LAHORE:
“I think that Urdu can only flourish in Pakistan. Its future in India seems bleak,” Dr Nasir Abbas Nayyer said at the third session of the Second International Urdu Conference on Sunday.
The theme for the session was Urdu in India. Writer Intizar Hussain presided over the session. The panelists included Dr Shamim Hanafi, Zubair Rizvi from India, Asghar Nadeem Syed and Dr Nayyer. The session was moderated by Aliya Shah. Nearly 200 people attended the session.
Dr Nayyer opened his talk by discussing the history of languages in India and the position of Urdu among them. He said the Indian government had deliberately lowered the status of Urdu after partition. There was active propaganda against the language, he said, Urdu had been removed from the school curricula and even Muslims had to study Hindi instead. “There aren’t many who can read or write Urdu in India,” said Dr Nayyer.
“We need to examine the role of major institutions in India, if we are to analyse the state of Urdu there,” Syed said. Bollywood has played a major role in sidelining Urdu under a government strategy, he said, Urdu enjoyed presence in Indian media till the 1980s. Syed said several Urdu writers and poets including Kaifi Azmi, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Sahir Ludhianvi, Saadat Hassan Manto, Javed Akhtar and Gulzar had contributed to Indian cinema…now called the Hindi film industry. He said that students who studied Urdu in Indian universities became researchers and critics, but very few of them opted to become writers or poets. “The future of Urdu in India is not that gloomy,” he said, “Its cinema still borrows heavily from it.”
Dr Rizvi, a script writer and researcher from India, said that Hindi was a ‘link language’ and the Indian government was justified in labelling it that way. “Urdu has its own status that cannot be diminished by any other language,” he said. Most kathak dancers and classical singers only performed on Urdu poetry. “Urdu has blended with several arts and no one, not even the Indian government, can take it out from there,” he said.
Dr Hanafi said, “The state of Urdu in India is not deplorable. However, whenever I think of Urdu I think of Pakistan.” He said that Pandit Nehru, who was criticised for propaganda against Urdu in fact, loved the language and would call it his mother tongue. “His wedding card was in Urdu. There were political reasons for declaring Hindi as the official language along with English, not enmity,” said Hanafi.
He said many rich languages were spoken and written in India. Urdu’s status as a language of the court had dealt it damage. “Languages do not flourish through the government’s supervision. Its speakers and writers make them progress,” he said.
Hanafi said that one of the reasons why Urdu failed to flourish among all classes and communities in India was the mistreatment of non-Muslim Urdu writers. “Muslims were responsible for the demise of Urdu in India and they are the ones who must fix it now,” he said, “The language needs all the help it can get to regain its vigour.”
Intezar Hussain concluded by seconding Hanafi’s statements and said, “All that had to be said has been said. Whatever I can add to it would not be of much value.”
India: victim of Hindu nationalism & Muslim separatism - i
The situation is that while written Urdu has declined in India, globally it has touched new heights, not only to become the official language and the lingua franca in multi-language Pakistan but gone beyond the borders of the Subcontinent to become the most recognized Indian language in the Gulf and even in the UK. In addition, it has developed new bases in other English-speaking countries like USA, Canada and Australia where Urdu-speaking communities and generally people of Indian and Pakistani origin have settled down.
By Syed Shahabuddin, The Milli Gazette
Published Online: May 13, 2011
Print Issue: 1-15 April 2011
The sad state of Urdu in independent India, particularly its decline in the field of education, administration & information, and consequent impact on the Urdu- speaking community is largely attributable to the policies adopted by the Centre and various Hindi-speaking states after Hindi was promulgated as the Official Language of the Union in 1950. A review of the situation of Urdu in 12 states with large concentration of Urdu speaking population shows that the position of Urdu in the southern states of Maharashtra, AP and Karnataka is much better than its position in the northern Hindi-speaking region namely UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarkhand, MP, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi. In the Hindi-speaking region Hindi and Urdu continue to face each other, although Urdu has given up all its pretension of being the ‘lingua franca of the Sub-continent,’ and the Urdu speaking community in the country has willy-nilly accepted the superior status of Hindi (‘the elder sister’), because it is now the official language of 9 states in North India which together account for about 80%, of the Hindi speaking population of the country.
