BD Sharma
Dogri had its hey days when Maharaja Ranbir Singh ruled the State. It used to reside in the royal palace of Dogra ruler. Then it roamed and roved from place to place without any plan and without any purpose for more than fifty years from 1889 to 1944. It started to make strides, one after the other and has now emerged as a modern standard language. Any Dogra would feel proud of these developments. But a strange phenomenon has overtaken the Dogra society in recent years which is gradually eroding the base of their mother tongue. Majority of Dogra youngsters, particularly in the urban areas, feel shy of learning and conversing in Dogri. It is taken as a symbol of backwardness and inferiority. The fault, in fact, does lie on the parents for disregarding the Dogri language. This attitude of Dogra parents is abominable because they should know that mother tongue is not just a language but is a mark of their identity. Mother tongue helps to know about one’s culture thoroughly. It has great influence on defining and constructing the personality of an individual. It tells us the story of our traditions, our “Reetee-Rivaaj”, our lore, our rituals. Moreover it is the unifying force for the community. Some people think that Dogri has millions of speakers so despite the disinterestedness shown by some individuals it is not going to see the day when we will have to search for Dogri speaking persons with a torch in our hands.
Such people may have a point in thinking on these lines. But much doubt does remain to many because the phenomenon of gradual elimination of languages is being witnessed in all over the world. It is also a fact that languages have come and gone throughout the history of mankind and so will they do in future also. Hundreds of our languages are teetering on the brink of extinction. Many linguists estimate that out of about 7000 languages in the world more than half are at the risk of dying out by the end of this century. This is happening because the speakers of a local language seek to learn a more prestigious language in order to gain social and economic advantages or to avoid discrimination. For historical and political reasons also the use of a dominant language has been encouraged. To many thinkers the loss of languages looks similar to the loss of species which is simply a fact of life on an ever-evolving planet. And many would consequently acquiesce in accepting these contentions.
Other thinkers contend that disappearance of languages should not happen. They point out that giving emphasis on one or two languages is short-sighted. We will lose, they feel, more than just words if we allow some of our languages to die out. Few others invoke social Darwinism and say that if we can make tremendous efforts for protecting species and biodiversity, then why should not we similarly protect and nourish a language, the one thing that makes us singularly human. Languages should not be allowed to become irrelevant because they are the conduits of human heritage. It is interesting to note that art of writing is historically a recent development and it was the language itself which provided our ancestors the vehicle to convey to us the sacred Vedas and other scriptures as also the songs, stories and poems of the communities . Languages also convey to us the unique culture, most of the time linked to a specific language. Some other people have the argument that pleads for diversity conservation. Just as ecosystems provide a wealth of services for humanity- some known, others unacknowledged or yet to be discovered. In the similar way languages, too, are ripe with possibilities. They contain an accumulated body of knowledge, including about history, geography, agriculture, flora and fauna, pattern of weather and lot more. We will lose the ancient knowledge if we lose languages. In addition languages are ways of interpreting the world and no two of them do it in the same way. Different languages provide distinct pathways of thought and frameworks for thinking and solving problems.
Despite these calls, emphasis is being given by parents to teach English and Hindi to the children in Duggar land. One should not bear any grouse if people learn these languages because they provide window to the wider world of science, technology, employment and literature. But leaving Dogri in the shelf itself isn’t a healthy development. Learning Dogri should not pose any problem. In case the parents simply converse with the children in Dogri, the children will even then become well conversant with the language. Moreover they will experience no difficulty in writing it because Nagri, the script of Dogri, is already being learnt by all the children for writing Hindi. The contention of some people that learning Dogri will be an additional burden on the children, as it amounts to learning a full fledged language, is also not well founded because many educationists believe that the children can learn even three languages easily during their formative years. Furthermore, it is always advantageous to be a multilingual. In the circumstances parents don’t have any justification in denying the children an opportunity of learning their mother tongue.
Many Dogras, I sometimes wonder, are invested with very interesting, freakish and unusual thinking. Speaking English or even Hindi over Dogri is taken as something being scholarly and highly placed. Dogra officers, despite being well versed in Dogri, would converse in Hindi with the illiterate poor villager to assert their authority. In our childhood we used to observe that when two ex-servicemen happened to have a fight they would start exchanging hot words in Dogri. But after some time the one who had retired from the higher rank would resort to shouting in Hindi or rather in a mixture of Hindi and Dogri. In this way he felt he had attained a commanding position in the skirmish. In the process, however, he became a laughing stock and people would make fun of his artificiality, his Gulabi Hindi. Similarly when I talk to three friends of mine, two retired JKAS officers, and one retired IFS Officer, they respond to me in English or Hindi in reply to my utterances in Dogri despite the fact that they speak better Dogri than I. They in fact look to be making stilted conversation. I enjoy fully this sort of bizarre show off exhibited by my Dogra friends.
We Dogras must learn a lesson or two from Kashmiri Pandits, a forward looking community. Within five six years of their mass migration to Jammu, many of them had acquired working knowledge of Dogri and some of their children had started speaking Dogri better than our children. And here are we Dogras who feel shy of letting our children learn and speak in our own mother tongue. Taking liberty with the famous verse of Dr Iqbal, it can be safely said of Dogras that “Na Samjho ge toh Mit Jao gey aye Duggar Desh Walo:: Tumhaari Dastaan Tak bhi Na hogi Dastaanon mein.” Those of us who think that using Dogri in our day to day discourse will lead our children to become inferior citizens must understand that when such children go in the field in connection with their service or business, they cut a sorry figure there and find themselves like a fish out of water.
