Title: Pashto Language & Identity Formation in Pakistan

Author: Rahman, Tariq
Source: Contemporary South Asia, July 1995, Vol 4, Issue 2, p151,20

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From these figures, for which no empirical evidence was provided, he concluded that the medium of instruction could not be Pashto unless the teachers were trained first.[125]

This emphasis on Urdu was in keeping with Zia ul Haq's use of Islam and Urdu as symbols of national integration and political legitimacy. The opponents of military rule, of course, played down the significance of these symbols and promoted others. Pashto, then, was one of the symbols promoted to oppose the military's centrist ideology.

Another such symbol was the process of modernization and standardization (i.e. corpus planning) in Pashto. Both were ideologically motivated. The Pashto Academy of Peshawar uses Urdu, English and Perso-Arabic roots; those who emphasize the Muslim identity use Perso-Arabic roots while the ethnonationalists prefer indigenous roots which, they feel, are symbolic of their distinctive identity. For reasons of identity, again, most Pakhtuns oppose giving up the distinctive letters of the Pashto alphabet.[126] Among the anti-Zia circles in the NWFP, this was used to express opposition to authoritarian federal rule, martial law, Islamization and support of the Afghan Islamic resistance to Soviet intervention. This role was evident at the World Pashto Conference held at Peshawar on 22 April 1987. Renowned anti-establishment figures like Ghaffar Khan and Wali Khan expressed satisfaction with the conference. Representatives of left-leaning political parties like the PPP, Mazdur Kisan Party and the Pakhtun Students Federation, and of course the ANP, attended it. The conference expressed solidarity with the communist revolution in Afghanistan and the poet Hamza Shinwari made the demand that Pashto be introduced at a high level and its use promoted in all domains.[127]

After the 1993 October elections, the ANP was again in power in coalition with the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) in the NWFP. However, because the PML-N is rightist and centrist in ideology, there was no significant change in the status of Pashto. In future too, despite the populist rhetoric of the PPP, which is in power again at the moment of writing (May 1994), only cosmetic changes may be made, but any major change, such as the use of Pashto in the domains of power, will strengthen the Pakhtun identity and concede the multi-national thesis. The ruling elite does not appear to be inclined to concede that and thereby reduce its own power in the provinces of the country.

Conclusion

Pashto has been manipulated as a symbol of Pakhtun identity by the ethnonationalist Pakhtun leaders -- such as Ghaffar Khan, Wali Khan and other ANP leaders -- since the late 1920s. They wanted Pashto to be used in the domains of power and to make it the major marker of their identity. It was a way of mobilizing the Pakhtuns as a pressure group to agitate for their rights and autonomy on the basis of an identity-marker less elusive than the code of values called Pakhtunwali. As the movement was anti-imperialist, the British did not allow it to succeed.

The government of Pakistan, faced with irredentist claims from Afghanistan on its territory, also discouraged the Pashto Movement and eventually allowed its use in peripheral domains only after the Pakhtun elite had been co-opted by the ruling elite. The ethnonationalist Pakhtun protoelite did use Pashto as an ethnic symbol. However, as its secessionist stance changed to autonomist, Pashto became a counter-hegemonic symbol of mere cultural autonomy. Thus, even though there is still an active desire among some Pakhtun activists to use Pashto in the domains of power, it is more of a symbol of Pakhtun identity than one of nationalism.

In short, a study of the Pashto Movement facilitates our understanding of how language helps a group of people to see themselves as a collectivity or to use this self-perception to gain power. As this phenomenon -- the assertion of group or ethnic-identity -- is the major problem of Pakistan's politics, this study may contribute in some small way towards an understanding of the relationship between language and the politics of that country.

Table 1. Mother tongue speakers as percentages of population

Legend for Chart:
A - Year
B - Punjabi
C - Sindhi
D - Pashto
E - Urdu
F - Baluchi
G - Brohi
H - Siraiki
I - Hindko

A            B              C               D            E
F            G              H               I

1951         67.08          12.85           8.16         7.05
3.04          4.04          --              --

1961         66.39          12.59           8.47         7.57
2.49          0.93          --              --

1982         48.17          11.7            13.15        7.60
3.02         1.21            9.54            2.43

Source: Census 1951, 1961, 1981.

