ਸ਼ਮੀਲ

Twenty years ago, when I was beginning my career in journalism, it was a different era. We would design newspaper pages with the old paste-up technique. Fast forward twenty years later, I recently learned languages of the internet—HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

 

My career has been a witness to the merging of an old era into a new one, that too only in the period of last one decade.

 

What an experience it has been! I had opportunities to experience and perform almost every role in my profession-- reporter, sub-editor, news editor, television reporter, television anchor, producer, news-coordinator, digital and social media coordinator, media entrepreneur and editor of a daily newspaper. To someone who seeks out challenges, this was the best that life could have offered.

 

Till the mid-eighties, Punjabi was just another regional language of a small Indian state of Punjab. Over the span of past twenty years, I have had the ringside seat to the metamorphosis of the Punjabi language.  From a rustic language of the Punjabi heartland to the global chic of Punjabi pop music, the image of Punjabi has completely transformed over the last few years. It is the only language from South Asia to travel that far and wide in such a short span of time.

 

I believe that multi-cultural values and multi-lingual organizations are the first steps towards global unity and oneness. I have come to appreciate the finesse and beauty of different languages during my career in a multi-cultural media organization in Canada. And I also realized that one cannot become multicultural without first having confidence in your own language. I must admit it took me years to realize that Punjabi occupies a unique status among the world languages. As recipient of the Television News Story of the Year award, I had opportunity to speak at a Canadian media award event in 2014. It was a multicultural event. I introduced myself in a way I had never done before. I said, “I represent here a language which is part of an ‘elite group of world languages’. Only 5 world languages-Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Punjabi- have the honor of being vehicles of the revealed sacred texts/sacred religious text of major world religions. I practice journalism in one of these five language”. That sublime experience I had never had before.

 

Punjabi is the first language of about 130 million people, spread all over the world; but it is a divided language. People on both sides of the India-Pakistan border speak the same language but employ two very different scripts. And there are very few people on both sides of the border who understand both scripts. I learned the Shahmukhi/Urdu script just to connect with the other side of our community. I am not sure there are many people on both sides of the border who will do so. Lately we have been fortunate to have software for script conversion between Shahmukhi and Gurmukhi. I’m hopeful that soon we’ll be able to make new global Punjabi media available in both scripts.

 

Our generation is witness to globalization of cultures. I have personally lived this change while migrating from India to Canada. Globalization of life and advent of new digital technologies have created opportunities for every language to become global, and I believe, for the benefit of humanity every language should acquire a global character.

 

Often journalism in ‘ethnic’ languages is reduced to regional and local issues. That is the ghettoization of cultures, languages and consequently our minds. Time has arrived to have global journalism in ‘regional’ languages to make our world truly a global one.

 

That is my new dream. That is my vision of journalism.