8/20/13

My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim | Rana Safvi

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My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim | Rana Safvi

My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim

Rana Safvi April 24, 2013 Comment

Hindustani0804

Urdu hai mera naam main Khusrau ki paheli Main Meer ki humraaz hun Ghalib ki saheli (My name is Urdu and I am Khusraus riddle I am Meers confidante and Ghalibs friend) Kyun mujhko banate ho tassub ka nishana Maine to kabhi khud ko musalmaan nahi maana (Why have you made me a target for bigotry? I have never thought myself a Muslim) Dekha tha kabhi maine bhi khushiyo ka zamana Apne hi watan me hum agar aaj akayli (I too have seen an era of happiness But today I am an orphan in my own country) (See YouTube video) I dont think anything can describe the state of Urdus neglect and decline than these lines by IqbalAshar. In this article I want to dispel the notion that a language can have a religion by tracing its origin and the roots of how that tag got attached to it, leading to its subsequent neglect. Language is a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition. India is home to several hundred languages out of which 22 are scheduled languages and a rich cultural heritage attached to all of them.
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My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim | Rana Safvi

After independence, the Sub-Committee on Fundamental Rights recommended that the official language of India be made Hindustani, as it was already the national language: Hindustani, written either in Devanagari or the Perso-Arabic script at the option of the citizen, shall, as the national language, be the first official language of the Union. Had this been adopted there would just be a beautiful national language, Hindustani with a shared cultural heritage instead of two artificially created languages via kind courtesy of the British: Sansritised Hindustani called Hindi and Persianised Hindustani called Urdu. Unfortunately, this recommendation was not adopted by the Constituent Assembly. Till the early 20th century Persian was the language of the elite and learnt by them (irrespective of religion) but Urdu was the language of the masses, and used as a medium of instruction. Our Prime Minister and the poet Gulzar, amongst other famous Indian personalities even today use the Urdu script for their writings. Many friends who read this will say their fathers or grandfathers according to their age received education in Urdu medium schools and were fluent in the language. So where did the language go wrong? When did it become associated with a religious community? To understand this we must understand the aftermath of 1857 and the British divide and rule policy. Languages are a common cultural bond and having known this the British encouraged the use of Perso-Arabic and Devnagari script via the printing press to cement the division of Hindustani, the lingua franca of a majority of Indians, into the standardised Urdu and Hindi language. In fact Bibles which were distributed by the missionaries to spread Christianity were also printed in the 2 scripts and distributed accordingly as per religion of recipient. After partition, the death knell for Urdu as an Indian language was struck when it was declared as the national language of Pakistan. But today only 7.4 percent of the total population of Pakistan claim Urdu as their mother tongue (and I suspect these are the muhajirs who went from the IndoGangetic plains.) Opposed to this is the figure of 44.15 percent Pakistanis who speak/ list Punjabi as their mother tongue. (In Pakistan, Urdu is spoken by a much larger percentage of people but they do not list it as their mother language and its the same case in India) In India there are 5.01 percent of the population for whom Urdu is the mother tongue and Hindi is spoken by 41.03 percent. Please note that the total population of Muslims in India is 13.4 percent of the countrys population. So if Urdu is supposed to be a language of Muslims why dont the Muslims of Kerala speak it? Why do they communicate/ list their mother tongue as Malayalam? Muslims represent a majority of the local population in Lakshadweep (93 percent) and they all speak Malayalam. Having lived in Kerala for many years I have a first-hand experience that the only other language understood by the majority was English. Why do Muslims of West Bengal, which has the second largest Muslim population in India, after
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My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim | Rana Safvi

