Urdu in India: victim of Hindu nationalism & Muslim separatis; PART -1

By Syed Shahabuddin, The Milli Gazette

Published Online: May 13, 2011

Print Issue: 1-15 April 2011

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.

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.