It gave me joy to see the tradition we began — the one we called the "All-India Dogri Conference," because two, three, four of our companions would come from Himachal, from Delhi, from Mumbai, and join us. I have taken part in every one of the Delhi conferences; and though the turnout at today's conference makes me very glad, even so, the turnout at those earlier ones has no equal. Delhi, though a new region, where the Dogras were not many in number — there the people would come with eagerness, and lift our spirits.
Today there is a pain in my heart that I wish to set before you. It is the pain of the Dogri language and Dogri literature. From the time the Dogras came onto this soil, we have no long, detailed, authenticated history of them; but a few wise historians did do research into this city — when was Jammu settled? how did the Dogras establish their rule here? Sukhdev Singh Charak was one such historian, with a deep command of the discipline of history. His first book was titled The Rise and Fall of Dogra Kingdom. By his reckoning, Maharaja Ranjit Dev (1730–1785) reigned fifty-five years. "Rise and Fall" — two very natural words; whatever climbs high must surely come down again, like the rising and the setting of the sun.
By his account, the first king of Jammu was Maldev. He notes that Maldev's coronation took place in 1360 A.D. — but he does not say whether it took place in Jammu, or had already taken place in the land from which they came. I had guessed it probably did take place in Jammu, for in Jammu the area of the old Mandi was itself the king's Mandi; here stood the old palaces of the kings. There is an old memorial of Maldev's here too, which they call the Baradari, where the coronations of the Dogra kings used to be held. Gulab Singh-ji's will not have been held here, for we have read that Maharaja Ranjit Singh-ji of Lahore came and performed it at the Jia Pota ghat in Akhnoor — and made the three brothers its masters. Their father at that time was Kishore Singh. After Gulab Singh, Ranbir Singh-ji's coronation took place; and in that same Baradari, Maharaja Pratap Singh-ji was given his.
When Hari Singh-ji's coronation took place, we ourselves saw the woods being cleared, the drains and grounds swept clean — they said a coronation was to be held there. In this way three coronations took place there; and near the Baradari, on the lane that runs to Fattu's Changan, stood his palaces. These palaces stood there from Maldev's time down to the age of Ranjit Dev. From 1360 to 1730, nearly four hundred years passed. After this came a king, Dhruvdev. He had four sons, and so he felt this place too cramped for them to live in, and laid the foundation of Mandi Mubarak. It is said the Dogras must have dwelt here even then; but the town of Jammu was not the capital in those days — Jammu became the capital with the coming of Maldev.
(This writers' conference was held in 2007.)
We know, by the linguists' account, that of all the dialects of North India — from Rajasthani down to eastern Assam — not one is older than eight or nine hundred years. There was Sanskrit — Vedic Sanskrit, and then classical (laukik) Sanskrit came. We call Valmiki the first poet, the adi-kavi, of Sanskrit; but he was not, for the Vedic literature of Sanskrit had already been composed by his day. The classical literature begins from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. In the plays of Kalidasa, Bhasa, Shudraka and the rest, we used to marvel to see that they made some characters speak Sanskrit and some Prakrit. Of Prakrit we did not know much, for it was not the language of common speech in that age. After Prakrit came the Apabhramshas, and after them the modern languages — Dogri, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, and the others. These are all sisters, and their age is not much above eight or nine hundred years. If we count from the king crowned in 1360, then a full seven hundred years have passed (1360 to 2000). Which means Dogri must have come out of Apabhramsha some hundred or hundred-and-fifty years before that. What form had it then? How much change, distinct from Apabhramsha, had come into it? Of this we have no written proof.
