spiritual to cultural to political- have emerged from language. He mentions how the words of Guru Nanak brought a spiritual awakening in the region, and by the times of Guru Teg Bahadur, it became the voice of the voiceless and oppressed. In the times of Guru Gobind Singh, the voice of the voiceless transformed into a clarion call of rebellion against tyranny. However, post that era, literature in Punjab went on a continuous decline as the struggle for mere survival became of prime importance as the region suffered relentless invasions.

Bhagat Singh further compares the state of Punjabi society with that of Bengal. Drawing parallels between Swami Vivekananda from Bengal and Swami Ramtirtha from Punjab, he wrote that the near contemporaries established the glory of Indian metaphysics abroad, but while there’s an entire institution established by the former in Bengal, the latter doesn’t even have a memorial in his name in Punjab. Furthermore, while Bengali stalwarts like Devendranath Thakur and Keshav Chandra Sen are remembered, their Punjabi counterparts like Guru Gyan Singhji have been completely forgotten, even in their home province. The only reason he could think of was a ‘total lack of literary interest and awakening’. He laments the absence of a provincial language in Punjab, which existed in other provinces.

Pre-partition Punjab was a Muslim-dominated province, with Hindus and Sikhs being the significant minorities. Therefore, Bhagat Singh first assessed the majority community’s arguments in support of Urdu. Muslims had argued that since Urdu is the most spoken and the court’s language in the province, it must be adopted by all. Another argument was that Urdu’s script was comparatively better as it saved space. But the key question asked by Bhagat Singh was about the lack of Indianness in Urdu:

“The urdu script cannot be called a perfect one and the most important point is that it is based on the Persian language. The flights of imagination of urdu poets—even if they are Hindi (Indian)—reach the saaqis (bar-maids) of Persia and date palms of the Arbs countries…. Their ignorance of Indianness and Indian literature is the main reason of this. When they cannot imbibe Indianness, how can their literature make us Indian? Students confined to the study of urdu cannot attain the knowledge of the classical literature of India. It is not that these texts cannot be translated into a literary language like urdu, but it will be useful only to a Persian in his pursuit concerning Indian literature.”

He further urged the Muslims to Indianise themselves, following the example of Kamal the Turk.

On the question of a national language, he firmly believed in the principle of one common language that acts as a link between cultures, regions, and ethnicities. Using the example of a Punjabi and Madrasi trying to communicate, he opined that the medium cannot be an alien language like English, it has to be Hindi. He saw the flower of Indianness blooming to its full potential in the form of Hindi. That is what, according to him, Muslims failed to recognize and, therefore, “they keep repeating the demand for Urdu like a parrot and take an isolated position.”

Though the situation in Punjab was unique, it was the time when the Lahore Singh Sabha movement was at its peak. Since its inception in the second half of the 19th century, it emphasized the promotion of the Punjabi language and specifically tried to popularize the Gurmukhi script. It was a script that was standardized by Guru Angad, therefore it held religious significance for the Sikhs. On the other hand, the Arya Samaj too held a strong base in Punjab, and the writings of Swami Dayanand Saraswati, which were critical of the Sikh Gurus, led to massive animosity between the two groups. Since Arya Samaj was a strong advocate of Hindi, Bhagat Singh wrote, “a few sentences of Satyartha Prakash caused malice and mutual hatred. The Sikhs, swept in the same stream, started hating even Hindi as well.”

Bhagat Singh then addressed the issue of the propagation of Gurmukhi. He wrote, “Punjabi has not been able to become a literary language of the central Punjab. It is written in the Gurmukhi script and is now Known as Punjabi. It is neither widely prevalent nor has any literature or scientific significance. It was left unattended earlier, but even now the deficiency of its script disturbs those who are now attending to it.…. script is thus even more incomplete than Urdu, but when we already have a scientific and perfect Hindi script, what is there to feel hesitant about adopting it? The Gurmukhi script is only distorted form of the Hindi script…. The Punjabi language will start developing immediately by adopting this perfect script.”

Though Bhagat Singh acknowledged the immense potential of Punjabi when it comes to capturing the imaginations of the people of the province. He lamented the fact that such a captivating language like Punjabi has not been adopted by everyone. He questioned Sikhs for basing their arguments in favor of Punjabi on religious grounds and hoped for an increase in ‘literary awareness among the sikhs.’ He stood for an amicable solution between Hindus and Sikhs, that was offered by Mahatma Hansraj, which was the official recognition of the Punjabi language in Hindu script. Bhagat Singh believed “Punjabi will come closer to Hindi when it will adopt the Hindi script attempt creating its literature.”³

However, these proposals were rejected by the extremists and the language politics became another foundation for the Hindu-Sikh religious conflict that saw a violent phase in post-partition India, leading to the loss of the lives of several Hindus and moderate Sikhs. It can only be speculated whether accepting such a proposal would have resulted in bridging the gap between communities and paving the way for national integration.

References

1. Amritsar Mrs Gandhi’s Last Battle by Mark Tully & Satish Jacob
2. भगत सिंह और उनके साथियों के सम्पूर्ण उपलब्ध दस्तावेज़, The Problem of Punjab’s Language and Script by Bhagat Singh (Marxists Internet Archive)
3. Ibid