A couple of weeks ago, I went to India for a few conferences. The first conference was at Panjab University in Chandigarh, the second one at Punjabi University in Patiala and the third one at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses in Delhi. While I had been to Delhi a few times, this was my first visit to the Indian side of the Punjab -- and what an eye-opening visit it was.

I landed in Delhi and took a taxi to Chandigarh, the planned city, which was supposed to replace Lahore as the capital after partition. Being a pucca Lahori, of course, I knew that nothing could ever replace Lahore, both in reality or in the imagination of the people, but I was still curious to see the ‘replacement.’ Chandigarh, like Islamabad, is a planned city of the 1950’s and reflects that in its wide boulevards, demarcated housing spaces, green belts, and assigned commercial areas. Obviously, with time, these delineations have blurred, but still the city gives a new, refreshing look. However, what surprised, and pleased me, was the fact that despite its modernity, it was still an avowedly, and unashamedly, Punjabi city.

My host institution in Chandigarh was the Panjab University. I was very eager to visit this institution, since it was set up by scholars who left Lahore in 1947. After almost a decade of uncertain existence, the university finally settled in Chandigarh in 1956, just as the new city was taking shape. Being a newly reconstituted university in a new city, I imagined that the university would be very modern and Westernised in its outlook and only ‘Panjab’ (the old spelling of the province and the university) in name. However, when I was attending the international seminar to celebrate the 150^th birthday of Professor Ruchi Ram Sahni entitled, ‘The Making of Modern Punjab: Education, Science and Social Change in Punjab c. 1850-c. 2000,’ I was shocked by many things.

First, the conference was celebrating the pioneer of modern science in the Punjab who lived his most significant years in Lahore where he was a professor at the Government College. Having never heard his name before being invited to this conference, I was very impressed when I learnt about Professor Sahni and his contributions towards popularising science education in the Punjab. He was indeed one of the first generation of scholars in the Punjab who spearheaded the movement towards modern education in the province after its annexation by the British.

The foundation of Government College Lahore and Forman Christian College Lahore, and St. Stephen’s College Delhi, as well as the Indian Academy of Science, owes a lot to people of his generation who set up and led modern educational initiatives in the Punjab. It is such a pity that people like Prof. Sahni are now forgotten in the Punjab, even in the college he taught in, and even the medal initiated in his honour, is, I think, discontinued. His work and legacy certainly deserves more than just this short and insufficient paragraph.

As the conference opened, I was amazed that the Vice Chancellor, Professor Arun Grover, a distinguished scientist, spoke in Punjabi. In fact, he even said that he would highly appreciate if speakers could try and speak in Punjabi as that was the best medium to communicate in. I was simply shocked that an international conference was being conducted in Punjabi! Such confidence and ease with the mother tongue is simply unthinkable in Pakistan. I was wondering if the Vice Chancellor of the University of the Punjab Lahore would speak to an international gathering in Punjabi and encourage others to do so? This is perhaps unthinkable at the original seat of the University of the Panjab in Lahore but normal at the reconstituted Panjab University, which incidentally is in the 226-250 bracket in the world in the Times Higher Education listings, scores of places ahead of any university, let alone the University of the Punjab, in Pakistan.

Similarly, I was astounded when I went to Punjabi University in Patiala. Established in 1962, the aim of this university is to further ‘the cause of Punjabi language, art and literature.’ Spread over an area of five hundred acres, with over five hundred faculty, nine thousand students, and 166 affiliated colleges, this university is at the forefront of Punjabi medium education in Indian Punjab.

At Patiala, I spoke at the South Asian History Conference convened by the dynamic historian Dr Kulbir Singh Dhillon. There I also met the Vice Chancellor of the university, Dr Jaspal Singh, who is a former Indian diplomat. He, too, like Professor Grover, spoke mainly in Punjabi even though he was equally proficient in Hindi and English. In fact, at the conference a number of scholars presented history papers in Punjabi, and a number of official sessions were also in Punjabi.

Seeing the enthusiasm of the students, the scholarly endeavours of the professors, and the general excitement generated by the conferences I spoke at, I wondered why such an environment is not present in Pakistan. Travelling through Indian Punjab, it was patent how the locals have taken on modern education and how it had positively affected their lives. The literacy rate of Indian Punjab stands at over 80 per cent today, at least 15-20 per cent ahead of Pakistani Punjab, and this was clearly reflected in the vibrancy of the universities and life there. I wondered where we had gone wrong? And why we were lagging behind?

There are several reasons behind the different trajectories of the two Punjabs. However, here I want to focus on one of them: Language.

When I came back from India, I happened to come across a book written by Hanif Ramay called, ‘Punjab Ka Muqaddima,’ Punjab’s Lawsuit, published nearly 30 years ago. Ramay dedicated the work to the then ‘five crore Punjabis who have no language.’ He further noted: ‘I apologise for not writing the book in Punjabi. But maybe "Punjab’s Lawsuit" needs to be presented in Urdu, since the Punjabis have discarded the Punjabi language.’

