Like any other living language, Urdu is not the exclusive language of a religious group but 50 years after the Partition, Urdu as a Mother Tongue and as a Medium of Primary Instruction or as a Second Language in High School stands almost totally rejected in India by the non-Muslims. Therefore, for all practical purposes it is today overwhelmingly the language of the Muslims. Urdu, at the same time, is not the language of all the Muslim Indians The coefficient of Urduisation of Muslim population varies from State to State as may be seen below:

[Note: States/UT's with less than 100,000 Urdu-speaking population have been left out].

Thus, 5 States UP, Bihar, AP, Maharashtra and Kerala account for 84.8% of the National Urdu Population (NUP); with the coefficient varying between 51.8 (UP) and 93.9 (AP). Nearly 45% of Urdu population is in non-Hindi States.

What is most important is the fact that Urdu unlike other MIL's has no home-base in as such it is a Minority Language in every State/UT.

Urdu's future in India, after 50 years of struggle, is indeed at a critical juncture. Urdu is lost between its growing popularity as a spoken language and its receding presence as a written language. It is this dichotomy, call it a contradiction if you like, which neither the government, nor the Urdu experts have been able to resolve and reconcile with its future as a distinct language and not as another form of Hindi. They have both consequently adopted a policy of drift and the 'mediators' - the Urdu-speaking elite, the managers of government agencies, the academicians, the poets, writers and journalists, have like an ostrich, buried their neck in the sand and adopted the Hedonist approach of making hay while the sun shines, organising and participating in Conferences, Symposia, Seminars, Workshops and Mushairas, praising the Government for its support and back-slapping each other for their contribution. Such endeavours, specially those by official agencies, however, serve to keep alive the illusion that Urdu is not only alive but making progress in India, the land of its birth.

The fact is that while Urdu has become an international language and is prospering in foreign countries, in India it is a dying language. It is one thing to declare Urdu as the Mother Tongue or the Household Language, it is another to know Urdu which implies, inseparably the  knowledge of the Urdu script.

With every census, the number of persons who can read and write (and not only speak in Urdu) is proportionately growing down, even while the area of literacy and of education is expanding.

Urdu's future in India does not depend on Urdu's progress in other countries or the adoption of more Urdu words of Arabic and Persian origin in the 'Hindi' news-reports in the electronic media or even in print media, the dialogue and songs in Hindi films or dramas or even in Hindi poetry. It depends solely on the percentage of children from Urdu-speaking population permitted to learn Urdu at the school and to use it as the medium of instruction at the primary level. Except to some extent in Bihar, Maharashtra and AP, the proportion is on the decrease. Indeed facilities are being restricted with every passing year. Even demand is going down under the triple impact of deliberate banishment and consequent non-availability of facilities, preference to learn Hindi in Hindi States and, regional languages in non-Hindi States. Even minorities educational institutions established by the Urdu-speaking people in Urdu-speaking areas for Urdu-speaking children are not providing adequate teaching facilities for Urdu because of government regulations and the prescribed syllabi.

Some optimists relate Urdu's future in India to teaching of Urdu and the use of Urdu as medium of instruction in Madarsas. While this may be true to some extent of Madarsas in the 'Urdu States', in the Madarsas in the non-Urdu States Urdu remains a tertiary language, ranking along with Arabic as a religious resource. To my mind this does not materially affect the future of Urdu as the % of students attending Madarsas is very small as compared to the total population or the students attending mainstream schools, government or private.

The Urdu elite sends their children to English-medium schools; the emergent classes see education purely as the doorway to gainful employment - public or private - and are, therefore, comfortable with their children learning Hindi or the regional language or both in non-Hindi States.

It is amazing that since Independence, no organised political pressure has been applied to stop the deliberate policy of Sanskritisation let loose by the powers that be in Hindi-speaking States in violation of Constitutional rights, educational principles and internationally recognised minorities rights. As if Sanskrit was not enough, southern languages were sought to be introduced in the north as Optional Languages, as a quid pro quo for acceptance of Hindi in the Southern States. The idea was to occupy all linguistic space and leave none for Urdu as Mother Tongue or as Second Language. The Anjuman Taraqqui-e-Urdu-Hind has raised the question of Urdu as the second official language in various States, but it has never pressed the question of Urdu as the Medium of Primary Instruction to Urdu-speaking students and as the First Language (as the Mother Tongue) in the Three-Language Formula at the junior and high school levels. What is worse, it did not offer consistent opposition to the de-facto substitution of Urdu, by Sanskrit or some other Language, even as the Second or the Third Language. It may be noted that in non-Hindi States, Urdu or any other non-Hindi linguistic minority requires a Four Languages Formula. But in the case of Urdu, a composite course of Hindi-Urdu can reduce the requirement to THREE: Urdu/Hindi, State Language and English.

Except in Bihar, Urdu, for all practical purposes, is out of school syllabus whether it is UP, MP, Rajasthan, Haryana or Delhi. One recalls Choudhury Charan Singh's brutally frank assertion that one of the greatest achievements of independent India was to make UP unilingual!

It is equally surprising that the Gujral Committee Report which we all acclaim and adopt as our Bible for the Urdu Movement, carefully chose not to make any emphatic recommendation on the use of Urdu as the Medium of Primary Instruction for Urdu-speaking students and as the First Language in the Three Language Formula .. Perhaps such non-recognition of Urdu accorded w ith me political climate and what is more important, the ethos of the new Muslim bourgeoisie which was anxious only to share the development cake and prepared to do so at the cost of cuntural heritage. In any case Gujral himself has repeatedly claimed that notwithstanding what Ale Ahmad Suroor and Ali Sardar Jafri Committees may have said, an the recommendations of his Committee stand implemented!

