That Urdu is not the language of Muslims alone ... Serves an important rhetorical and political purpose,, but has little analytical value. Hindi, for example, is not the language of Hindus alone, nor, for that matter, are Tamil, Gujarati, Bengali etc.
... Since 1947 Urdu has become in India a language exclusive to Muslims, and that the questions concerning the 'development' of Urdu and Urdu education should be considered only with reference to Muslims ... Currently, the discourse on Indian Muslims is too emphatically directed by concepts of 'religious minority' and 'reservations'. We should not let these almost twin concepts exclusively govern any discussion of Urdu education in India. Likewise, we should bear in mind that questions concerning the socio-economic plight of Indian Muslims should not be considered with reference to Urdu alone. 'Backwardness' of Indian Muslims does not exclusively, or even primarily, come from the terrible state of Urdu education. Its cause is the overall very low presence of education or even simple literacy among the Muslims ... Does Urdu's future development lies in an increase in the number of its speakers? In that case, there is nothing to worry about. According to the 1981 census, there were 34.9 million speakers of Urdu in India, a definite increase over the 28.6 million recorded in 1971.
Or, does 'development' mean an expansion of Urdu's lexicon and those areas of its speakers lives in which Urdu is presently used? If so, how do we measure it? Should we judge it by the quantity and quality of Urdu publications (books, magazines and newspapers)? The question of quantity is easier to explore ... According to the Statistical Abstracts published by the Government of India, 428 Urdu books (titles) were published in1974, as compared to 182 during 1967-68. The same source also provides the following figures: Number of Urdu newspapers and periodicals published in India: 929 in 1975; 1492 in 1984.
As to the questions of quality and subject matter ... Urdu Literature (poetry, fiction, criticism and history) seems to be the dominant category, followed by the category of Islamics (commentaries and translations, religious law, sectarian tracts, Sufi literature, etc.) The quality of books in these categories seems to have remained unchanged - a few truly significant books come out every year. Current events, political and economic history, sociological issues and such have never been big in Urdu and that continues to be the case ... Urdu as such is (not) going downward, for in whatever sense it might be doing so in India that can't be true in Pakistan too. In other words, we need not worry about the language itself.
What is worrisome is the ambivalence - and worse-one presently seems to feel between Urdu and the Urduwallas in India ... To give one example, among the 34 million speakers of Urdu in India, there certainly must be 34 hundred persons of means who can spend a thousand rupees annually on Urdu books. But do they? Even the best Urdu books come out in minuscule first editions, and very few get a second printing. Urdu doesn't have any national weekly publication of the kind that are numerous in English and plentiful in such regional languages as Bengali and Malayalam. Even Hiridi has a couple of them. The only weekly or fortnightly magazines in Urdu are a few shrill rags that devote themselves to fiery headlines concerning the 'plight of Indian Muslims' and seem to toe the ideological line of one or the other of the so-called Muslim countries; Libya; Iran; Saudi Arabia. There are only four kinds of monthly magazines in Urdu: literary; quasi-literary and movies oriented; religious; and women's magazines. There is no magazine for children of the quality that is found in several other Indian languages and did in fact exist in Urdu in1947. Urdu journalism, as a whole, is in a very sad shape, particularly in what is described as the 'heartland of Urdu'. There is not a single flourishing Urdu newspaper in Delhi, UP and Bihar ...
Why this depressing state? Is it because the number of Urdu speakers who can afford to subscribe has gone down or is it because they prefer to spend their money elsewhere? I would very much like to find ow what effect the Tablighi Jama'at and the Jama'at-e-Islami have had on the reading habits of the educated Muslims of North India. Where do their members, particularly the members of the first group, get their information about the world around them? What publications do they buy? Also, what are the bestsellers in Urdu in India and what can they tell us about the cultural and educational goals of their readers? ...
Some Urdu intellectuals suggest that Urdu should be written in the Devanagri script in India ... I don't believe that Urdu should change its script, but I also think that ... if the script is changed, Urdu will have as much, if not more, effect on Hindi. We have the example of the so-called Hindi films; they use a language that is not the cherished variety heard on official bulletins or in the corridors of Hindi institutions. The Hindiwallas are always nervous around Urdu, particularly Urdu texts and authors.
They may call Urdu a shaili or style of Hindi, but they will never include Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz (or Sarshar, Ruswa and Qurratulain Hyder) in the Hindi canon. Yes, they have made their own Insha's Rani Ketki ki Kahani and some of Nazir Akbarabadi's poems, but it will be a cold day in hell when they do include a selection of classical Urdu ghazals in Hindi textbooks ..
... The (students) know Urdu but are less conversant with its script than with Hindi? If that's the case, shouldn't they be learning how to read and write Urdu rather than its literature? The problem is that at the Aligarh Muslim University and elsewhere, instruction in Urdu means reading Urdu literature. The two tasks, however, are entirely distinct and should be engaged in separately.
Equally importantly, there has to be some strong motive for the students to learn Urdu. They come from a culture where their parents determine what they study, and I have rarely met a parent who knowingly urged any slightly smart progeny of his to study Urdu at the university level.
These students take up Urdu because they have no other choice or, more commonly, because the institution requires them ... What is intellectually depressing is not that the AMU failed to produce its much ballyhooed History of Urdu Literature, but that it never bothered to publish a complete - or even partial - edition of its own founder's extraordinary writings, much less to make them a serious part of its Urdu syllabus ... Statistics (are) often invoked to show how very few Muslims got into the administrative services in India in the Fifties and the Sixties; what is not brought out is the small number of Muslim graduates who actually tried for those services in India in those decades ...
. Self-help is best. The Urduwallas will have to take the initiative and find the needed resources themselves. Self-pity and putting blame on others will not get them far. If Muslims can teach their children to vocalise the Qur'an they can also simultaneously teach them to read Urdu ... Where they have to fight against the prejudice of the authorities is in the area of primary education, which should be available to every child in his or her mother tongue. That, unfortunately, has not been the case - particularly in the so-called Hindi belt. There, even the facilities available in 1947 were deliberately destroyed by the official proponents of Hindi. The criminal damage they caused has not been corrected yet. According to R.K. Sharma, Director, NCERT, a state institution of utmost importance in the field of Education, of a total of 90,000 schools in UP, only 400 were Urdu-medium, all at the primary level (i.e. upto grade 5), and 70 per cent of Muslim students never reached the 10t grade. Also, according to Mr. Sharma, "in some schools near the Jama Masjid at Delhi there were Urdu teachers who didn't know Urdu at all. But if the powers-that-be are not fair and just, it is much more important presently for Muslim children to be well educated through whatever language is available than poorly or not at all. That is the only way they can successfully compete with their peers in these radically changing times ... (Source: The Ambiguities of Heritage)