We too are that sort of thing — we keep whatever we need, and set the rest aside. And there is a sorrow in it: that there ought to have been a full knowledge of the languages. Dogri did not come straight out of Sanskrit; it came by way of two stages, and each stage must have lasted five hundred years at the least. But of the thing that lived on, and went on being spoken, for those five hundred years, we have no literary proof. We have no Prakrit literature. Even if some books were written, they are no longer with us today. For this reason I reckon our history — the history of the Dogras, of Dogri speech and language — at seven hundred years. This is no very great span; yet if we peer into these years and ask how literary awareness and growth came into this language — when it came, in what surroundings — then it seems as though for some centuries we stayed in a half-lit age. Our language did not grow up alongside us. In our speech we went on using Dogri, calling it our mother tongue. And we are indebted to those people who, in the name of folk literature, wrote down the folk songs and folk tales, made the idioms and sayings, and enriched the language. We are indebted to the Sahitya Akademi and the Cultural Akademi, that here a few people had the thought that we ought to gather up our scattered heritage. A great many folk songs and folk tales were collected. The credit for writing down Dogri's idioms and sayings goes to Shri Tara Smailpuri. A few others, too, took an interest in this work — but afterwards we neglected it once again. To neglect folk literature is the same as forgetting the history of one's own folk tradition. But the blessing is that a great deal of it was gathered and published. This was beyond the means of any single individual or institution of ours; only a government body could do it. We are grateful to them for doing that work.
Among the Dogras there was a kind of diffidence — that in Jammu, if someone spoke to us in Punjabi, we would set Dogri aside and begin speaking with him in Punjabi. Such weaknesses are with us even today. There was not that kind of love for one's own tongue. Dogri is a very forceful language; it has a folk literature of its own besides. The cracks showing in our circle today are showing in two-language households as well — for their children too study in those public schools where the whole effort is that our child should speak English. Seeing the child utter two sentences of English, the family is delighted: our child is becoming an Englishman. Seeing the actors and actresses on TV rattle off their English, people think — this is the secret of success. Today, in our homes, the children do not speak Dogri. A danger has arisen for Dogri. Dogri lives in our very mera-tuhada — the intimate "mine" and "yours" with which we address one another. And yet, before my own eyes, while I watched, all this came to pass: that a girl married into a Dogra household understands Dogri but cannot speak it. This is a matter for concern. We do not even try to make the child understand that we can easily speak four languages. Speak English too; through the medium of Hindi-Urdu, in the higher classes you study, speak those too; and the mother tongue then comes of its own accord — for at home all the elderly women and the rest speak Dogri, so why do you not? But a certain atmosphere has come about, certain institutions have opened, that are estranging us, and our children, from the mother tongue. This is a deeply painful thing. It is a danger to Dogri — and to meet it we have raised no front, made no programme. When the Dogri institution was first formed, there was as yet no Cultural Akademi, no Dogri department of the University, no Dogri newspapers, nothing of the sort. But you people, who have seen that decline and that rise of Dogri — you were men of spirit.
In 1963, when Ashai Sahib was Registrar, I said to him: you have started the M.I.L. examinations in Kashmiri, and you have left Dogri out. He answered, "Shastri-ji, I have heard that no publisher comes forward to print Dogri; and if not a single Dogri book is printed, then how are the course-books to be prepared — books with six papers each, and two or three volumes within each, eighteen or twenty books for every class? And who will prepare them? Who will provide them to the children?" I went and called a meeting of the Working Committee, told them Ashai Sahib's words, and asked what answer I should give him. One spoke up, and then a second: we will write these books, the Dogri institution will print them, and we will provide the course-books. I drew up an application, and all of them signed it.
I handed one copy to Ashai Sahib. He was left speechless; now he could not refuse. We had the syllabus printed ourselves — and not only did we get it printed and provide the books, we even started free coaching classes. These we held not only in the cities but in the villages and hamlets too. My fellow professors came with me. To teach, we would stay away from home two or three days at a stretch. Once, in great heat, we went to Hiranagar. There someone asked me: in such heat you have come so far, and after teaching the children an hour and a half or two hours you must get up and go — what do you gain by it? I said: my gain is just this — that if some attachment to the language is born in you, then our coming and going will have succeeded. From place to place we kept travelling to stage Dogri plays and mushairas and the like. It was a very hard road; in those days we did not get so much as a paisa for it.
In 1948 the Radio Station was set up — four years after the founding of our institution of Dogri writers. In those days one got seven rupees as honorarium for reading an essay on the radio.
Turning over the pages of history somewhere, I learned that in the middle of the eighteenth century there lived a poet, Devi Datt. He dwelt in Bhaddu, which was a separate little hill principality. Professor Gauri Shankar did a great deal of work on the poet Datt. Once a Punjabi literary gathering was held in Jammu, to which renowned poets came. The Dogri institution decided that they should be invited and served tea. They were called — and there they recited three poems —