Punjabi

“ Even this ideal will take years to be realised. First of all, we should create literary awareness in this endeavor, not among a few but in the masses. The people's own language is essential for creating literary awareness among the people. On the basis of this logic, we say that you can succeed in Punjab only in Punjabi language.
Till now, 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. ”

“ We have to adopt one language, one script, one literature, one ideal and one nation, but the adoption of a single language precedes all the other unities, so they we can communicate with and comprehend each other. A Punjabi and a Madrasi must not sit together mute at a gathering, but try to communicate their ideas and emotions, and this should be done in our own language, Hindi, rather than in an alien language like English. ”

“ We wish our Muslim brothers, while sticking to their religion, think of Indianising themselves like Kamal the Turk. India's salvation is possible only that way. Instead of making language a communal question, we should adopt a wide perspective.
We will now return to the problem of Hindi and Punjabi. Many idealists entertain a vision of the world turned into one single nation, one global nation. This ideal is beautiful and one should keep it before oneself. ”

“ Muslims totally lack Indianness, therefore they want to propagate Arabic script and Persian language. While failing to understand the importance of Indianness in the whole of India, they fail to understand the importance of one language, which could only be Hindi. That is why they keep repeating the demand for Urdu like a parrot and take an isolated position.
Then comes the turn of the Sikhs. Their whole literature is in the Gurumukhi script. Hindi is very much there as a component, but Punjabi constitutes the main component. ”

“ The Times.—'Time was when these sketches of native Punjabi society would have been considered a curiosity in literature. They are sufficiently remarkable, even in these days, when interest in the "dumb millions" of India is thoroughly alive, and writers, great and small, vie in ministering to it. They are the more notable as being the work of a woman. ”

“ The school-goers will restore hand-spinning to its respectable status. They will hasten the process of making Khaddar fashionable. For no mother, or father, worth the name will refuse to wear cloth made out of yarn spun by their children. And the scholars' practical recognition of art will compel the attention of the weavers of India. If we are to wean the Punjabi from the calling not of a soldier but of the murderer of innocent and free people of other lands, we must give back to him the occupation of weaving. The race of the peaceful Julahis of the Punjab is all but extinct. ”

“ Grim said a few words to Narayan Singh in Arabic, which so far as the sentry was concerned wasn't a language, but Narayan Singh spoke in turn in Punjabi, and the man just out from India began to droop like Jonah's gourd under the old soldier's scorn. ”

“ But I must not go as a Sikh because of the religious difficulty; neither may you be a Pathan, because you in no way resemble one, nor do you speak the Pushtu tongue. But I will be a Pathan, because I can speak that language; therefore they will respect me as a man prone to fight readily and well. And knowing that no Pathan would demean himself by being servant to a man of no account, they will more readily respect you. Although you are neither Sikh nor yet Pathan but are supposed to be a Punjabi Mussulman. ”

“ The whole of India was made to crawl on her belly in as much as a single Punjabi was made to crawl in that dirty lane in Amritsar, the whole womanhood of India was unveiled in as much as the innocent woman of Manianwalla were unveiled by an insolent office; and Indian childhood was dishonoured in that, that school children of tender age were made to walk four times a day to stated places within the martial area in the Punjab and to salute the Union Jack, through the effect of which order two children, seven years old died of sunstroke having been made to wait in the noonday sun. ”

“ Those among us who have served with the Punjabi troops know how, for years, while the old force was on the frontier, you strove to maintain that high standard of military organisation, discipline and duty, of which the fruits were manifest when several regiments were, on the occurrence of the Bengal mutinies, suddenly summoned to serve as auxiliaries to the European forces, before Delhi, in Oude, in Hindostan,—on all which occasions they showed themselves worthy to be the comrades of Englishmen ”

“ A Northerner who did not seem to understand Punjabi almost cost King his balance as he thrust broad shoulders between him and the bunnia.
The bunnia chattered like an outraged ape; but King, the person most entitled to be angry, actually apologized! That being a miracle, the babu forthwith wrought another one, and within a minute King's one trunk was checked through to Delhi.
“Delhi is right, sahib?” he asked, to make doubly sure; for in India where the milk of human kindness is not hawked in the market-place, men will pay over-measure for a smile. ”

“ The remembrance of the ten years’ war which had closed only in 1849, a bountiful harvest, the old love of battle, the offer of good pay, but, above all, the personality of Lawrence and his officers, raised the Punjabi force into a new army of 59,000 men, and induced the non-combatant classes to subscribe to a 6% loan. ”

“ Old men, young men, and men of middle age brought their horses and weapons before these great Englishmen, and begged to be allowed to enlist. So week by week some Punjabi, [1] Sikh, or Pathan regiments of foot or horse would march proudly to the Delhi camp, sent down by command of John Lawrence, who himself could ill afford to spare them. The first reinforcements to arrive were the 1st and 2nd Punjab Infantry and the 4th Sikhs. ”

“ The colonel will be setting out from Balandghar in a day or two, with perhaps a couple of hundred sowars, Sikhs, Pathans, and Punjabi Mohammedans. Mr. Jackson is raising a few score Sikhs and Dogras for him in the Jalandar district, and you are to set out at once to take charge of them, joining your commandant at Delhi. ”

“ A row of these, gigantic in size and of considerable weight, stands outside the door, and a Punjabi is ready (for a consideration) to display his splendid muscles like the "strong man" generally to be seen along the quays of Paris near the Institut de France.
A marble causeway bridges the water to the Hari Mandar (God's Temple) , starting from a large gateway on the margin of the tank. By the side of this, when I first saw it, a Hindoo was sticking wet rose-leaves and marigold petals on to a wall-painting of a four-armed and four-headed Brahma. ”