According to the Census 2001 Hindi has been declared the mother tongue by more than 450 million people, which is much higher than the second highest linguistic population of 83.4 m. in the case of Bengali. Urdu is the 6th most spoken language in the country. The critical problem for Urdu lies in the fact that unlike Hindi, it is not the mother tongue of the majority of the people of any state. In fact, of all the original Schedule 8 Languages, Sindhi and Urdu are the only languages, which are ‘homeless’ as they are not the principal language of any state. In the South it continues to compete with Hindi even numerically, but Hindi has the advantage of being taught as the official language of the Union which is expected to take the place of English as the link language in due course. In these states Marathi, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil & Malayalam are the principal languages of the state; but Urdu is widely understood & spoken and taught at the school level. In fact the average South Indian does not and cannot differentiate between spoken Urdu and spoken Hindi. He is more concerned with the spoken language, which comes alive on the electronic media and in the so-called ‘Hindi’ films. Many of them identify this spoken language as Urdu or Hindustani and do not have the same inclination as in the north to Sanskritise it.
In the North, for more than 250 years Urdu has been facing, the hostility and constant threat of assimilation by Hindi under the impact of Hindu resurgence. This threat has increased many folds since independence. After Partition Urdu was assumed to have ‘migrated’ to Pakistan and its use was steadily limited to the Muslim community. Thus, since Partition Urdu faces a hostile political environment in north India. Any other language would have normally succumbed to the pressure against it as a distinct language but Urdu has shown great resilience and withstood the politically-motivated rejection.
The situation is that while written Urdu has declined in India, globally it has touched new heights, not only to become the official language and the
lingua franca in multi-language Pakistan but gone beyond the borders of the Sub-continent to become the most recognized Indian language in the Gulf and even in the UK. In addition, it has developed new bases in other English speaking countries like USA, Canada and Australia where Urdu speaking communities and generally people of Indian and Pakistani origin have settled down.
Myths about Urdu
Not surprisingly, many myths have been floated about it. It is asserted that Urdu is nothing more than a ‘style’ of Hindi. Even a liberal and secular intellectual like Jawaharlal Nehru, who made his public speeches in Urdu and declared Urdu as his mother tongue shared this untenable myth in one of his letters to the Chief Ministers. Urdu is a distinct Language, it is not a dialect nor a style of another language; it has a rich literature all its very own.
Another myth, to which even Gandhiji succumbed, propagated against Urdu was that Urdu is written ‘in the script of the Qur’an’. The fact is that Urdu is neither written in the Arabic nor in the Persian script. It has a script of its own and the Urdu script is phonetically much more comprehensive than either. It represents sounds which are peculiar to Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic, and also it has compound alphabets.
Until recently, the Urdu-speaking community itself continued to identify Urdu with the Muslims while at the same time, claiming that Urdu had a wider reach and was more entitled to be the national language or the lingua franca of the country. Urdu is neither the language of all Muslims of the sub-continent nor only of the Muslim, though increasingly, through voluntary dissociation of the Hindus from written Urdu and its use in madrasa instruction and in religious discourse, Urdu has indeed become the language of Muslim Indians for all practical purposes. An effort was made in 1937 in some states like UP and Bihar, with an objective to bring Hindus and Muslims together, to introduce both Hindi and Urdu as compulsory languages in schools so that every child who learnt Hindi as his mother tongue also learnt Urdu and vice versa. In fact, at the level of common speech Hindi and Urdu students had to learn only two scripts. This is what led Gandhi and Zakir Hussain to formulate the scheme for a common language, but by then the die had been cast. In his speech in Lahore in 1940, Jinnah identified Urdu with the Muslims of the Sub-continent and the demand for Partition. After Partition Urdu became the official language of Pakistan which was a key factor in the later secession of East Pakistan to form Bangladesh. In fact, one of the main grievances of the Bengali speaking Pakistanis was that Urdu was imposed on them. In India Urdu has paid the price of Partition. In Pakistan it has paid the price of imposition.
