Language on Wheels

Rickshaws offer mobile advertisement which gives far greater reach, visibility to the message being disseminated.

About three years back, I started noticing the writings on the trucks which ply our roads. And, as any researcher would bear out, a new world opened out before me. My study, based on 672 trucks, was published in 2010. My conclusions were that Urdu is the language of most of the writings (75 per cent) followed by Pashto (14 per cent) and then Punjabi (10 per cent). Sindhi, Balochi and Brahvi have a very small share in the writings (1.03 per cent).

Considering that the mother-tongue speakers of Urdu are 7.57 per cent; those of Pashto 15.4 per cent and those of Sindhi 14.1 per cent, it appears that Urdu is the most widely used language of wider communication as a second language and Pashto has a fair share but only because the truck drivers are mostly Pashtuns. Punjabi, whose mother-tongue speakers are 44.2 per cent, does not have its just share but it is used more in trucks than Sindhi, perhaps, because people enjoy its puckish, earthy, somewhat risque humour.

The other major conclusion was that the themes of most of the writings are amorous. These are couplets in the style of the Urdu ghazal, veering either towards romantic love or salaciousness and appreciation of female beauty. The couplets are not by the great masters of the ghazal but their names are used sometimes. I found that painters kept scrapbooks with favourite couplets which drivers and owners could choose from. Sometimes drivers had their own favourites, which they got from other trucks or newspapers and magazines and these were given to the painter to write. The other themes were about the driver’s devotion to his mother, the inevitability of fate, the life of travelling and so on. The Islamic component was generally at the front of the truck and had the token function of invocation of divine blessing as is common in Pakistani society. Some — but very few — trucks advocated the strict Deobandi version of Islam. However, others had photographs of women (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan being a favourite) though the drivers did say that the Taliban and other preachers objected to them. But even then they persisted.

In short, even among the ordinary truck drivers, owners and painters of Pakistan — despite the fact that most were from the very religious society of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa — the harsh views of the Taliban had not found acceptance. Ordinary people were still wedded to their centuries-old intercessory Islam, in which they believed in saints, the blessings conferred by them and, of course, in superstitions of various kinds. Urban intellectuals, on the other hand, shun intercessory, folk Islam opting for fundamentalist versions of the faith which, while being more rational in certain matters, are also harsher and less tolerant of other versions of the common peoples’ simple faith.

This was nearly two years back. During this period my attention had been drawn to the writings on rickshaws by Raza Rumi in this paper. He had pointed out that they carried jingoistic, pro-war messages. This drew my attention to the rickshaws, which I had not studied before.

Meanwhile, the first authoritative study of truck art by an academic of Pakistani origin, Jamal Elias (On Wings of Diesel, 2011), was launched and I reviewed it in 2013. The book also contained an annexure on writings and they confirmed what I had written earlier. While reviewing Elias’s book, I started noticing trucks again to see if any change had taken place in the writings upon them. This time, my sample was small and unrepresentative, as I could not have spent time on taking a larger sample as I had in 2010 but it was sufficient to confirm that the basic themes had not changed. In short, there was no change in the worldview of the common man in Pakistan in the last three years. This is also suggested by the elections in which the religious parties have never won at the polls. Where, then, does the excessively harsh world view on the backs of rickshaws come from?

In my opinion, it comes from groups which aim to change the world view of Pakistanis through all means, including textbooks and rickshaw posters. The fact that the rickshaw offers an easily changeable place for advertisement gives them the opportunity to take advantage through renting this space. Moreover, it is mobile advertisement which gives far greater reach and visibility to whatever message is being disseminated among the public. Tahirul Qadri’s campaign afforded me a deeper study since almost all rickshaws suddenly carried his slogan “Save the state; not your politics” to every nook and cranny of Lahore. After his debacle, his image was replaced by the usual ones enjoining women to cover themselves, telling their husbands, brothers and fathers to make them do so and suggesting that their mobility should be restricted.

The anti-India slogans are inevitable but they, too, increase or decrease with events. When Nawaz Sharif mentioned meeting the Indian prime minister after his victory at the polls, I noticed more rickshaws saying “Hindustan se rishta kya? Dushmani ka, nafrat ka” (What is the relationship with India; that of enmity and hatred). It may be only a coincidence, as I do not claim that I have carried out a proper research on these changes but this is what I noticed. In some cases, the names of the organisations giving these messages are given but mostly they are anonymous. There are advertisements of doctors (mostly quacks), teachers (who can make you proficient in English in a matter of a fortnight) and other providers of services. But mostly, the rickshaws are being used to radicalise the Pakistani urban population. With the textbooks, TV anchors, rumour-mongers, school teachers and preachers doing exactly this, it is a wonder that Pakistanis still retain some sanity. I am not surprised when they attack Christians, Ahmadis and Hindus; I am not surprised when women are killed for honour; I am not surprised when they want war. I am surprised when they say ‘no’ to such things — and many do!

Published in The Express Tribune, May 28^th, 2013.