Introduction of Gawri-Urdu-English Conversation book

 

By Dr. Tariq Rahman

Professor of Linguistics and South Asian Studies
National Institute of PakistanStudies
Quaid-i-Azam University
Islamabad

 

Gawri has been called by different names by previous researchers. Biddulph (1880) used the name Bashkarik for it. This name was also used later by Morgenstierne (1940). However, Grierson in his monumental Linguistic Survey of India (vol.8) (1901-1927), called the language Garwi. Barth (1956: 52) said that the name was actually Gawri and also clarified that the name Bashkarik is used in the area. Rensch and his colleagues from the Summer Institute of Linguistics working upon their Sociolinguistic Survey of Northern Pakistan (Vol.1) said that the term Gawri was regarded as pejorative. Accordingly the researchers of the SIL, most notably Dr. Joan Baart have used Kalami and Kalam Kohistani for the language. However, now that Zaman has used the word Gawri for the language I intend to adhere to this usage in this piece of writing.

The language is very ancient having been mentioned as Gawri by Panini, the great Sanskrit grammarian, in the 5^th or early 4^th century BC. A tribe called Gauraioi lived in the Swat and Dir areas but were forced to retreat into the mountainous Kohistan when the Afghans, speaking Pashto, displaced them. The Gawri speakers now live in the Utrot, Kalam and Ushu valleys of Swat and in the upper Panjkora valley.

In the schools I visited in Kalam the medium of instruction was Pashto but the local language, the mother tongue of the children, was used as the informal medium of instruction at the primary level (Rahman 2002: 370). The local people identified with Pashto because it was the dominant language in the area but, as Muhammad Zaman, the author of the present work, told me, some educated young men did desire to keep Gawri alive. As the number of the speakers of this language was estimated to be only between 60,000 to 70,000 in 1995 (Baart 1999: 4), such young men have a daunting task---this, after all, is not a predominantly literate society that encourages linguistic activism and the creation of language movements.

At present the most scholarly work on the language has been done by Joan L.G. Baart, whose books A Sketch of Kalam Kohistani Grammar (1999) and The Sounds and Tones of Kalam Kohistani (1997) are the latest standard linguistic works upon the subject. Baart does not, however, write in Gawri itself. He, being a linguist, does research on the language and presents the results in English. Pervaish Shaheen, a researcher from Swat, reports written works by Ghulam Isa and Maulana Abdul Haq Kalami in the language itself but these have not been seen by the present author (Shaheen. Int. 2000). In short, Zaman is among the pioneers of writing in Gawri---a feat of which he can be justly proud.

To my knowledge Zaman has written a primer of Gawri and Baart too wrote an ABC Book along with him (Rahman 2002: 449). The alphabet used in the present dictionary uses the diacritical marks and the orthographical symbols used in these primers.

The present book is an attempt to introduce Gawri to the educated public of Pakistan. The languages in which Gawri words are translated are English and Urdu. These are the most widely used languages of communication among educated people in the country. The book is written on the model of a number of local language-teaching manuals like Urdu-Pashto Bol Chal and Urdu-Arabic Bol  Chal which are meant to introduce ordinary educated Pakistanis to Pashto or Arabic as the case may be. Elsewhere in the world such manuals, containing a few words and commonly used phrases, are widely available for tourists. They help one to understand a few commonly used words of the language in daily life.

The question which arises is whether anyone will ever need to learn Gawri? It is of course, conceivable that professional linguists will need to learn it, as they have in the past, but all such linguists would know English. A manual also containing Urdu can only be helpful for children in ordinary Urdu-medium schools or grownups who do not know English. At present both children and ordinary grownups in Pakistan are not likely to learn Gawri through Urdu on their own. Zaman's work, therefore, is mostly a labour of love. It is symbolic of the aspiration of a man who does not want his language to die. Zaman and his associates in the Kalam Cultural Society (Kalam, Swat) are the pioneers of the kind of  language movement which has caused the reversal of language shift in various small languages of Europe such as Welsh.

In Pakistan, too, we know of indigenous linguists working on Khowar, Kalasha, Wanechi, Ormuri, Gujari, Hindko and other small languages. These people generally do not know modern linguistics; they have no access to journals, books, theses and so on; they have no research grants; they do not even know if their work will be published at all. And yet they keep writing about their language. There is a spark in their hearts which does not die. Zaman is one of them. I wish his book all success in the days to come.

 

References

Baart, Joan L.G. 1997. The Sounds and Tones of Kalam Kohistani Islamabad: National Institute of Pakistan Studies & Summer Institute of Linguistics.

________. 1999. A Sketch of Kalam Kohistani Grammar Islamabad: As above.

Barth, Fredrik. 1956. Indus and Swat Kohistan: An Ethnographic Survey Oslo.

Biddulph, John. 1880. Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh (Reprinted edition, 1971).

Grierson, George. 1901-1927. Linguistic Survey of India Vols. 1-10 Calcutta: Govt. of India, Central Publishing Branch.

Morgenstierne, Georg. 1940. ‘Notes on Bashkarik’, Acta Orientalia 18: 206-257.

Rahman, Tariq. 2002 Language, Ideology and Power: Language-Learning Among the Muslims of Pakistan and North India Karachi: Oxford University Press.

Shaheen. Int. 2000. Interview of Shaheen Pervaish, researcher from Swat, by Dr. Tariq Rahman, 21 May 2000 in Hyderabad, Sindh.