URDU

C.P. Bhambri on Urdu Language

The partition of India had many negative consequences for the Pakistani and Indian society. One of the victims of the 'negativism' was Urdu, a purely Indian and extremely creative language. Mohammad Ali Jinnah killed Urdu in East Bengal and weak and opportunistic secular parties neglected Urdu in India. A few important points about the development of any language may be made to situate the neglect of Urdu in Independent India.

1. First, market acts as a push and pull factor for the growth or neglect of a language. Urdu cannot get encouragement from economic transactional market. But it can get great patronage from cultural market of India. The popular Indian Cinema depends a lot on story writers and poets and others who have knowledge of Urdu. But if the pipeline of supply is blocked, there is no prospect of Masoom Raza Rahi's and Naushad's to emerge. And if the audience is not trained in the nuances of language, Qawwali and Ghazal will also die.

2. The Hindu communal forces, on the one hand and, weak, vacillating and opportunist secular forces, on the other, have created an atmosphere for the decline of Urdu ...irrespective of their reasons. Why is Urdu dependent on politics? In a multilingual country, languages have to be legitimized by public opinion and political parties for example the DMK in Tamil Nadu spearheaded the movement for Tamil while in Andhra Pradesh, the Telugu Desam Party has taken over the cause of Telugu. Similarly, in Karnataka, all major political parties have championed the cause of Kannada. Same is the story about Hindi. Urdu received very weak political support in independent India.

3. In Northern India, Urdu has completely vanished due to anti-Urdu conspiracies of the fascist Hindu and chauvinist Hindi forces. There is no arrangement of Urdu teaching at any level in northern Indian states (except in Bihar - Ed.). As a result, three post-independent generations of Muslims in India are devoid of knowledge of Urdu. No doubt, then, that for the third Muslim generation, the problem of Urdu is no problem at all. It is ironical to note that under the category of one modern language in three- language formula, Sanskrit, instead of Urdu, is taught as a Modern Indian language.

4. Hindi and Urdu as natural twins were separated by the politics of religion and backward caste politics of Lohia Socialists in North India. Hindi was appropriated by High Caste Hindus and also the champions of Backward Castes in U.P. and Bihar.

5.No public school has shown any interest in Urdu. The government maintains only a few schools in some states which are catering to the lower middle classes and with very poor infrastructure. The Muslim minority institutions also have very poor academic standards. The result is whatever little teaching of Urdu is undertaken; it is of very poor quality because the Indian elite has abandoned Urdu.

6. Uptil 1989, during the Congress rule, the issue of Urdu did surface occasionally, but after 1989 when the Janata Dal came to power, the issue of Urdu was shelved for ever. Before the 1989 general elections the ruling Congress Government, during its last session in the UP Assembly has approved a bill to make Urdu the second official language of the state, but the Hindu upper caste lobby in the Congress, in consonance with the Nagri Paracharini Sabha, managed to obtain a "Stay" from the Allahabad High Court, and thereby stopped the implementation of this Bill. The case is still pending. Meanwhile neither any political nor any Urdu organisation has ever tried to (have the stay vacated).

(Thus) a conspiracy of factors has worked against Urdu because it was disowned or very weakly accepted by the political class.

A rich and creative language like Urdu has a bleak future unless elite academic institutions make provision for its teaching. The so-called Urdu medium schools can only be a non-starter as promoters of the language because of their overall poverty and under-development. The growth and development of Urdu in India depends solely upon voluntary Muslim organizations, for which they will have to undertake the difficult task of building political pressure. What needs to be done is to begin a fresh struggle for the rights and appropriate status of Urdu. Nevertheless, to achieve a desirable and positive result the so-called Urdu champions who are associated with government and semi-government organizations in short, the pro-establishment Muslims, should be kept at a distance.                                              

 (Statement at New Delhi Seminar, 15 January, 1997)

First of all, I am a woman, then an Indian, then an actress, then a Muslim, an activist, a wife and a daughter. Not necessarily in that order. But post Babari Masjid, identity is being compressed into the narrow confines of religion to the absence of any other aspect of identity and that to me is extremely traumatising.                                                    

- Shabana Azmi, in the Afternoon Despatch and Courier