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Saraiki people

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Saraikis
سرائیکی
Digital depiction of Saraiki men near Derawar Fort
Total population
c. 20 million[1]
Regions with significant populations
 Pakistan20,324,637[2]
Languages
Saraiki
Religion
Majority
Sunni Islam

The Saraikis (Saraiki: سرائیکی) are a community native to central Pakistan, unified by their use of the Saraiki language and a shared regional identity that transcends tribal and ethnic affiliations.[3] Most of them are ethnically either Punjabi or Baloch.[4]

The Saraiki regional identity arose in the 1960s, separating itself from the broader Punjabi ethnic identity, as a result of a feudal-led political movement to separate the Derawali, Multani and Riasti dialects from the Punjabi language,[5] and to instead declare them to constitute a separate language for which the term Saraiki was adopted,[6][7][8][9] hitherto only used for a Sindhi dialect spoken in northern Sindh.[10][11] The movement was launched by the feudal lords of southern Punjab to protect their authority from the Punjab government by attaining a separate province in the south, on the basis of a newly-forged identity, where their authority would be dominant.[5]

The community mostly inhabits southern Punjab as well as most parts of Derajat, which is located in the region where southwestern Punjab, southeastern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and northeastern Balochistan meet.[12][13]

The Saraikis follow many religions, though most are predominantly followers of Sunni Islam. A small minority of Saraikis follow Christianity, Hinduism and Sikhism. After the independence of Pakistan in 1947, many Hindus and Sikhs from the region migrated to India where they still identify with their ethnic Punjabi identity and are known as Multani, Derawali or Bhawalpuri Punjabis.[14]

Etymology

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Painting of Saraikis (or Seraikis) from a series of twelve paintings, ca.1850

The present extent of the meaning of Sirāikī is a recent development, and the term most probably gained its currency during the nationalist movement of the 1960s.[15] It has been in use for much longer in Sindh to refer to the speech of the immigrants from the north, principally Siraiki-speaking Baloch tribes who settled there between the 16th and the 19th centuries. In this context, the term can most plausibly be explained as originally having had the meaning "the language of the north", from the Sindhi word siro 'up-river, north'.[16] This name can ambiguously refer to the northern dialects of Sindhi, but these are nowadays more commonly known as "Siroli"[17] or "Sireli".[18]

An alternative hypothesis is that Sarākī originated in the word sauvīrā, or Sauvira,[19] an ancient kingdom which was also mentioned in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata.[20]

Currently, the most common rendering of the term is Saraiki.[a] However, Seraiki and Siraiki are also commonly used.

Notable people

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Main article: List of Saraiki people

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Saraiki is the spelling used in universities of Pakistan (the Islamia University of Bahawalpur, department of Saraiki established in 1989,[21] Bahauddin Zakariya University, in Multan, department of Saraiki established in 2006,[22] and Allama Iqbal Open University, in Islamabad, department of Pakistani languages established in 1998),[23] and by the district governments of Bahawalpur[24] and Multan,[25] as well as by the federal institutions of the Government of Pakistan like Population Census Organization[26] and Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation.[27]