“ Information was received to the effect that Sikh officers of influence, serving in Oude, were saying that they had helped to restore British power, and why should they not now set up a kingdom for themselves. These ideas were beginning to spread among the Punjabi troops serving not only in Oude and the north-western provinces, but also in the Punjab itself, even as far as the frontier of Afghanistan. All this showed that the hearts even of brave, and on the whole good, men may be evilly affected by pride and ambition or by a sense of overgrown power. ”

“ At the time of the first Sikh War the Dogras had a great reputation as soldiers, which they have worthily maintained in the ranks of the Indian native army. They are classed as fighting men with the Sikh and Punjabi Mahommedan. ”

“ The Punjabis, armed with a greater disregard for a woman's life, gained the victory by the simple method of beating a retreat, leaving the helpless woman behind them. In common humanity she could not be left to die. ”

“ The Sepoys of the Bengal army who were mutineers nearly all belonged to Oude and Hindostan; the Punjabis regarded them as foreigners, and detested them ever since the first Sikh war, even disliking their presence in the Punjab; he was fully alive to this feeling, and made the very most of it for the good of the{107} British cause. He knew too that they hated Delhi as the city where their warrior-prophet Tegh Behadur had been barbarously put to death, and where the limbs of the dead martyr had been exposed on the ramparts. ”

“ He was certainly absent from Singapore for a space; and when he returned there, going on to Hong Kong, he interested himself in chartering a ship for the conveyance of Punjabis to Canada. Punjabis, and especially Sikhs, frequently seek employment in the Far East, and have for some time been tempted by the higher wages procurable in Canada. But their admission to that country is to some extent impeded by the immigration laws which we have described already. ”

“ Poet Nazrul-Islam is a shining star. Latif Hussain 'Natwar' is prominent among the Hindi poets. The same is true of Gujrat also. But Punjab is unfortunate. Here, even Hindus and Sikhs are not united, leave the Muslims alone.
Punjab should have been the language of Punjab, like other provinces, but since this has not happened, as this question is a spontaneous question, Muslims have adopted Urdu. ”

“ Some Bengali writers, who do not know what the real sound of য় is, make at times the unscientific and useless attempt to represent the sound by য + আ to convey the peculiar Bengali sound to the ears of the foreigners. They do not know that the spelling গ্যাল for গেল is highly misleading to the people all over India, for ই অ is the sound of both য, and য ফলা—outside the presidency of Bengal. The Indians of all other provinces, as well as the Europeans, who come to learn Bengali after studying Sanskrit or Hindi, are sure to pronounce গ্যাল as গিয়াল. ”

“ They were excellent fighters, as many a hill fight had proved, and there were not a few officers in India who would as soon have had a company of wild Mahratta warriors at their back as Sikhs or Punjabis, when it came to a tussle.
Lieutenant Kerr certainly held this opinion. Long service with them had made him acquainted with their courage and faithfulness.
“The Bombay Infantry may rise, but not my Mahrattas,” he affirmed. “There isn’t a man among them who wouldn’t follow me to the ends of the earth!” ”

“ The last native rulers of the Punjab were the finest ones of all—the Sikhs. The Sikhs, a nation of fanatics and heroes, fought the Moslems for hundreds of years, and the prize was the rule of the Punjab. The Sikhs won, and formed a barrier behind which India was safe from the savage Moslem tribes of the north-west.
The Sikhs are a warrior race pure and simple. They make splendid soldiers under white officers, and the fine Sikh regiments are the pride of our native Indian army. They did not yield up the Punjab to British rule without a stern struggle. ”

“ In the Bengali noun we have a purely inflectional genitive, the legitimate descendant of the Sanskrit termination -asya. Bengali and Oṛiya are like overgrown children, always returning to suck the mother’s breast, when they ought to be supporting themselves on other food. Consequently the written Bengali, afraid to enter boldly on the path of development, hugs the ancient Sanskrit forms as closely as it can, and misleads the reader by exhibiting as genuine Bengali what is merely a resuscitation of classical Sanskrit. ”

“ The central mountainous region and the table-lands of the Dekhan yet belong to the aboriginal tribes, who in the north were crowded out or subjugated, at a period lying only just beyond the ken of recorded history, by the Indo-European races, as they intruded themselves through the avenue, the passes on the north-western frontier, by which the conquerors of India have in all ages found entrance. The principal modern dialects of our kindred are the Hindi, Bengali, and Mahratta, each with various subdivisions, and each with a literature of its own, running back only a few centuries. ”

“ In languages such as Panjabi which have little or no literature, and in the speech of the peasantry all over India, they are few in number. In the modern literary Bengali a false standard of literary taste has led to their employment in overwhelming numbers, and the homely vigorous home-speech, which is itself capable of expressing every idea that the mind of man can conceive, flounders about awkwardly enough under the weight of its borrowed plumes. The native vocabulary of the modern Indo-Aryan vernaculars is thus made up of tadbhavas, dēśyas and tatsamas. ”

“ They could tell tales worth inditing, those pillars and galleries that have witnessed all the major festivities of Punjab Anglo-India—its loves and jealousies and high-hearted courage—from the day of crinolines and whiskers, to this day of the tooth-brush moustache, the retiring skirts and still more retiring bodices of after-war economy. And there are those who believe they will witness the revelry of Anglo-Indian generations yet to be. ”

“ During this era, the Hindus, one of the seven Aryan tribes of which the Persian, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Sclav and Teutonic form the other six, descending from the mid-Asian plateau, settled the Punjab in Northwest India. They drove the dark-skinned aborigines before them and reclaimed forest and swamp to civilization, making the land of the seven rivers bright with agriculture and brilliant with cities. This was the glorious heroic age of joyous life and conquest, when men who believed in a Heavenly Father4 made the first epoch of Hindu history. ”