Uttar Pradesh, list their mother tongue as Bangla? Gujarati Muslims use and list Gujarati as their mother tongue. Yes, majority of practising Muslims in India as well as in the rest of the world read/ understand Arabic or at least try to. That can be called the language of the Muslims as the Holy Book was revealed in it. Hindavi, Dehalvi, Gujri ,Dakhini, Rekhta were the names given to the language which evolved from Hindustani to todays Hindi and Urdu. The first writer to popularise Hindavi, which he referred to as Dehalvi, was the prolific and wondrous Amir Khusrau. Sunil Sharma, the author of Amir Khusraw: the poet of Sultan and Sufis credits Khusrau as being the father of Hindi and Urdu. Khusrau baazi prem ki main khelun pi ke sang, Jeet gayi to piya moray, haari, pi kay sang. (Khusrau, I play the game of love with my beloved, If I win, the beloved is mine, if I lose, my Beloved I am yours.) The word Urdu is derived from the same Turkish word ordu (army) that has given English the word, horde. In fact according to S.R. Farooqui the term Urdu was used during Akbars time to denote royal city. When Shah Jahan built a new walled city in Delhi in 1639, known as Shahjahanabad, a market close to the royal fort (the Red Fort) was called Urdu Bazar (Army/camp Market.)Emperor Shah Alam II with his love for Hindi, gave it a position in his court with the nomenclature, Zabaan e Urdu e mualla. (The language of the exalted city.) Meer Taqi Meer( 1722-1810) used the words Rekhta and Hindi for the spoken language. Rekhta ke tum hi ustaad nahiN ho GHalib Kahte hai Nagle zamane meN koi Meer bhi thA [rekhta = Urdu] (You are not the only expert of Rekhta,Ghalib Have heard tell that ere was a Meer too) Mushafi farsi ko taaq pe rakh Ab hai ashaar-e-Hindavi ka rivaaj (Mushafi put Persian back in the closet Custom is now to write verses in Hindi) Showing that Hindi was exchangeable with Rekhta till the 19th century for the language. Mushafi (1750-1824) himself was the first to use the word Urdu meaning a language in his first Divan. Till then it was called hindavi and Rekhta. The conversion of Hindavi/ Hindustani into Urdu, a language of Muslims started with Gilchrist (June
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My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim | Rana Safvi

1759 1841) a surgeon turned Indologist who wrote and published An English-Hindustani Dictionary, A Grammar of the Hindoostanee Language in Persian and Devnagari script. Though the British accepted that Hindustani was spoken or at least understood all over India, they insisted on identifying it with Muslims. According to S.R. Farooqui since the term Hindustani was ambiguous in its religious affiliation, the British insisted on Urdu, as that didnt have the faintest reverberations of a Hindu link.
The earliest reference to the story of the Zaban e Urdu, Hindi being generated by Muslim invaders was in a book for teaching Hindustani (that is Urdu) to British bureaucrats, and was written and printed in Fort William College under the aegis of Gilchrist, by Mir Amman Dihalvi called Baagh o Bahar.

Mir Ammans book had many loopholes and he also forgot to mention that the language he called Zaban e Urdu was in a sense the language of the city and referred to as Hindvi / Hindi, as it was called at that time. Soon the popularity of his text book ensured the perpetuation of the myth of Urdu as a language of Muslim invaders. It took a long time to harden the khariboli into separate Hindi/ Urdu traditions and there is evidence that the Hindu populace for whom a new linguistic tradition was being created in the 19th century, resisted the idea. Peter Austin in his One thousand languages: living, endangered, and lost writes that Urdu and Hindi have the same roots in the emerging Indo-Aryan language varieties spoken in an area centred on Delhi and specially the variety called KhariBoli which spread throughout India under the Muslim armies of the Delhi Sultanate (13th to 15th Century). He says that in the early 19th Century the British chose KhariBoli as their administrative language, encouraging the use of Perso-Arabic and Devnagari script in parallel. The choice of scripts and source of vocabulary gradually became a source of religious affiliations and ultimately resulted in two standard languages, Urdu and Hindi. The advent of the printing press meant that religious literature was translated for the common man. This deepened the growing schism amongst religions which was being fanned by the British and led to Sanskrtisation and Persianisation of Hindustani into a formal Urdu written in Persian script using Persian origin words and Hindi written in Devnagari with more words of Sanskrit origin. The British rulers created texts and published discourses for Indians in the now rapidly getting standardised Hindi or Urdu by using Devanagari or Perso-Arabic script and distributing accordingly. In the early days translations of The Quran and religious texts were commissioned and printed in Persian and Devanagari script. Later Urdu was the preferred medium for Islamic texts and treatises, further strengthening the belief of it being a language of Muslims. Though, today I have many relatives who read the Quran in Devanagari and many Gujarati friends who read it in Gujarati script. There is a vast treasure trove of Indian literature, prose and poetry written in Urdu. Everyone in India has heard of the poetry of Ghalib, Meer, Daagh, Brij Narain Chakbast, Krishna Bihari Noor,
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My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim | Rana Safvi

