Prof Shamsul Islam |
THERE can be no two opinions that Urdu, born and brought up exclusively in India, was willfully guillotined by the Congress rulers most of whom were motivated by the Hindu high caste imagery. These leaders who came to rule India after Independence were committed to imposing Sankritised Hindi as the national language and worked overtime to cleanse India of Urdu. How deeply entrenched was the anti-Urdu vision can be known by the attitude of Lala Lajpat Rai who despite not being familiar with the Hindi varnmala or alphabets was one of the most prominent votaries of the slogan, ”Hindi-Hindu-Hindusthan”.
In this context, another important example was how Bombay films with mainly Urdu dialogues and songs were given censure board clearance as Hindi films only. The lobby inimical to Urdu even suggested a change of script of Urdu to Devnagri from Nastaʿlīq script. There were, of course, exceptions like MK Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru who resisted such attempts but half-heartedly. Gandhi, conscious of the inimical attitude of the Congress leaders towards Urdu, gave it a new nomenclature; Hindustani. It was an attempt to further Indianise an already Indian language! With this objective, he established Hindustani Academy at Allahabad (now Prayagraj) which still exists in a pathetic condition.
Those who declare Urdu as an anti-national language due to hatred towards the composite character of India, remain blind to the great role Urdu literature played in the glorious anti-colonial freedom struggle. After our defeat in 1857 more than 100 leading Urdu journalists, poets, authors and calligraphers were hanged in Delhi alone. The National Archives of India has published the proscribed literature by the British rulers of different Indian languages. Lovers of Urdu should be proud of the fact that in the prose section of the proscribed literature, 68 Urdu literary pieces appear second to Hindi’s 138. Likewise, in the poetry section 58 Urdu poems were banned, second to Hindi’s 264. The slogan in Urdu Inquilab Zindabad was a rallying call for the Indian freedom fighters which was coined by Maulana Hasrat Mohani and popularised by Bhagat Singh and his comrades.
But it is also true that Urdu which was born on the streets (known as Lashkari, in fact, Urdu derived its name from the Turkic word ordu which meant army) with included rich vocabulary of Persian, Arabic, Haryanvi, Avdhi, Braj, Bhojpuri, Bundeli etc. However, after 1857 when the British rulers adopted divide-n-rule as their main policy, this all-inclusive language was split into Hindu and Muslim variants. The high-caste Muslim elite and the clergy subservient to the British were patronised by the latter to cleanse Urdu of local Indian influences, replacing it with Arabic and Persian idioms. Thus, Urdu was Arabised and Urdu spoken by common Muslims was decried as Bihari Urdu; a derogatory term. The North India Urdu elite refused to accord Urdu which developed in the South of India an equal status, branding it as Dakhini Urdu. It was not a one-way process. The Brahmins were appointed to cleanse khadi boli or Hindustani spoken by common Hindus of Persian and Arabic idioms. Thus, the same language was Sankritised/Hinduised.
The sad reality is that a language that was truly MADE IN INDIA was exiled!
Disputed Language in Pakistan
It is interesting to note that if Urdu was incapacitated in India in a planned manner by the State it became a disputed language even in Pakistan. Urdu was accorded the status of official language with English as the second one in 1948. The decision to make Urdu the first official language drew instant strong protests. The genesis of the protest was not baseless. Pakistan was constituted of regions namely, Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan, NWFP and Bengal where Urdu was not spoken. The declaration of Urdu as the official language was taken as an imposition by the sections of Pakistanis who spoke Bengali, Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, and Saraiki (colloquially known as Multani). In fact, at the time of the formation of Pakistan, more than 30% of the population spoke Bengali in Pakistan. These non-Urdu Pakistanis constituted more than a majority.
It is important to note that the movement for the liberation of Bangladesh started with the Language Movement in 1948 itself. It began when almost the whole of East Pakistan protested against the deletion of Bengali text from the State currency and stamps. This protest aggravated into Bengali versus Urdu, reached a climax on 21 February 1952 when Pakistani armed forces fired upon the protesting students and civilians in which countless agitators were killed and maimed. It was the resurgence of Bengali national identity which culminated in the bloody war of liberation.
The moral of the story is that languages are used as tools by rulers in their sectarian polarising game. The examples of Jinnah who did not know the alphabet of Urdu and Lajpat Rai who was not familiar with the Hindi alphabets are examples of this sad reality. Urdu is a living example of this tragedy. Those who are writing the obituary of Urdu miss one important point, that is, that languages do not survive due to patronage of the State nor die due to opposition of the State. It is to be noted that though in Pakistan there has been no danger from Brahmanical opposition to Urdu this land of Urdu did not produce another Ghalib, Premchand, Meer or even Iqbal. Languages survive and develop in civilisations which are vibrant, self-critical and sensitive to those issues which are overlooked by the ruling elite.
If the plight of Urdu in Pakistan proves that State patronage is no guarantee for the survival of a language, there are many examples when despite repression of the State languages survived as society came forward to uphold its linguistic heritage. We have a few examples from the past as well as the present.
When Iran converted to Islam, the Iranians refused to accept Arabic as the official language. Despite repression for more than 400 years of the Arab caliphs, Iranians did not compromise on their language heritage. They accepted the Qur’an in Arabic but refused to use Arabic for khutba, sticking to Persian. It is recorded that hundreds of writers, poets and intellectuals sacrificed their lives for the cause of the Persian language. In the cultural history of the world, it is regarded as one of the longest cultural resistance movements. In the present world, Kurds despite continuous horrible repression by many States have not forsaken their love and attachment for Kurdish language. Likewise, the Palestinians, in the face of the severest repression of the Zionist regime, have kept resistance on through the finest poetry in Arabic.
Instead of doing siyapa [mourning] those of us who care for Urdu must answer one simple question. What did we do for the sustenance and spread of Urdu in our family, locality, relations and society at large?
_____________
*The writer is a retired Professor at Delhi University. The views are personal and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them.