History of Urdu-Hindi Confrontation:
Historically speaking while both Urdu and Hindi share common roots in Khari Boli and Brij Bhasha spoken in Western UP, literature in the Devanagri script appeared much later than in Urdu. In early 19th century its ‘manufacture’ was sponsored by the East India Company through the Fort William College which was established in Kolkata to train its employees and administrators to facilitate contact with the rural masses. Words of Arabic and Persian origin in Urdu books were substituted by words of Sanskrit origin and Urdu books were rewritten in the Devanagri script. By that time Urdu had also reached its peak as a language of poetry and Hindi was not in a position to offer anything comparable. Thus for many years Urdu remained the language of culture, in north India from Dhaka to Ahmedabad and touched Lahore in the north and Hyderabad in the South; irrespective of their religious affiliation, the elite used Urdu and nothing but Urdu.
By early 19th Century the British had overcome all political resistance in north India and the local potentates had become their tributaries. The British defeated the Marathas in 1804 and entered Delhi, appointed a Resident who was the virtual ruler of Delhi and functionally much more powerful than the Moghul Emperor, who was virtually confined, to the Red Fort with the villages of Palam and Mehrauli as his farthest jurisdiction-’Alamdari-e-Shah Alam, Uz Dilli ta Palam’. The ‘Emperor’ lived on British pension, which was technically in lieu of the revenue collected by the East India Company under the imperial mandate.
In order to bring the alien administration closer to the people as well as to cut at the roots of the residual cultural influence of the Moghul Empire, the British first decided to replace Persian by Urdu in Persian script in offices and courts. It was the time when the Holy Quran was also translated from Persian to Urdu and many works of theology were composed in Urdu including the textbooks commonly used in Madrasas for instruction in theology as well as secular subjects.
Then arose a divisive movement, majoritarian in spirit, that Urdu in the Persian script was not intelligible to a large majority of the people and, therefore, Hindi in Devanagri script should have the same status as Urdu in Persian script. What shocked Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was that one of his old friends Babu Shiv Prasad of Varanasi became a leader of this movement and submitted a memorandum to the Lt. Governor of North Western Province of Agra and Oudh in 1868. This memorandum ended with the prayer that just as the government had thrown out the Persian language, similarly it should now throw out the Persian script. In 1893, the Nagri Pracharni Sabha was established in Varanasi to carry on the campaign for the introduction of Devanagri script. It was supported by Hindu Rajas and nobles apart from personalities like Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya. In November 1895 in Varanasi and again in March 1898 in Allahabad this Sabha submitted memoranda to the then Lt. Governor. The Sabha succeeded in its objectives and the Lt. Governor issued a directive which granted equal status to Hindi in Devnagri script in government offices and courts. The Muslims and the Urdu-speaking elite made a token protest but they were silenced when the Governor threatened to cut off government aid to the MAO College, Aligarh. What is important for us is to remember the words of Christopher King on the real purpose of the Hindi movement; to differentiate Hindi from Urdu and to make Hindi a symbol of culture & medium of education & administration. Hindi movement formed part of a much broader process which fashioned communal awareness in pre-Independence India. The transformation of one linguistic group into two communities and nationalities culminated in the birth of Pakistan.
This is what Sir Syed Ahmad Khan had anticipated and he had expressed his views in a letter to Nawab Mohsinul Mulk on 29 April, 1870. He said’ I am sad and concerned that the movement launched by Babu Shiv Prasad has inspired the Hindus to replace the Urdu language in Persian script which is regarded as a sign of Muslims. This implies that now there cannot be unity between the Hindus and the Muslims’.
We can conclude that, the Hindi movement deliberately tried to widen the gulf between the Hindus and the Muslims while the protagonists of Urdu were pleading the case of Urdu as a symbol of common nationhood. The Hindi movement in every way tried to encourage the Hindus to break off any attachment to Urdu, while the Urdu movement was trying for a synthesis. In fact, again to quote Christopher King, a divide was created so that one could no longer advocate the cause of Urdu & Hindi at the same time. The process culminated in ‘Jap Niranter Ek Zaban, Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan’ as slogan ‘The slogan Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan which indeed left no room for non-Hindi speakers and non-Hindus in Hindustan. Thus the seeds were sown for dividing the nation through the cultural stream which through centuries of common endeavour had produced a common language (Urdu) and enriched a common culture with a unique mode of artistic expression in Ghazal, Hindustani music and miniature paintings.
