1. Gopi Chand Narang, New Delhi

2. Jagan Nath Azad, President, Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu, Jammu Tawi.

3. Mohd. Jaleel Pasha, Chairman, All India Urdu Educational Committee, Hyderabad.

4. Asad Madni, President, Jamiatul Ulema-e-Hind, New Delhi.

5. Waris Alvi, President, Gujrat Urdu Sahitya Academy, Gandhinagar

6. Ali Sardar Jafri, Mumbai.

7.Jaffar Raza, Allahabad.

8.Zahiruddin Malik, Aligarh

9.Amir Qazalbash, Delhi.

10.Gulzar, Mumbai

11.Syeda Jaffar, Hyderabad.

12.K.R. Malkani, New Delhi

13.Man Mohan Sharma, Editor, Punjab Kesri, Delhi

14.Mohd. Aslam Parvaiz, Editor, "Science", New Delhi.

15.Kalidas Gupta Raza, Mumbai.

16.Badruddin Ali, Editor, "Salar" Daily, Bangalore.

17.Ahmad Sajjad, Chairman, Markaz-e-Adab-o-Science,Ranchi.

18.Mohd. Yusuf Taing, Srinagar.

19. Mohd. Wali Rehmani, Munger.

20. Ahmad Saeed Malihabadi, Editor, Azad Hind, Calcutta.

21.Abul Kalam Qasmi, Aligarh

22. Khwaja Hasan Sani Nizami, New Delhi.

23. Rafiq Zakaria, Mumbai.

Urdu in Tamil Nadu Shahabuddin's Letter to Indian Express, 21 December, 1999

Apropos your editorial "Much Ado About Tamil" (20 December, 1999) I endorse your view that the adoption of Tamil as the medium of primary instruction is a step in the right direction because it is the mother tongue of 86.7% of the State's population. The needs of Tamil children will be fully served so long as Hindi and English are also introduced in stages by the time they finish primary education.

However, 13.3% of the population is constituted by Telugu (7.1), Kannada (2.2), Urdu (1.6), Malayalam (1.2), Gujarati (0.4) and Hindi (0.3) speaking minorities. The children of the linguistic minorities have equal right to primary instruction through their respective mother tongue. Tamil should be taught to them at the primary stage but it should not be the medium of instruction for them, purely for educational reasons. The Government of Tamilnadu should, therefore, provide for primary instruction through the medium of mother tongue also for those children, if necessary, by adding sections in some schools located in villages/localities of concentration of linguistic minorities and by aggregating them, within reasonable limits, in selected schools.