Josh Malihabadi, Jigar Moradabadi, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Kaifi Azmi, Sahir Ludhianvi, Shakeel Badayuni to present day Javed Akhtar and Gulzar to name just a few. In prose we have Munshi Premchand, Saadat Hasan Manto, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Krishan Chander, Qurratulain Hyder,Ismat Chughtai. Munshi Premchands first novella, Asrar e Maabid was first published in Awaz-e-Khalq, an Urdu Weekly, after which he became associated with an Urdu magazine Zamana, writing columns on national and international events. He wrote under the pseudonym Nawab Rai in Urdu script, afterwards transcribing them (or hiring some local helper to transcribe them) into Devnagari, so that he eventually published practically everything in both scripts. A picture of the original manuscript of Kafan
Firaq Gorakhpuri, the famous Urdu poet, had been a champion of secularism all his life and was a chief crusader against the governments effort to brand Urdu as the language of Muslims. He was also instrumental in the allocation of funds for the promotion of the language.

In 2010 Gujarat High Court observed there was nothing on record to suggest that any provision has been made or order issued declaring Hindi as a national language of the country.
Today Urdu is languishing because somewhere along the line it was adopted by Muslim parents and the common perception is that it had apparently converted to Islam too! Nowadays its just a malnourished, homeless orphan.

(Urdu is the 6th most spoken language in the country but 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. (Census 2001)) The percentage of people listing Urdu as their mother tongue is also declining. In many instances Muslims themselves are listed with their mother tongue as Hindi by census officers because they dont know how to read and write Urdu. Today Urdu is no longer linked to jobs and no language can progress or grow unless it can lead to economic rewards. Urdu newspapers are on the decline because of lack of advertising revenue. Schools/ colleges have stopped using it as medium of instruction because of dearth of Urdu text books for science and technology. Urdu medium schools lack qualified teachers. Associated as it is in peoples eyes with Muslims, it has become nothing but a trap for vote bank politics, unkept promises and empty dreams. The only silver lining is that it still lives in the hearts of many across religious lines, in our Hindi films and TV serials, the crowds flocking to mushairas and the number of sites which provide sms lines on the internet. After all everyone needs words to express love! baad-e-nafrat phir mohabbat ko zabaan darkaar hai phir aziiz-e-jaan vahii urdu zabaan hone lagii (After hatred, once again love needs a language for expression, Once again Urdu becomes beloved of all)
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My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim | Rana Safvi

- Dr Mohammad Yaqub Aamir (The views expressed in this column are the writers own) Tags: Hindi, language, Muslim, Rana Safvi, Religion, Urdu, Urdu poetry Share:
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Urdu lost by one vote to Hindi in the Constituent Assembly (predecessor to Indian parliament) for national language because one day before voting, Pakistan voted to make Urdu its national language. Today, after English, Urdu has max. number of registered publications in India. As long as there are people who love Urdu exist, the language will survive, irrespective of Govt. support. We should ensure that we learn urdu and make our children do so too. There are several online and weekend courses organised by Government of India and as a student, I can vouch for them as a very suitable method for introducing urdu. Reply 18 Like Follow Post April 25 at 7:34am Navin Kumar Reply Follow Top Commenter 170 subscribers

Sir there is NO national language in India 2 Like April 26 at 12:04am Follow Product Manager at PayPal

Gagan Singh really?

Reply Like April 27 at 2:15am Mintoo Kanpuriya IIT Roorkee Gagan Singh there is a difference between rajbhasha and rastra bhasha Reply Like August 10 at 7:13pm Gitanjali Rai Works at Was HOD Psychology SNDT College, Mumbai Urdu itni meethi zubaan hai... wish more of us spoke and understood it... Reply 16 Like Follow Post April 26 at 11:59pm Milind Pagare Siddharth College of Commerce' Arts and Science I like y r thought Reply Like June 12 at 5:31pm
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My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim | Rana Safvi

Bhupendra Sharma nice thought

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Reply Like July 4 at 1:43am Ravi Malhotra Southbank university, London Agreed..... Reply Like July 12 at 6:04pm View 2 more Mohammad Haider Deputy General Manager/ Head-Legal, Regulatory and Corporate Affairs at Bharti Wow....Simply amazing, inspiring and thought provoking composition! Reply 7 Like Follow Post June 29 at 9:07pm Shivesh Dwivedi K. J. Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research toooooooo good bhai Reply Like June 30 at 2:11pm Vikas Sharma Reminds me of a funny incident in Sydney few years ago (junior women cricket was on) and few young Pakistani girls were enjoying an Indian/ Pakistani lunch at Darling Harbour....one of them wanted to have another naan but hesitated. I heard her whispering to her mate...."pata nahin ye indian Urdu samjhega ki nahin". Funny but ironic....these girls did not have any idea what Hindi and Urdu shared. Finally, they had their extra naan...by speaking in Urdu. Reply Like June 30 at 4:03pm Savio Pashana Works at SMS Gupshup I am a Chrisitan and whenever I speak in Urdu or recite verses from the works of Mir, Ghalib or Gulzar, I am often asked, "Tu to isaii hai na? Phir tu Urdu kaise bol leta hai?" Many thanks for this article. Reply 13 Like Follow Post April 25 at 12:52am Rana Safvi Reply Top Commenter

