2007
Partition of tongues
Urdu has a rich tradition among non-Muslims in north India. It is only in recent years that the language is becoming confined to Muslims alone
Hasan Syed Kamaal Delhi
Urdu, a graceful tongue steeped in Indian culture and history, lost its traditional moorings in the country after Independence and was tagged with a particular religious community, the Muslims. Was this deliberate? Or did circumstances dictate the sorry turn of events for this language? The answer lies, perhaps, somewhere in between.
Urdu was never and still isn’t entirely the language of Muslims alone. In Tamil Nadu, the language of Muslims is Tamil. Former president Abdul Kalam, a Tamilian Muslim, neither reads nor writes or speaks a word of Urdu. In Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh as well, most Muslims speak only the local languages of their respective states.
The world of Urdu literature includes many non-Muslim names — novelist Ratan Nath (Sarshar) who is a Kashmiri pundit, poets Raghupati Sahay (Firaq Gorakhpuri) and Balraj Komal, fiction writer Gulshan Nanda, critics Malik Ram and Kali Das Gupta (Raza), short story writers Krishan Chander, Rajendra Singh Bedi, Surendra Prakash, Balraj Menra and Sharwan Kumar Verma to name a few. Some of the best ghazal (Urdu romantic poetry) singers are Jagjit Singh, Bhupinder Singh and Pankaj Udhas, none of them a Muslim.
However, this is only one side of the story. The other side, unfortunately, is not so bright. Most of the names mentioned above belong to a generation born before or around the time of Partition and Independence of the sub-continent. The scenario has changed quickly and significantly since. The generation that came from the partitioned Punjab and North West Frontier (NWF) was ‘Urdu-knowing’, or rather, ‘only Urdu-knowing.’ To cater to it, Urdu newspapers like Aryavrat, Milap and Pratap were published from Jalandhar and Delhi. The publishers and editors were Hindus. But the next generation of these migrants opted for Punjabi with the Gurumukhi script, if they were Sikhs who had settled down in the Indian side of Punjab, and Hindi, if they were Hindus. Consequently, the children of many Urdu writers and poets, including those mentioned above, can neither read nor write Urdu. The reason for this circumstance is not any sort of bias or prejudice but the simple fact that Urdu is no more a good prospect for employment.
Why did Urdu decline in the north Indian states? For some time, it ruled the roost in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It also flourished in strong pockets like Bhopal and Indore in Madhya Pradesh, and Jaipur, Tonk and Udaipur in Rajasthan. The story in these states was slightly different and the Congress, even before Independence, had a very strong role to play in the demise of Urdu here. Congressmen like Madan Mohan Malviya, Govind Ballabh Pant and Dr Sampurnanand were dead against Urdu. In their opinion, Urdu was responsible for the partition of the country. They propagated their point of view with a vengeance. Even the socialist movement of Ram Manohar Lohia, which was apparently opposed only to English, disapproved of Urdu.
These anti-Urdu Hindus forgot that the largest treasure of Arya Samaj literature had been written in Urdu before the Partition. They also ignored the fact that in the early 20th century, a Hindu from Lucknow, Munshi Naval Kishore, had started a printing press in Lucknow to publish the 18 Puranas and the Mahabharata in Urdu. Or perhaps they just thought that Hindi would not grow and find its rightful place in national life if Urdu was allowed to flourish.
Whatever the reasons, the fact was that the unjustified interpretation of the ‘three language formula’ proved to be the last nail in Urdu’s coffin as far as UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were concerned. This formula was adopted on the insistence of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. The idea was that children all over the country would learn English, the national language Hindi, and their mother tongue. If the mother tongue was Hindi, they would choose another language prescribed as a national language in the 18th schedule of the Indian Constitution. After the language riots in the southern states that protested having Hindi ‘imposed’ on them, the ‘three-language formula’ was changed to teaching English, the mother tongue and the language of the state in which the student resided.
In the northern Hindi-speaking states, this formula was twisted further by the ‘right-wing’ in the Congress governments. Instead of allowing the teaching of Urdu to those whose mother tongue was Urdu, Sanskrit was introduced as the third language for all and sundry. As a result, except for those schools and colleges that were run by Muslim trusts and orphanages (which were very small in number), all other schools and colleges closed down Urdu classes and departments. It became difficult for even Muslim students, let alone non-Muslims, to learn Urdu in these institutions. Urdu was thus confined to Muslim schools and madrassas.
Astonishing as this may sound, despite past and current roadblocks littering its path, it cannot be denied that Urdu is growing in India even today and has more readers than ever before. The most visible change in its growth and spread is that the language has shifted its citadel from north India to the south and west of the country. Maharashtra, in particular, provides the best environment for the language today. When I came to Mumbai to join Urdu Blitz as a sub-editor, the two prominent Urdu dailies of the city Inquilab and Urdu Times had a combined circulation of 25,000 to 30,000 copies. Today, the city has four prominent Urdu dailies, and their combined circulation is greater than 1,50,000 copies, which is more than that of the Hindi dailies in the city.
Parts of Maharashtra that never had Urdu medium schools now have many. A student who made it to the merit list of the IAS this year received his entire education in the Urdu medium. Three years ago, a boy from an Urdu-medium school in Sholapur, Tanveer Muniar, topped the list in the SSC exam in Maharashtra.
Similar stories have emerged from Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, and to some extent Tamil Nadu also. There are many doctors and engineers in these states who have received their education through the Urdu medium. It is noteworthy that in states where Urdu is not perceived as a threat to the local language, there is no resistance to it. After the reinstatement of the state language as compulsory learning, Marathi, Telugu and Kannada are not threatened by Urdu and there is no hindrance to its being taught as the mother tongue to those students, mostly Muslims, who use it at home.
Even Bihar has started opening up in favour of Urdu. When Lalu Prasad Yadav became chief minister of Bihar, Urdu was allowed as one of the languages to be used for the Bihar Public Service Commission exams. Hence, some relationship was established between employment and Urdu, making a big difference for the growth of the language in Bihar. The same was not done by Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government in UP.
However, it is unfortunate that today it is Muslims alone in all these states who are learning Urdu. It was former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who, while giving an interview to a Hindi weekly Dharam Yug in 1967, had said that Urdu is a language spoken by a few Muslims in north India. At that time, it was not correct to say so; but sadly enough, today, it is.
The writer is a lyricist and former editor of Urdu Blitz