URDU

Views of Gopi Chand Narang on Urdu

I do not agree that Urdu is on the decline in India. Urdu is still very significant and plays a very crucial cultural role, but the problem is that Urdu is a victim of the politicalization of the narrow-minded power plane in the country. Urdu has, through the centuries, stood for secularism, for humanitarianism and has strongly opposed forces of orthodoxy in this country. Be it the poetry of Ghalib or Nazir or any other master it derides the narrow interpretation of religion, ridicules the Mohtasib (censor) or the Mulla (priest) or those who exploit religion for their class gains. Urdu has always been a progressive and forward-looking language of love and peace.

After the Partition it has fallen on bad days its liberal genius has been completely overlooked. If such a language becomes a victim of narrow-mindedness and prejudice it is a national loss. This is one of the missions of my life. We must try to appreciate the true spirit of Urdu literature which manifests the building of bridges between the two major communities of India. If India has to stay as a culturally unified country allowing other languages and ethnicities to have their functional identities, I do hope that some of the misconceptions that surround Urdu today will be dispelled.

Every language with its system of orthography is a single whole. The relation between a language and its script, however arbitrary it may seem, is not so. Especially when a language develops through a particular script for a number of centuries that script becomes an integral part of that lingual system.

Urdu can be written in Devanagiri, it was written in Roman in the days of the Raj. So it is scientifically possible but socio-lingually and culturally it amounts to denying the rights of language to adopt its own script and develop it. In a democratic country like India there are almost two score major languages and each of them has a right to its script. There is no controversy about the script of any other language, so why raise one on Urdu. Many of the scripts have so much affinity to Devanagiri that they are interchangeable. If they can't be forced to change their script and adopt Devanagiri a demand made on Urdu to do so has a fascist motivation lurking behind it.

Since the number of readers who have been trained through Devanagiri is large and they want to read some of the Urdu classics and finest poetry you would see many of the Urdu masters' Diwans and large part of Urdu fiction being made available in Devanagiri script. It enlarges the circle of Urdu readership and at the same time Urdu does not lose its identity. So I have not objection to the forces of the market whereby Urdu literature is produced and published in Devanagiri. It amounts to enrichment of both. This is where the bonds of Urdu and Hindi become stronger.

But if a political demand is made that a particular language should change its script if it has to survive, it is based on the denial of freedom and is anti-democratic.

short-sighted and lacks deeper understanding of the socio- linguistic aspects of how languages function.

The government is responsible in the sense that it is the Assembly in each State which has framed the Official Languages Act, if that Act does not reflect the concern of a bilingual society, if the State is bilingual, if by sheer misplaced national concern, we think that a particular State is homogenized by imposing language In fact what is being done is adoption of totalitarian mannerism. This is where the government comes into amend the Official Languages Act, as it was done in Bihar to give a place of honor, in a bilingual society, to the other language which is spoken with the main language. Then implement the three-language formula honestly. There is nothing wrong in the formula but it has never been implemented honestly to give scope to the Urdu speakers to learn their language. This has resulted in further insecurities and Urdu has been struggling to survive. In many areas schools to accord a rightful place to Urdu but the general picture still id discouraging.

On the other hand, no language stays alive just by government patronage. It is the Urdu speakers who have to see that if Urdu is not taught in schools, then the language has to be taught by private efforts. If people themselves get demoralized and give up their language, the language falls on evil days. Undoubtedly on the one hand it is for the State governments to provide due protection and encouragement to Urdu, on the other it is for the speakers of Urdu to keep using and learning it.

This be a long-drawn process. History has not corrected itself it is we who have to accommodate and adjust. We cannot undo history. We have to live with it. If Hindi has to develop to the full status of a national language, Urdu has to be developed in its own right and to strengthen Hindi.

Our Constitution in Schedule VIII lists a number of languages, now 18 of them, which are usually referred to as the national languages of India. In a plural, multi- lingual society it will not be a single monolithic language which could be called the national language. Of course, Hindi, being close to Sanskrit, is a great storehouse of Indian heritage. it will have all the respect. Nevertheless. India needs associate languages to run parallel to Hindi and not counter to it, functioning alongside with Hindi, as languages of larger communication.

Being a powerful medium of poetry and elegant speech, Urdu has been adopted extensively by Bollywood and the image which has been developed and which does not do justice to Urdu in that Urdu is a language of Mushairas and Qawwalis. This is an image Urdu has to fight against. Urdu has to be given a rightful place as an Indo-Aryan language along with other languages and has to be accepted as a truly national language of the country. I am not yet disheartened.

(Source: The Hindu, 3 March 1996)