Glad you liked it.Thank you 1 Like April 25 at 1:35am

Nazim Uddin Aap jesy log hi is zubaan ko aagay le ja rahe he. Good you not only speak urdu but love great urdu poetry as well. Nazim Karachi Reply Like August 16 at 11:04am Vishaal Bhatnagar Associate Vice President at CyberMedia Thanks for a very well-researched piece on one of the most beautiful languages of India. I come from a Lucknow-based Hindu family but it was quite magical to hear my father and uncles and aunts discuss Urdu poetry avidly. I believe encouraging the young to learn and express themselves in Urdu can actually bring sensitivity and understanding in today's highly fractious public debates on politics, criminal justice system, good governance, religion, culture, sports, science and economics. We owe it to ourselves as Indians. Reply 9 Like Follow Post April 25 at 7:25pm Amit Bhatnagar You are right. I get questioned when I use Urdu in my spoken language. Guess, it sound alien to many. Like you, I also come from a Lucknow-based hindu family. Reply 1 Like April 26 at 2:10am
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My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim | Rana Safvi

Qudsia Lone Sounds like a great idea. Reply Like April 26 at 7:25pm Nazim Uddin Lucknow or locknow walo ki to kia baat he ! Tehzib ke mathy ka jhoomar he ye ! Nazim Karachi. Reply Like August 16 at 11:06am Rana Safvi Top Commenter

would like to make two clarifications. 1.Dekha tha kabhi maine bhi khushiyo ka zamana. Apne hi watan me hum agar aaj akayli. (I too have seen an era of happiness. But today I am an orphan in my own country). The word in second line is "magar" and not "agar" that was a typo. 2. As pointed to me Urdu is the official language of Jammu and Kashmir but it is not the principal language which is spoken there. Reply 8 Like Follow Post April 25 at 11:24am Priya VK Singh hum ur hoon ? Reply 1 Like April 25 at 1:03pm Follow 169 subscribers

Chandra Prakash Yadav UP Technical University, Lucknow Reply Like April 25 at 2:05pm Rana Safvi Top Commenter

Priya VK Singh I am sorry I didn't understand your comment Reply Like April 25 at 2:17pm View 4 more Neena Singh Reply Follow Chandigarh, India

Well researched piece again Rana Safvi..proud of you, dear friend! Keep writing and giving joy! 6 Like Follow Post April 25 at 6:55am Rana Safvi thank You Reply Like April 25 at 11:24am Pavan Madhini IIT Kanpur "After independence, the Sub-Committee on Fundamental Rights recommended that the official language of India be made Hindustani, as it was already the national language: Hindustani, written either in Devanagari or the Perso-Arabic script at the option of the citizen, shall, as the national language, be the first official language of the Union.. How could Urdu have been "already the national language" before Independence? Also, why this obsession with a national language? What need do we have of a national language in such a diverse country as ours?
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country as ours? I do appreciate though, your concern for the beautiful language that Urdu is. Reply 5 Like Follow Post April 25 at 12:34pm Rana Safvi Top Commenter

My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim | Rana Safvi

The word I use is Hindustani and it was and is still the most widely used language. How many people speak Sansritised Hindi or persianised Urdu, we all speak Hindustani. That was the language which the British and the printing press turned into formal Urdu/Hindi thus assigning religion to it Reply 4 Like April 25 at 1:15pm

Mihir Kumar Works at Indian Revenue Service I don't quite understand what is Hindustani though it is fashionable to use the term. If Hindustani means a combination of Khari Boli Hindi and urdu, very few people india speak that language. If it means that the variant of Hindi spoken in North India where the regional languages like brajbhasa, haryanvi, bhojpuri etc is mixed than the resultant cocktail Hindustani is spoken by the masses in north India, from Haryana to Bihar. Reply Like April 25 at 3:16pm Rana Safvi Top Commenter