In 1906, the All India Muslim League, established that year counted Urdu as the undivided heritage of the Muslims. It was therefore, a pointer in favour of the political position which developed as the country moved towards independence. In 1937, after the first elected government was formed in various provinces, Gandhiji tried for a compromise calling for the adoption of Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani as the national language of the country to be written in both Devanagri and Persian scripts.
Minimal Aspirations of Urdu In Post-Independence-India
With the defection of the Hindu elite, the Muslims were left with the responsibility of nurturing Urdu. With a few exceptions on both sides, the cultural divide had widened and while the Freedom Movement tried to bring about Hindu-Muslim unity, the cultural gulf could not be bridged. The Muslim elite almost gave up the struggle and owned Urdu as their language. In schools the number of Hindu children declaring Urdu as their mother tongue slowly came down to zero.
As mentioned earlier, Urdu has recognized the change of circumstances and accepted the dominance and superior status of Hindi. Since 1950 the Urdu community has been demanding only that Urdu as a mother tongue be the medium of instruction at the primary for Urdu-speaking children and that at the secondary level it be taught as the first language under the Three Language Formula to those who declare Urdu as their Mother Tongue, with the provision that all such children also learn Hindi in the Hindi-speaking states as the compulsory Second Language and in other states, in the same manner, the Principal Languages of those states.
However, time and again Urdu has been rebuffed even in respect of the constitutional & legal demand. Communal politics, which has cast its shadow on the mindset even in a secular state, is not prepared to accept even this minimal demand. So, Urdu stands exiled totally from UP which, even today has the largest Urdu- speaking community (25 %) in the country. This has meant that in every successive generation the percentage of Urdu-knowing people is going down. In the first stage, Urdu-speaking children were denied facilities through numerical jugglery and administrative tricks. But they continued to use Urdu because they learnt to speak it at home and learnt to write it from private tutors. The second stage was reached when Urdu-speaking children began using with greater frequency Hindi equivalents of common Urdu words. The third stage is now with us, spelling Urdu incorrectly in writing, while mispronouncing Urdu words which are in common use. Ghaziabad became Gajiabad while Akash Vani invites listeners to ‘Galib ki Gajal Begum Akhtar ki jabani.’
Some experts assume that the spirit of a language is in its spoken form and that words when they travel from one language to another get deformed and suffer change in meaning and pronunciation; they do not see that Urdu will survive in the land of its birth, retaining both its vocabulary and its pronunciation. They look upon Urdu as a language which has always been progressive and generous in accepting words from other languages. No doubt, this is how Urdu grew and how it retains its innate vitality but why should common words which are understood at every level be distorted or replaced by unfamiliar Sanskrit equivalents till they become common currency?
To be continued in the next issue
This article appeared in The Milli Gazette print issue of
1-15 April 2011 on page no. 12
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A few years back I had the opportunity to meet the renowned poet Javed Akhtar, who made a very interesting comment. He said that ‘Zabaan aur libaas, yeh region ke hotey hain, religion ke nahi’ which means that language and clothing belong to a region, and not to a religion. Hold on to this thought for a moment, and we’ll return to it multiple times in this article.
So what is Urdu? As soon as one says Urdu, the first thing that comes to an average Indian’s mind is ‘the language of the Muslims’. Let us understand how this language came into being, and why this tag had been attached to it. When the Mughals came to India (Hindustan as they called it), they brought their religion and culture along. The language that they originally brought with them was called Chagatai, which is a Turkic language. Chagtai is now an extinct language which was spoken by Chagatai Turks and Tatars (of Mongol lineage). Gradually, with more influence of Persia, Farsi replaced Chagatai. As cultures met, a new culture was being formed in the Indo-Persian belt (from present day south-east Afghanistan to central India). They never bought Urdu along with them.