I had a first hand experience in this regard. Once an acquaintance of mine approached me, when I was posted as Deputy Commissioner Kathua, with the request that his grandson was serving as a Medical Officer in an interior village of Billawar tehsil and he was not feeling comfortable there. So he requested me to arrange for his transfer in a hospital in some town. Since employees particularly the doctors and teachers shirked to go to the far-flung areas so the government had decided not to effect any premature transfer from such areas. It was, as such, not possible to accede to this request. In order to encourage the young doctor to adjust himself in that area, I told him that the interior areas of Billawar were very beautiful and there were a number of scenic places there. Pure eatables were available in plenty and the atmosphere was Pollution free. People of the area were very nice and they extended lot of love and respect to the government employees and some other similar justifications. The young doctor responded positively and told me that he liked the area and the people very much but he was not deriving full professional satisfaction there. He identified some deficiencies like non-availability of medicines, lack of support system etc. But the most critical difficulty he experienced at the place was his inability to understand the language of the people there. He explained that despite Dogri being spoken at his home, his parents had discouraged him to speak/learn Dogri. And majority of patients coming to his dispensary spoke Dogri only and that too a “Theth” Dogri. He further elaborated that the patients came with such ills as “Kaleja Tukhe da, Kaali Paobay di, Amblay Dakkar Aabe de, Aandhraan baar Nikle di Aan, Akhaan balley kardi Aan Na” and the like and all these terms were Greek to him. He was getting the help of his staff members but as is often said that a language was very jealous and didn’t yield its true meaning through intermediaries, so he was unable to appreciate fully the problem of the patients and apply his mind comprehensively to treat them. This left him unsatisfied and even bewildered many times. Though he was born in a Dogra family but he was discouraged to learn his mother tongue in his childhood and as a result he had become alien in his own land. It is not understood as to why someone should experience difficulty due to lack of knowledge of his own mother tongue and that too in his own area and amongst his own people.
This problem was not confined to the Health department only. In an awareness camp organized by the Agriculture Department, a farmer while highlighting his difficulties, made a mention about “Haadi” and “Sawani” crops(Dogri words for Rabi and Kharif crops). He further requested for providing the seeds of some crops like “Saankhi” and “Kaongni” for growing fodder. I noticed that the senior officers of the department were unable to understand as to what the farmer was referring to and were seen inquiring from one another about it. Though the officers had acquired the highest qualifications yet they were unable to understand the local language and respond promptly to the problems of a farmer. Some of the fault may lie with our officers but some of it does also lie with our system, with our thinking and in our forgetting our roots.
Knowledge of one’s mother tongue and conversing in it, on the other hand, is a bliss. Once while waiting for the departure of my delayed flight at New Delhi airport I was making a call to my friend to idle away time. One elderly man started roaming around me and listening to my chat. Though I was not speaking something secret yet it looked odd that the gentleman was listening to my talk so attentively. I could, however, sense that there was a radiance of ecstasy on his face and he was relishing my casual conversation. When I finished talking with my friend, the gentleman in question approached and wished me profusely in Dogri. He apologized for having overheard my phone conversation. He told me that he was a Jammuite who couldn’t resist listening to the sweet Dogri being spoken by me. He told me that he was living in USA and had not listened to such sweet Dogri for a long time. He got so much enamoured of listening it that he forgot the basic nicety not to hear other people’s talk. He was a practising lawyer in USA and had left Jammu many years earlier. He told me that he was a friend of the journalists, Ved Bhasin saheb and Balraj Puri Ji and had served as Reader in the Law Department of Punjab University before migrating to USA. He introduced me to his wife and gave me his visiting card and a pen as souvenir. I had never imagined that language could establish such a powerful bond between people. One even throws the nicety of overhearing somebody’s private chat and the hesitation of mixing up and interacting with a stranger to wind.
In somewhat similar vein a friend of mine once told me that he had been meeting a gentleman for years in connection with his business dealings in Mumbai. Though they were meeting frequently yet their relations remained formal and business like. After many years of acquaintance once my friend happened to sit in the office of that gentleman, when the latter received a telephone call and he started conversing in Dogri. The moment he finished talking, my friend pounced upon him and showered few expletives in Dogri upon him as to why he kept it a secret that he belonged to Jammu. They exchanged few more swear words in Dogri and then they hugged each other so profusely as if long separated friends were meeting. They developed a lot of intimacy afterwards and introduced some of their friends from Jammu to each other. Later they formed a small group who would meet and interact often over a cup of tea or meals. But they bound themselves to talk always in Dogri. In this way their mother tongue had provided a strong bondage to them.
Many readers must have encountered similar experiences and established and firmed up relationships as a consequence of exchanges in their mother tongue. This write-up will certainly help them to reminisce and relish those sweet experiences. It has given a lot of happiness to the narrator also and it will be a pleasure to share some more akin episodes with the readers in the coming days. (The author is a former civil servant)
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