Khari boli with mix of easy to understand sanskrit and Perso-Arabic words is Hindustani... The language used in Hindi cinema and TV serials Reply Like April 25 at 5:23pm View 2 more Syed Haider Abbas Zaidi Aligarh Muslim University Rana beti very well written. I read the whole article and am impressed by the facts you have brought out about Urdu. It's really a pity that our own children can't read & write Urdu.In pre-partition days Urdu used to be the official language in courts Reply 5 Like Follow Post April 25 at 1:00am Rana Safvi Reply Rana Safvi Reply Top Commenter

Thank You Ammujan 1 Like April 25 at 1:35am

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My Twitter handle is @iamrana. 5 Like Follow Post April 25 at 1:46pm Chandra Prakash Yadav UP Technical University, Lucknow Reply Like April 25 at 2:05pm Jayshree Shukla St. Stephen's College, Delhi I loved your blog, Ranaji. And would love to connect with you here on Facebook as well. Reply Like April 25 at 6:06pm Jayshree Shukla St. Stephen's College, Delhi Have sent you a request. Reply Like April 25 at 6:07pm
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My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim | Rana Safvi

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a month ago

Dear Rana, Good article and a pecemaker; Please view " Urdu/hindi an artificial divide African heritage---" exposing British creating a " indo-euro-aryan" language/nation and a semitic nationalism --all assuming biblical races as '' real history"; Book exposes this wrong policy " and a deliberate one " and also suggests anew classification based on " scientific evolution out of Africa. This is a real clincher for south Asian peace as it discards Sanskrit, Hebrew Arabic as " Divine creation" and locate them as part of evolution out of Africa and Mideast farmer's migration some 12000 yrs ago; Here humans were just human free from biblical/hinduic racism.
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jet t y S ingh

2 months ago

My Dear Ms Safvi....an excellent and well researched article. My father and mother were great lover of Urdu Adab. but unfortunately, in our times, Urdu was totally absent from schools and syllabuses. The result is i can neither read nor write in Urdu. i have been living in London for forty years. i wrote this poem in 1999, literally FIRED by comments by some dear Pakistani friends at an informal party in Knights Bridge. Poem (my copyright) is in Urdu but i write in Hindi (Devanagari) script. i am sending this to show that even though, one is exiled or thousand miles away from Mother land... the love for language....all languages or the people...all the people of your country NEVER dies, Jazaaq Allah......jetty Singh.... [email protected] URDU ZUBAAN Chand roz huae ik baithak main masroofh thae sahibaan Ba shiddat bahs-o-jirah garmi pahunche paish dalaan Ik Muslim dost kucch haqlaye aisae kiyaa bayaan Ki zehan hamaarai se nikalee wo sheeri numaan zubaan Tumharae haathon ho rahaa ab jis ka qatleaam
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My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim | Rana Safvi

neoimaginat ions

3 months ago

thank u for bringing such an awesome article on such an awesome language urdu http://neoimaginations.blogspo...
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s uvrajy ot igupt a

3 months ago

I wish I could agree with the article but I cannot.There are historical inconsistancies in the article... Firstly before independence the Muslim League did put up Urdu as a Pan-Indian Muslim language.Urdu was the life-blood of the Pakistan movement and very concious efforts were made to purge it of Sanskrit words. Secondly post 47 there was an effort to impose Urdu upon East Pakistan- Bangladesh.Which triggred the "bhasa( language ) andolan" and finally led to independence in 71.Thus the language does have an association with imperial/communal tendencies.This is one of the reasons why Bangladesh still refuse to give citizenship to the small Urdu speaking minority in the country ( called incorrectly Biharis..in Bangladesh). Finally I cannot disagree with the beauty and the grace of Urdu but the question is,are the regional languages any less beautiful? Then why donot they receive the same support and patronage from the State?
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K hy ber K hpalwak

3 months ago

Chira

Great tribute to Urdu. I do not grudge you your love for Urdu but the promoters of Urdu here in Pakistan took our local languages away from us. It is ironic Urdu is oppressed in India and the oppressor in Pakistan.
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3 months ago

A li

There is or was no national language in India!

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3 months ago

An American who speaks fluent Urdu, enjoy Mr. John Hanson. It is amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
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mohammed

3 months ago

In kerala none of the muslims understand urdu..But communal harmony is the highest in kerala since people cutting across religion speaks the same language
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My name Is Urdu and I am not a Muslim | Rana Safvi

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