Farsi remained the major language of the courts and the rulers. On the ground though, a new language called Urdu was born, as result of Farsi’s continuous intermingling with Hindi and other ‘Sanskritized’ languages. The major area where this new language was being spoken was the area between Delhi and Lucknow. Till around 1830, Punjab, Sindh and other frontier areas (most of which today is the state of Pakistan) were not exposed to Urdu. Only after the British gained control of Punjab and NWFP, did Urdu slowly move there and relegated Farsi as a classical languages, like Sanskrit. Apart from literary usage, the language spoken by the people of north and central India was a mixture of Hindi and Urdu called Hindustani. Very few people actually spoke (or speak) pure Hindi, or pure Urdu; and these forms are usually reserved for literary purposes and not communication as such.
Urdu has words from Farsi, Arabic, Turkish, and Sanskrit, which clearly indicates that it is not a pure language itself. Urdu grammar is based on Hindi or Sanskrit where as most words are borrowed from Farsi. Urdu is written in a slightly modified version of the Nastaliq script, which is the Perso-Arabic script. Hindi on the other hand is written using the Devnagiri script. The Urdu speakers traditionally were people who belonged to the very ‘Mughal’ regions of India, like Delhi, United Provinces, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab. Traditionally the Muslim peoples from these regions spoke a more ‘Urduized’ version of Hindustani, where as the Hindus spoke a more ‘Hindized’ version of it. In Punjab and Kashmir, it was the official language, and the second language of the people encompassing Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Because Urdu drew most of its vocabulary from Farsi, it was slowly identified as a Muslim language, which brings us back to Javed Akhtar’s remark.
After the partition of India, millions of Urdu speaking Muslims moved from central and north India into Pakistan, where as millions of Urdu speaking Punjabis moved to India. But because Urdu was ‘the language of Muslims’, it suddenly became Pakistan’s language. For many years, the people of Pakistan (indigenous Pathans, Balochis and even Punjabis!) did not even accept Urdu as their national language, because the cultures of Punjab and Sindh were so strong that the original people of those regions could not tolerate change being introduced by migrants from central India. In India, there was a systematic move towards Hindi. Hindustani (which till today is the main language of India) failed to be established as a recognized formal language. Even Mahatma Gandhi tried to make Hindustani a formal language, because in a way it signified the amalgamation of the Hindu and Muslim (Mughal) culture.
The nation was named Bharat instead of Hindustan and though some tokenism is still followed to promote Urdu, the nation as a whole had decided to move away from it and embrace Hindi, a language which no one really spoke (or speaks). It is important to note that throughout this whole turmoil, regions south of Madhya Pradesh and East of Bihar had nothing to do with this language, even though many had (and still have) huge Muslim populations (like Kerala or Bengal). A good example of this paradigm shift towards Hindi is our national anthem, “Jana Gana Mana” the famous Sanskritized-Hindi song by Rabindranath Tagore. The national anthem of a nation is supposed to exhilarate the masses, the way our ‘real’ anthem ‘Saare Jahan se acha Hindustan humara’ does. In ‘Jana Gana Mana’ we have a great poem which is not understood by 90% of the population of the country. Ask yourself if you understand each line of our national anthem; even though I am interested in languages, I don’t. But because ‘Saare jahan se acha’ was written by Allama Iqbal and was in Urdu, it could not be accepted as our anthem. Interestingly, till date, it remains the official marching tune of the Indian Army.
Another glaring example that highlights my argument that Urdu has nothing to do with ‘Islam’ as such is the story of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan. Even though the country was a Muslim country, it was (and is) a Bengali speaking nation. When it was East Pakistan, imagine the plight of the people, who had to listen to their Prime Minister’s address from Lahore in a language (Urdu) which they could not understand. West Pakistan sought to impose their culture and language upon these people, which was met with resistance. This, along with several other factors became one of the major reasons for their secession from Pakistan. Urdu was then systematically removed from Punjab, which perhaps had one of the richest Urdu and Farsi cultures in India. The folk, literature, and the poetry of Punjab had been in Urdu and Farsi for hundreds of years. The difference is so glaring today, that in Amritsar, nothing is written in Urdu but 60 km away in Lahore, everything is in Urdu; and the joke is that essentially both peoples speak the same Punjabi and Urdu dialects.