Notes and references

1. According to the Britannica Year Book (1992) the population
     of Pakistan was 126 406 000 and that of Afghanistan 16
     922 000 in 1991. As the percentage of Pakhtuns in
     Pakistan is 13.1% this gives a figure of 16 432 780, and
     for Afghanistan, where Pakhtuns are 52.3%, the figure is
     8 850 206, the total adding up to 25 282 986.

2. These terms from language Planning theory are explained in
     Robert L. Cooper, language Planning and Social Change
     (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p 32.

3. Britannica Year Book (1992). For the use of languages see
     Sauri P. Battacharya, 'Soviet nationality policy in
     Afghanistan', Asian Affairs: Journal of the Royal Society
     for Asian Affairs 15 (June 1984), pp 125-137.

4. Joshua A. Fishman, 'Nationality-nationalism and
     nationnationism', language Problems of Developing Nations
     (eds) Joshua A. Fishman, Charles A. Ferguson and
     Jyotirindra Das Gupta (New York: Wiley, 1968); Benedict
     Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
     and Spread of Nationalism (revised edn) (London and New
     York: Verso Books, 1991), Chapters 6 & 10.

5. Cooper, pp 122-156.

6. Leon B. Poullada, Reform and Rebellion in Afghanistan:
     1919-1929 King Amanullah's Failure to Modernize a Tribal
     Society (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press,
     1973), p 73 and the 1923 constitution given as Appendix
     A.

7. Abdul Ghaffar Khan My Life and Struggle: Autobiography of
     Badsha Khan (Delhi: Hind Pocket Books Ltd, 1969), pp
     51-52.

8. Alam M. Miran, 'The functions of national languages in
     Afghanistan', Afghanistan [Kabull 30: 1 (June 1977), pp
     67-77 (69). The number in parentheses is of the page
     referred to in the text.

9. Battacharya, p 131.

10. Handbook of Population Census Data: 1981 (Islamabad:
     Population Census Organization, Statistics Division,
     Government of Pakistan, 1985).

11. The figures for Pakistan as a whole before 1971 include
     Bengali speakers who constituted 56.4% of the population
     in 1951 and 55.48 in 1961. The number of Punjabi speakers
     is less in the 1981 census because Hindko and Siraiki,
     which were included in Punjabi in 1951 and 1961, were
     classified as separate languages. The number of Pashto
     speakers is higher in 1981 because the former princely
     states of Dir, Swat and Chitral, were included in the
     census figures as districts of the NWFP.

12. Yu. V. Gankovsky, The Peoples of Pakistan. trans. from
     Russian by Igor Gavrilov (Moscow, 1964. Lahore: Peoples'
     Publishing House, 1973).

13. Christopher Shackle, 'Siraiki: a language movement in
     Pakistan', Modern Asian Studies, 11, 3 (1977), pp
     379-403.

14. Hamza Alavi, 'Nationhood and communal violence in
     Pakistan', Journal of Contemporary Asia, 21, 2 (1991),pp
     152-178.

15. Anderson, Chapter 10.

16. Hamza Alavi, 'The state in post-colonial societies --
     Pakistan and Bangladesh', New Left Review, No 74
     (July-August 1972), pp 59-81.

17. Alavi (1991), p 159.

18. Tariq Rahman, 'The English-Urdu controversy in Pakistan',
     Modern Asian Studies (forthcoming).

19. S. M. Shamsul Alam, 'language as political articulation:
     East Bengal in 1952', Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol
     21, No 4 (1991), pp 469-487.

20. Tahir Amin, Ethno-Nutional Movements of Pakistan
     (Islamabad: Institute of Policy Studies, 1988). See the
     Sindhu Desh Movement.

21. Selig S. Harrison, In Afghanistan's Shadow: Baluch
     Nationalism and Soviet Temptations (New York: Carnegie
     Endowment for International Peace, 1981).

22. For the instrumentalist view about Urdu's role in Muslim
     separatism, see Paul R. Brass, language: Religion and
     Politics in Northern India (Cambridge: Cambridge
     University Press, 1974); also his 'Ethnicity and
     nationality formation, Ethnicity, 111 (1976), pp 225-241.
     This is debated by Francis Robinson, 'Nation formation:
     the Brass thesis and Muslim separatism', Journal of
     Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, xv (1977), pp 215
     230. The primordialist-instrumentalist debate goes on.
     See Brass, 'A reply to Francis Robinson's "Nation
     Formation: the Brass Thesis and Muslim Separatism" ',
     Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, xv
     (1977), pp 231-234.

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