References

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  1. ^ "Saraiki". Ethnologue.
  2. ^ "Pakistan Census 2017" (PDF). www.pbs.pk. Retrieved 20 September 2020.
  3. ^ Mughal, Muhammad A. Z. (1 September 2020). "Ethnicity, marginalization, and politics: Saraiki identity and the quest for a new Southern Punjab province in Pakistan". Asian Journal of Political Science. 28 (3). Routledge: 301. doi:10.1080/02185377.2020.1814360. ISSN 0218-5377.
  4. ^ Grierson, George Abraham (1919). Linguistic survery of India specimens of Sindhi and Lahnda vol.8; pt.1. p. 240.
  5. ^ a b "The origin and politics of the Seraiki movement". Pakistan: Dawn. 24 May 2009. After the separation of East Pakistan most of the Seraiki MNAs and MPAs including Khosas, Legharis, Qureshis, Mazaris, Wattoos and Nawabs of Bahawalpur joined the PPP and saved their fiefs and the fear of the radical agrarian reforms subsided. However, the radical political verdict from the central Punjab loomed large. After the feudals of the Seraiki belt joined the PPP there was a conscious effort to bifurcate Punjab into two provinces and after the failure of the campaign for a separate Bahawalpur province, the language, or the dialect, was made the basis for this bifurcation move.
  6. ^ "Key Findings Report - The Largest Digitization Exercise of South Asia" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2024-07-19.
  7. ^ Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2016: "Until recently it was considered a dialect of Panjabi."; Masica (1991, p. 443) defines Saraiki as a "new literary language"; see also Shackle (2003, pp. 585–86)
  8. ^ Rahman, Tariq (1996). Language and Politics in Pakistan (PDF). p. 174. The process of the creation of a Siraiki identity in south-western Punjab involved the deliberate choice of a language, called Siraiki, as a symbol of this identity. This involved the renunciation of both the local names of regional dialects (e.g. Multan or Riasati) as well as the all-inclusive label of Punjabi. The term 'Siraiki' probably came to be used for all dialects of the Siraiki-speaking areas through consensus amongst the Siraiki nationalists in 1960 (Rahman, U. Ltr: 6 February 1993). {{cite book}}: line feed character in |quote= at position 74 (help)
  9. ^ Nazir, Kahut (May 24, 2009). "The origin and politics of the Seraiki movement". DAWN. p. 1. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved January 28, 2025.
  10. ^ Handbook of comparative and historical Indo-European linguistics ; Volume 1. Berlin Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. 2017. p. 433. ISBN 9783110393248. The five major dialects of Sindhi are Vicholi, Lari, Lasi, Thari, and Kachhi. Four dialects are spoken within the borders of Sindh itself. Siraiki, in Upper Sindh, is not to be confused with the Punjabi language of the same name. Vicholi, considered the standard dialect, is spoken in central Sindh, while Lari is the dialect in southern Sindh. Lasi is spoken on the western frontier of Sindh and in Balochistan. The Sindhi spoken in the Thar desert of the Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan is called Thari. In Gujarat, Kachhi is spoken along the Rann of Kutch and in the Kathiawar peninsula.
  11. ^ Qadeer, Mohammad (2006-11-22). Pakistan – Social and Cultural Transformations in a Muslim Nation. Routledge. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-134-18617-4. Punjab's diversity of dialects, Saraiki and Pothohari contrasting with the heartland Punjabi, was striking at the time of independence. Since then, the increased mobility of the population and the absorption of refugees from India have stimulated homogenizing tendencies both linguistically and ethnically. NWFP, although symbolically a Pashtoon is also a province of many ethnicities and languages, for example, Hindku-speaking people inhabit the Peshawar Valley and Hazara district, and Saraiki speakers are found in the Derajats.
  12. ^ "About Punjab: Geography". Tourism Development Corporation, Government of the Punjab. Archived from the original on 2007-12-02. Retrieved 2007-12-14.
  13. ^ "People & Culture". Government of the North-West Frontier Province. Archived from the original on 2007-11-17. Retrieved 2007-12-14.
  14. ^ Bhatia, Tej K.; Ritchie, William C. (2008-04-15). The Handbook of Bilingualism. John Wiley & Sons. p. 803. ISBN 9780470756744.
  15. ^ Rahman 1995, p. 3.
  16. ^ Rahman 1995, p. 4; Shackle 1976, p. 2; Shackle 1977, p. 388
  17. ^ Shackle 2007, p. 114.
  18. ^ Shackle 1976, p. 24.
  19. ^ Dani 1981, p. 36.
  20. ^ Shackle 1977.
  21. ^ "The Islamia University of Bahawalpur Pakistan – Department". iub.edu.pk.
  22. ^ "Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan". bzu.edu.pk.
  23. ^ "Department Detail". aiou.edu.pk.
  24. ^ "History of Bahawalpur". bahawalpur.gov.pk. Archived from the original on 11 June 2012.
  25. ^ "Introduction -City District Government Multan". multan.gov.pk.
  26. ^ Population by Mother Tongue Archived 12 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine, website of the Population Census organization of Pakistan
  27. ^ Saraiki News Bulletins Archived 6 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine, website of Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation

Sources

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  • Dani, A.H. (1981). "Sindhu – Sauvira : A glimpse into the early history of Sind". In Khuhro, Hamida (ed.). Sind through the centuries : proceedings of an international seminar held in Karachi in Spring 1975. Karachi: Oxford University Press. pp. 35–42. ISBN 978-0-19-577250-0.
  • Lewis, M. Paul; Simons, Gary F.; Fennig, Charles D., eds. (2016). "Saraiki". Ethnologue (19 ed.). Archived from the original on 25 April 2019.
  • Masica, Colin P. (1991). The Indo-Aryan languages. Cambridge language surveys. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-23420-7.
  • Rahman, Tariq (1995). "The Siraiki Movement in Pakistan". Language Problems & Language Planning. 19 (1): 1–25. doi:10.1075/lplp.19.1.01rah.
  • Shackle, Christopher (1976). The Siraiki language of central Pakistan : a reference grammar. London: School of Oriental and African Studies.
  • —— (1977). "Siraiki: A Language Movement in Pakistan". Modern Asian Studies. 11 (3): 379–403. doi:10.1017/s0026749x00014190. ISSN 0026-749X. JSTOR 311504. S2CID 144829301.
  • —— (2007). "Pakistan". In Simpson, Andrew (ed.). Language and national identity in Asia. Oxford linguistics Y. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-922648-1.
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