The Muslims who chose to stay back in India (referring again to only central and northern India) were looked at as remnants of the partitions; and as noted earlier, due to the shift towards Hindi in Bharat, the whole notion of Urdu being ‘their’ language gained even more momentum. This created a barrier which has resulted in many further complications between Hindus and Muslims. My father and his entire family spoke only Urdu, Punjabi and Farsi. In fact, my grandfather, after migrating to India from Multan, had to learn Hindi to continue serving with the Indian government! Urdu slowly became the identity of the Indian Muslim. This was a fatal mistake because it further alienated the Indian Muslim from mainstream India; even though the Hindu and the Muslim of Delhi spoke the same language, which was neither Hindi nor Urdu, but was Hindustani! From being the language of the courts and governments, Urdu became an optional subject in schools. If tomorrow I want my son or daughter to study Urdu as a subject, I will have to send him/her to a Urdu medium school, where only children of poor or conservative Muslims study.
Urdu has been the language of poetry and art. Out of the many languages I listen to and try to speak, I have never come across a language which is as beautiful as Urdu. But if I speak, read and write in Urdu, people ask me if I am a Muslim!? But if a Muslim from Maharashtra speaks Urdu, that is logical as it is ‘their’ language. See the irony? The Urdu speaking Hindus from Punjab and further west lost their identity. Their clothes, their language and much more was taken away from them. Suddenly they are supposed to be Hindi speakers, even though hardly anyone actually speaks Hindi in India. The language of the masses remains Hindustani. The language of Indian movies, or mainstream media is also Hindustani. For my Indian readers, consider this:
1. English: The food was very tasty; can I get some water?
2. Hindustani/Urdu: Khana bohat lazeez tha; kya thoda paani milega?
3. Hindi: Bhojan adhikh swadhisht tha; krupaya thoda jal denge?
Look at the Hindi sentence. I personally don’t know a single Indian who would say this sentence. So I hope the fact that the spoken language in India is NOT Hindi is established by now. I would also want to add here that Hindi always was and still is the language of the Brahmins (especially of UP and Bihar) where as Urdu was the language of the market; of commerce. Urdu has long been recognized as one of the sweetest languages on earth. It has a long history of poetry, and is also known for its typically ‘respect giving’ vocabulary. For hundreds of years, great poets like Mirza Ghalib, Mir Taqi Mir, Allama Iqbal, Kaifi Azmi, and non-Muslims like Gulzar, Neeraj, Mahendra Singh Bedi amongst others have produced great pieces of poetry. If I were to list more names, one would notice that the overwhelming majority of these people were from the Delhi-UP belt or from Punjab. This reiterates the point that Javed Akhtar had made to me.
Today, the newer generation of Punjabis (most notably Khatris) don’t even speak proper Punjabi, let alone Urdu. In my family, I am the only person in my generation who can read, write and speak Urdu. The Hindus of Kashmir moved out from the valley and lost touch with their languages, Kashmiri and Urdu. The Hindus of UP and Bihar speak a lot of Urdu but call it Hindi without realizing that it is actually Hindustani/Urdu. The Bollywood industry, which virtually migrated from Lahore (note the amount of Punjabis in it) still uses Urdu, Hindustani and occasionally Punjabi as its major languages. But it is known as the Hindi film industry. If it is the Hindi film industry, then why do people across Pakistan watch our movies so passionately. A good example of a Urdu and Punjabi film was the blockbuster, Veer Zaara.
Urdu has been a victim of marginalization. First it got tagged as the ‘Muslim’s’ language. Now it is tagged as Pakistan’s language! So much so that Manpreet Singh Badal (a Sikh politician and exponent of Urdu from Punjab), who speaks a very Urduized version of Punjabi was ridiculed for his vocabulary by some people and the poor guy is trying to explain to them that this is my language! Urdu or Hindi are anyway not the languages of choice for the elite, it is English. The Urdu-Muslim relation has become so strong (which has contributed to its demise) that in central Maharashtra (who have nothing to do with Urdu!), Muslim children go to Urdu schools! But people find this logical, but I as a first generation Punjabi am not supposed to be an Urdu speaker! I wear a Salwar Kameez and speak Urdu (remember Javed Akhtar’s point about language and clothing), my friends ask me if I have embraced Islam! But half the women of this country wear Salwar Kameez and that is logical! The Punjabis, Sindhis and Kashmiris have paid a very high price as a result of this political mariginalization. Sindhi language is also written in the Nastaliq script (like Urdu), but because the Sindhi kids today in Bombay never studied Urdu, they cannot even read Sindhi! The same is the case with Punjabi; thank the Sikhs for inventing the Gurmukhi script, because even Punjabi (as my family knows it) was written in the Shahmukhi (Nastaliq) script.
