Sir,
Punjabi is the mother tongue of all the residents of Punjab are they Hindus Muslims Christians Sikhs or others. Besides a large number of Punjabi-speaking villages were transferred to Haryana on November 1 1966. A good portion of Himachal’s population is also Punjabi-speaking. The whole of the Union Territory of Chandigarh is indisputably a Punjabi-speaking area.
Hindi in Devnagni script has been declared and accepted as India’s official language but our mother-tongue is Punjabi which may be written in any script one likes. If’ Punjabi-speaking people declare Hindi as their mother tongue in the current decade’s census returns they will be telling a lie. I appeal to Punjabis especially Hindus not to disown or betray their mother-tongue which is Punjabi. We have not yet recovered from the devastating consequences of such a blunder made at the time of previous census operations.
Pawan Kumar Jain
Kharar
Article extracted from this publication >> February 8, 1991
