On Urdu Case in Supreme Court 26 August, 2000
You may kindly recall that I had mentioned to you the appeal by the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan against the Allahabad High Court judgement in our favour, on recognition of Urdu as Second Official Language of UP. pending in the Supreme Court. I have repeatedly asked Dr. Khalique Anjum that the Anjuman Taraqqui-e-Urdu Hind should intervene in the case and take it up as the Supreme Court verdict would be of critical importance to status of Urdu not only in UP but in all other. Urdu-concentration States. So far Dr, Anjum has not deemed it fit to accept my suggestion. He had mentioned that the Anjuman Taraqqui-e-Urdu-Uttar Pradesh shall take it up. But it has not. I request you to take up this matter with the ATUH urgently.
Secondly, on continued denial of Urdu Education in UP i.e. teaching of Urdu at school level and use of Urdu as medium of primary instruction for those children whose Mother Tongue is Urdu, the Urdu Movement should file a writ in the Allahabad High Court. I request you also be give due consideration to this proposal. This can be done through your organisation Association of Minority Educational Institutions, UP, Lucknow. I shall be happy to assist in the formulation of the writ.
Introduce Mother Tongue as Compulsory Subject
Shahabuddin to Laloo Prasad Yadav, 7 August, 00
The Government of Bihar has, as you know, decided to introduce the course of study of the Central Board of Secondary Education for the Secondary Examination.
A problem has arises because Central Board of Secondary Education syllabus includes 2 languages only out of a long list of languages. Naturally the two languages would be Hindi and English.
Thus, the minority languages of Bihar which are compulsory under the present scheme, shall be totally left out.
Urdu, Bengali, Oriya, Nepali, Maithili, Munda, Oraon and Santhali are recognised in Bihar at the school level.
The only solution is to modify the CBSE syllabus with the addition of ONE MORE LANGUAGE as Mother Tongue. For linguistic minorities, their Mother Tongue should be compulsory. Hindi-speaking students, whose Mother Tongue is Hindi, should have the option to take Sanskrit or any other MIL, from among those spoken in Bihar.
I request you to consider the suggestion and advise the State Government accordingly.
On Urdu University 12 September, 2000
I have read your editorial "More than a University" regarding the progress of the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (Nation and the World, 1 September, 2000). You have emphasized the long-term contribution that the University shall make in your view, to the economic uplift of the Urdu-speaking population, as 'its social role far exceeds its academic goals'.
Respectfully, I disagree with your criteria: posterity shall judge the University by the contribution it makes to uplift Urdu itself to the level where it can serve as the medium of modern education, not just at the under- graduate level but at the post-graduate level and for higher and professional education. Today, years after its formal establishment, it is still engaged in distance education, a task which could have been easily preferred by the IGNOU itself, simply by making its courses available also in Urdu, apart from Hindi and English. After all Urdu is the only other pan-Indian Language.
Secondly, even after it develops its own campus and, hopefully, affiliates Urdu-medium colleges across the country, it would be managing the education of a very small percentage of the students who speak Urdu or whose Mother Tongue is Urdu. So quantitatively its existence is not going to make much difference to the educational or economic status of the community.
Thirdly, even from a purely economic or, more realistically, employment angle, the University should not be expected to create, statistically speaking, more than a marginal number of additional jobs for its Urdu-knowing products. Opening areas of employment and utilization is beyond the power of any University; perhaps it was not even part of the objective behind establishing the University. So, I would like the MANUU to lay emphasis on the development of Urdu language as a vehicle for the transmission of modern knowledge, specially science and technology. It should not worry about the numbers but it should play the role that no one is prepared to play today. And surely, among million of Urdu-speakers, it can find some Urdu-speakers and Urdu-loving scholars who would devote themselves to this historic task of reforging the links with the historic Osmania experiment and take it forward. That would be its achievement.
