This might seem queer to some of our honourable Members, but the Punjab is a peculiar province. It is not an inter-provincial or inter-territorial question in the Punjab, but a communal question. This is a legacy of the pre-partition days. If we look at the census reports of 1931 and 1941, it would be clear that the Census Commissioners of those reports pointed out that persons, very respectable and honourable, gave wrong answers in their enthusiasm to choose one language or the other. People who wanted Urdu to be their language, while they actually spoke Punjabi, replied to the question that their mother-tongue was Urdu. Similarly, to counteract it, the answer from the other side was that their mother-tongue was Hindi while they spoke and were conversant only with Punjabi. Under these circumstances the figures that were collected were wrong and the Census Commissioner had to give up that attempt which he recommended might be dropped altogether.