Urdu protagonists are happy with the establishment of Urdu Academis (with annual increase in the budget), with state patronage of Mushairas, with the setting up of more or more Urdu Departments. In Colleges and Universities (whose long-term contribution has been to render the Muslim youth with Ph.D. in Urdu more unemployable, and not to develop Urdu language or literature), with the sweet rhetoric of praise for the language and support to its 'cause'

What about Urdu literature? Rich as it is in poetry, fiction, literary criticism, history, Islamic studies, Urdu cuts a sorry figure as a vehicle of physical sciences, even of social sciences, not to speak of applied sciences and modern technology. In this sense, perhaps all modern Indian languages lag behind English and other European language and are falling more and more behind with every passing day. But Urdu had made a glorious start in the 20's in the Osmania University. That great experiment was abandoned in the heat of t he Partition. Now Urdu does not even have proper school textbooks of a national standard for all subjects for the high school, the higher secondary and the degree courses.

The idea of establishing Urdu University was initiated to put Urdu back on the road of development. I had proposed the conversion of JAMIA MILLIA ISLAMIA, in accordance with its original charter and its very raison d'etre, into an Urdu-medium University under Article 30 for the Urdu-speaking linguistic minority. Many interests combined to defeat the idea. Now the Abul Kalam Azad National Urdu University has been established. So far all it has done is to duplicate distance education in Urdu, something which could have been done, at much lower cost, by the Indira Gandhi National Open University. The Urdu University must affiliate Urdu-medium schools and degree colleges throughout the country, whose instruction can then be standardised and deliberately implement a programme of producing original and translated textbooks for degree and post-graduate level. But again, under economic pressure, the University is likely to concentrate on certificate courses with employment potential, to the utter neglect of its real objective - the development of Urdu as a modern language and of Urdu-Hindi composite courses for AP, Karnataka and Tamilnadu to fit in with the Three-Language Formula.

The strategy of seeking 'Second Official Language Status' for Urdu, granted in Bihar and AP, has also proved to be an exercise in tokenism. In Bihar, Urdu translators and typists were recruited (much less in number than the government propaganda made it out to be) but they are

being largely used as Clerks in various district/block offices. What can they do if hardly any petitions in Urdu are received from the public? What are they to translate and what are they to type in reply? And will the officers, under whom they serve, not be inclined to put them otherwise to work?

The simple point is that if the population which reads and writes Urdu (and not merely speaks Urdu) goes down, the Second Official Language strategy is bound to fail.

And why is the Urdu-reading population going down? Primarily because less and less number of school going children are studying Urdu or through Urdu. And why are they not? Primarily because the Urdu-speaking population - largely Muslim - hesitates to make the cause of Urdu a political and, at that, a communal issue, and because, in its heart of hearts, it sees little economic benefit in its children learning Urdu. Neither does it see the enormity of the consequent cultural loss.

For the last 20 years, I have been knocking at every door, raising my voice against the exclusion of Urdu from the primary and secondary schools but with little or no support from the institutional and individual Mujawirs of Urdu in our country.

Prof. Mohd. Hasan is one figure from the Urdu world who saw through the utter hypocrisy of sprinkling water on the leaves while cutting the vines at the roots engaged in by successive national governments.

Today the leaves have began to turn yellow. Soon they shall drop off the vines. Tomorrow the vine will turn into dry stick. Yet the roots of Urdu are there in the cultural soil of our country. Urdu can sprout again and nourish new vines, provided the Urdu fraternity adopts a Programme of Survival and Regeneration and struggles for its implementation at every level, in combination with other linguistic minorities of the area and people. The programme include :-

i) Declaration of Urdu as Mother Tongue by all Urdu-speaking families in Census and educational Surveys and determination to teachUrduto their children.

ii) Primary instruction in Urdu to all Urdu-speaking children in all Schools without any numericai limits.

iii) Teaching of Urdu as Mother Tongue/First Language under the Three-Language Formula to all Urdu-speaking children.

iv) Establishment of Urdu-medium Primary Schools in Urdu-concentration areas, in accordance with national norms at least one Urdu-medium High School, one Higher Secondary School and one Urdu-medium Degree College in every district headquarter in which Urdu-speakers constitute 10% of the district population.

v) Development of Abul Kalam Azad National Urdu University as the nodal affiliating University for all Urdu-medium high schools, higher secondary schools and degree colleges throughout the country and for development of Urdu as a vehicle for science and technology of modern thought.

vi) Use of Urdu for specified official and administrative purposes in all Panchayats, Tehsils/Blocks, Municipalities, Districts and States where the Urdu-speakers constitute 10% of the population.

vii) Due allocation to Urdu out of the central and state budgets for development of languages.

viii) Due allocation out of central and state advertisement budget to Urdu newspapers and periodicals. Urdu is neither the Language of Muslim Indians only nor of all Muslim Indians but today Urdu is the Mother Tongue of at least half the Muslim Indians, the repository of Muslim Religious and Cultural Heritage. But it is an Indian language and the language of its Composite Culture.

Nationalism and Secularism, Social Justice and Human Rights, the Constitution and the International Law demand not only that it survives in India but that it is given a rightful place in Education, Administration and Information’s.

New Delhi,

1" January, 2000