This book provides insights into Pashtun migrants in Pakistan. Pashtuns (Pashto) are, perhaps, better known as Pathans, the Hindi/Urdu equivalent. It is a case study, paying special attention to the decades following the opening of the Karakoram Highway, in 1978, highlighting problems faced by migrant-settlers, their attempts to maintain their mother-tongue, the linguistic pressures they face in day-to-day situations and language shift. Particularly valuable are the author's interviews with “ordinary” Pashto-speakers: cobblers, traders, tea boys, farmers and porters.
The book has been organised into four parts. Firstly, the author provides a geographic and socio-linguistic introduction to Pashtun presence in Chitral and Kohistan. Secondly, he provides the impetus for Pashtun migration and their activities in the mid-1990s, connecting the socio-economic development of the area with Pashtun migration.
Thirdly, language contact, language maintenance and language shift of the Pashtuns in Northern Pakistan are considered. Finally, the author makes predictions on Pashtun migration based on its trends in the mid-1990s.
In this socio-ethnographic account, Matthias Weinreich highlights the problem of these migrant-settlers in their attempts to deal with the inevitable linguistic shifts. Language emerges as a crucial issue. The value of Weinreich's account is his immediate access to the migrants themselves. This book claims to echo the voice of the marginalised. As a linguist, I would have liked to have seen more naturalistic data within the text but the author has not taped the conversations. Therefore, there is no way of validating his translations. Unless another researcher, preferably someone who speaks Pashto, undertakes similar fieldwork and makes recordings, we would be none the wiser.
The preservation of Pashto is more complicated than its survival in a context in which identity is necessarily negotiated and re-negotiated. Pashtuns face a choice of preserving their mother-tongue or adopting local dialects or a lingua franca. They are choosing to keep Pashto according to Weinreich. A shopkeeper says “How can our children call themselves Pashtuns if they do not master their language? How can they preserve their pride without Pashto?” (p. 99). One might ask, will it be the same in another half century? The question itself defies prediction, tied to vagaries of time and space. The Pashtuns' knowledge of the hills and valleys together with their fearlessness earned them a reputation as brave fighters. An identity bolstered by pride is one that is worth clinging on to.
Weinreich has taken 30 informants, ranging in age from 15 to 75, tabulating their first and second languages alongside those spoken outside the home. The children of Pashtun men married to Pashto mother-tongue speakers remain with that language (p. 119). One of the most interesting findings in Weinreich's data is that the mother's first language determined the child's mother-tongue. (This is predictable given the absence of the father from the household for most of the day. But this is not necessarily the full story. To take a single example, where the mother speaks a different language, her children will tend not to speak Pashto. The father in this case, a Pashto-speaker, was bilingual using Shina as well.) This gives a good idea of the pressures threatening migrants and/or minority cultures.
It is significant that language pressures do not affect temporary migrants. Another example which goes against the natural instinct for linguistic approaches, is where those proficient in Urdu still had to speak Pashto on the grounds that it was shameful not to do so. Language seems here more than a tool for verbal communication. As Weinreich's short case study demonstrates, it is also a matter of ethnic identity and lineage.
The reader is privy to information that is not normally available; the voices of the marginalised are heard. More importantly, they are first generation migrants and their experiences are relayed directly. The presence of Pashtun in Pakistan has been published in works more than a century old, in the late nineteenth century. However, Matthias Weinreich, provides historical, economic and linguistic insights on Pashtun migration to northern Pakistan, a phenomenon that has increased over the last few decades. Moreover, the two categories – temporary and permanent migrants – offer valuable insights into language maintenance of Pashto-speakers.
I would have welcomed an index and a list of the fine photographs that are lost in the density of the text. Weinreich's proofreader should also have corrected a small number of typographical errors. But Weinreich needs to be congratulated in producing a picture of an area that is both remote and dangerous and of a people who are now attracting wider attention.
More case histories along these lines are needed. There are 47 references in the bibliography but there is an obvious gap in that there are no major local works on the topic cited. The author has had discussions with a Pakistani academic but it would be necessary to see case histories from local researchers.