I understand why this has happened. Sanskrit has been an ancient Indian language, and reflects our rich literary heritage. But it is not the language which is spoken, and it never was in the last 600 years. It is the language of the Vedas and its dialects are the languages that have been used in other Hindu scriptures. And as a matter of fact, the government does not promote the real Sanskrit as a language anyway.
All I know is that one of the most beautiful languages of India, which still is spoken by millions of Indians, is dying a slow death. If we do not promote Urdu as one of our major languages, and NOT a ‘minority’ language, it will die. In a couple of generations, there will be no one who can read and write it, and no one who will be interested in its nuances. A very well written poem by Manzar Bhopali beautifully elicits the pain suffered by Urdu in the last 50 years (the poem uses Roman script with an attempt to standarize Urdu pronunciations using Roman):
zabaan-e-hind hai urduu to maathe kii shikan kyuu.N hai
vatan me.n be-vatan kyuu.N hai
[shikan = frown]
merii mazaluum urduu terii saa.Nso.n me.n ghuTan kyuu.N hai
teraa lahajaa mahakataa hai to lafzo.n me.n thakan kyuu.N hai
agar tuu phuul hai to phuul me.n itanii chubhan kyuu.N hai
vatan me.n be-vatan kyuu.N hai
[mazaluum = oppressed; ghuTan = suffocation]
[lahajaa = style/manner; thakan = fatigue]
ye naanak kii ye Khusro kii dayaa shankar kii bolii hai
ye diivaalii ye baisaakhii ye iid-ul-fitr holii hai
magar ye dil kii dha.Dakan aaj kal dil kii jalan kyuu.N hai
vatan me.n be-vatan kyuu.N hai
ye naazo.n se palii thii miir ke Gaalib ke aa.Ngan me.n
jo suuraj ban ke chamakii thii kabhii mahalo.n ke daaman me.n
vo shah-zaadii zabaano.n kii yahaa.N be-anjuman kyuu.N hai
vatan me.n be-vatan kyuu.N hai
[be-anjuman = without a gathering/assembly (alone)]
muhabbat kaa sabhii elaan kar jaate hai.n mahafil me.n
ke is ke vaaste jazbaa hai ham-dardii kaa har dil me.n
magar haq maa.Ngane ke vaqt ye begaanaapan kyuu.N hai
vatan me.n be-vatan kyuu.N hai
[elaan = proclaimation; jazbaa = feeling; ham-dardii = sympathy]
[begaanaapan = indifference/aloofness]
ye doshiizaa jo baazaaro.n se iThalaatii guzaratii thii
labo.n kii naazukii jis kii gulaabo.n sii bikharatii thii
jo tahaziibo.n kii sar kii o.Dhanii thii ab kafan kyuu.N hai
vatan me.n be-vatan kyuu.N hai
[doshiizaa = young girl; naazukii = delicacy; tahaziib = culture/etiquette]
[o.Dhanii = veil; kafan = shroud]
muhabbat kaa agar daavaa hai to is ko bachaao tum
jo vaadaa kal kiyaa thaa aaj vo vaadaa nibhaao tum
agar tum raam ho to phir ye raavan kaa chalan kyuu.N hai
vatan me.n be-vatan kyuu.N hai
So the poem says that if Urdu is the language of India, then why is it the frown on India’s face…why is it suffocating in its own country. All I wish for is that youngsters from north and central India recognize this as their language irrespective of their religion. I can assure you that it is not difficult to learn because any one from these regions already speaks it more than Hindi, and that the beauty that it offers appeals even to the modern mind. Do post your comments on this subject especially if you are from the areas that I have identified as the Urdu speaking belt.