This short dedicatory sentence very aptly summed up the book, as well as the stark reality. In this very well written book, Ramay laments the state of Punjabi in Pakistan noting, rightly, that in trying to become ‘Pakistani’ the Punjabis forgot their own ethnicity, culture and language. The ‘Speak Urdu, Read Urdu, and Write Urdu,’ campaign, he notes, did make Urdu the lingua franca of Pakistan, but killed the Punjabi language. He wonders if any in the Punjab can even read or understand, Waris Shah’s ‘Heer’, Maulvi Ghulam Rasool’s ‘Yousaf Zuleikha’, or Mian Muhammad Bakhsh’s ‘Saif ul-Mulook’.

Similarly, he grieves that even elements of Punjabi culture -- its dress, food, household things, dances etc -- are slowly dying out. ‘If other provinces did not wear the Kurta, even that would have died out in the Punjab,’ Ramay exclaims.

Ramay’s thought provoking book might seem bizarre to some for lamenting the state of the Punjabi in Pakistan. After all, is the Punjab not the dominant force in Pakistan? Are the Punjabis not controlling the military, the bureaucracy, etc? Are the Punjabis not practically ruling the country and ignoring the fair demands of the other provinces? All this is true, but what Ramay is pointing out is that in doing all of the above, the Punjabis have lost their own language and culture.

In trying to make ‘Pakistan’ synonymous with ‘Punjab’, the Punjabis discarded their language and culture and took on the more acceptable north India Muslim culture. Therefore, at the moment the Punjab is the only province in the country where there is no real provision for the promotion of its language and culture. People in Sindh are taught Sindhi in school and even some schools teach Pashto in Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa, and some schools Balochi in Balochistan. However, hardly any school teaches Punjabi in the Punjab.

In Lahore, I only know of the Lahore Grammar School which started Punjabi classes a few years ago. Except for that school, no one else has even ventured to teach the language which is supposedly the first language of a majority of Pakistanis. At the higher education level, the University of the Punjab only started a Department of Punjabi in 1970 -- which is eight years after the Indian side established a full-fledged Punjabi medium university! Even now, except for Punjab University, the Government College and Oriental College properly teach Punjabi, and other institutions only occasionally dabble in the language. The Punjabi medium is not even a consideration in Pakistani Punjab, and even the teaching of the language is still considered slightly odd in its own province.

Even in terms of culture and tradition, I have seen -- just through my own experience -- how Punjabis in Pakistan are increasingly cut off, and even embarrassed, from their culture. When Forman Christian College, where I teach, allowed local dress on Fridays, I asked a class of mine -- which had a majority of Punjabis -- what would they wear, and everyone said that they would wear Shalwar Kameez. On inquiring how this was their ‘local dress,’ a number of them responded that how could they wear the Punjabi dress of ‘kurta’ and ‘dhoti’ since that was ‘paindo,’ and inappropriate.

When I told them that in India, Punjabis, and others, did not have such qualms about wearing local dress, and that in fact, the prime minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, still wears an inexpensive kurta pajama, and that the ex-prime minister of India, Atal Behari Vajpayee, regularly wore dhoti, some of my students were simply shocked.

Since coming back from Indian Punjab, I have dwelt quite a bit on the question of Punjabi language and culture. Even though I am not a Punjabi, I have lived most of my life in Lahore, and at least consider myself a Punjabi by adoption. My Indian Punjab trip has made me realise the critical importance of the mother tongue in the development of a person, a people, a country, a civilisation. The confidence and clarity with which students interacted with me in Chandigarh and Patiala was predicated in the fact that they were conversing with me in their mother tongue -- I could understand them and they could articulate their thoughts to me.

How often is the main problem in Pakistani higher education the issue of language where students simply cannot articulate themselves in either English or Urdu, both commonly spoken but rarely mastered languages in Pakistan. Often I comment in my classes that I would teach students in any language if they knew any language well enough.

The real predicament in education in Pakistan is that students do not know any language well enough. I am no language specialist, but even from my cursory reading, I know that there is enough evidence that students learn better if they are taught in their mother tongue in their primary school years, and they are better able to learn a second language well if they know their mother tongue sufficiently. The imposition of first Urdu and now English as the medium of instruction in primary schools, was, and is, ensuring that we continue to produce half educated and half articulate students.

Hanif Ramay wrote his ‘muqaddama’ in 1985, and sadly died in 2006, yet it seems that no one is willing to fight his case. While a wholesale change in thinking will not come and decades of the ‘embarrassing Punjabi language and culture’ tag will not easily go, at least we in the academia can try and fight the case in our own small way by encouraging the study of the Punjabi language (and other regional languages), and by instilling confidence in our students to be accepting and proud of their culture and traditions. Let us not let another thirty years pass.