In West Bengal, Urdu Is In a Better State Despite State Apathy

Hindi, Not Bangla Poses a Threat to Urdu Main Points: 1. Urdu has suffered hugely due to communal politics in the sub-continent. 2. Urdu is in a better state in states where Hindi is not the regional language. 3. In Mughal period and Nawab rule, Urdu and Persian were the language of the elite in Bengal. 4. Muslim rulers of Bengal patronised and promoted Bangla. 5. Urdu is systematically being removed from Bihar and Kashmir. ------ By New Age Islam Staff Writer 20 February 2023 Urdu language has a complicated history in India. It originated in the region of Sindh after the Muslims arrived here from Arab. The Iranians arrived two centuries later with their language Persian. Arabic and Persian words and phrases mixed with local dialects to form a new language which was first called Hindawi and then Rekhta or Urdu. With the expansion of Muslim rule in Northern India, Urdu spread to the north and then to the East after the Khilji conquest of Bengal in the 11th century. It became the lingua franca but the official language remained Persian. The Mughals used Persian as their official language though Urdu was also popular as the language of poetry and literature. After the East India captured power, they also retained Persian as their official language but they promoted Urdu because they realised that it was the lingua franca and Persian was only the language of the elite. To promote Urdu, the East India Company Fort William College in Calcutta where Books in Urdu prose were published. Hundreds of original books of Urdu prose and translations were published by the College. The purpose of this venture was to teach The Englishmen who worked in the government well conversant with Urdu so that they could deal with the public efficiently. When that purpose was fulfilled, the college was shut down after twenty years or so and Persian was replaced with Urdu as the official language in 1832. It remained the official language of India till the Independence. After Independence, Urdu was considered responsible for the partition though during the freedom movement, Urdu played a crucial role. Bhagat Singh's mother language was Urdu as of majority of freedom fighters. But the stigma lingered on for decades. Since the seventies, some states started recognising Urdu and accorded it the status of the second official language. In Bihar, Jagannath Mishra government granted it the status of the second official language. In 2011, the Trinamool Congress government granted Urdu the status of the second official language in blocks where the Urdu speaking population was 10 per cent or more. Ironically, the Left Front had opposed the move in the assembly. However, Urdu has not been implemented practically due to the threat of a backlash from the Bangla community. Bengal has produced many Urdu poets and litterateurs who belonged to the Bengali community. An entire article can be written on the topic. For example, Raja Raj Kishan Raja was a landlord of Bengal. He was a great poet of Urdu. He had command over Urdu, Persian and Arabic and had not one or two but five Deewan's of poetry to his credit. Deewan is a collection of Ghazals in alphabetical order. Apart from it, he had authored a Mathnavi (a long poem) which only few poets have the ability to write. This speaks of his calibre and status as a poet. Ram Prasad, the legendary Bangla Bhakti poet who was more popular than Rabindranath Tagore, learned Urdu and Persian according to the tradition of the period. In the 20th century, Dr Shantiranjan Bhattacharya was one of the most famous fiction writer, historian and critic of Urdu of Bengal. During the 70s, Bangla was an optional language in secondary school syllabus. But in the 80s, Persian replaced it under the pressure of Muslims. Of late, Muslims have been demanding that Bangla should be made the optional language in Urdu medium schools. In West Bengal, Urdu is in a better state than in other states because Bangla does not pose a linguistic threat because of its distinct grammar accent and vocabulary. Since Hindi and Urdu have common grammar and vocabulary, Hindi easily becomes a rival to Urdu because of its official status. In the states like Bihar, UP and Madhya Pradesh where Hindi is the regional and state language, parents of Urdu speaking community prefer Hindi for their children because of the advantage Hindi has over Urdu. But in states where a non-Hindi language is the state language, Urdu speaking children enrol in Urdu medium schools because they can't read or write Bangla. So, here it is more a compulsion than a choice. Mr Salman Khurshid's assumption that the Bengal government does not impose Bangla on non-Bengali community is based on lack of knowledge of the reality in the state. Urdu speaking candidates face discrimination in jobs on linguistic grounds. The government does not impose Bangla in school level because it does not want Muslims to enter bureaucracy. Even during the Left government rule when Bangla was the third or optional language in schools, the job percentage of Muslims was 2 per cent whereas their population was 30 per cent. When the Aligarh Muslim University branch was opened in Kerala, Bihar and Bengal (Murshidabad), during the Congress government, there was stiff opposition not only in Bihar but also in Bengal. The Hindutva forces had argued that the centre will become a safe haven for Bangladeshis. Some professors and so called left intellectuals had also opposed the move. The grass always looks greener on the other side. As for the Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu Hind in West Bengal, it became active during the official language movement during the last tenure of the Left rule with the slogan ' No Urdu no vote '. Trinamool Congress came to power riding on the promise to grant official status to Urdu and fulfilled the promise, at least on paper. But the Anjuman has not exerted much pressure on its implementation and has not been able to do much for the resolution of other problems of Urdu speaking community in the state. However, despite all this, Urdu does not face an existential threat in West Bengal as it does in Bihar or other states including Kashmir. Urdu schools get regular grants and funds and the education system is not bad. Schools have their own buildings. Primary and High schools are running even villages contrary to what is seen in UP and Bihar where some schools run under the trees or in dilapidated buildings. Every town in West Bengal has its own Urdu medium high school and Muslim girls and boys study and complete their schooling without any hindrance. If there are problems with the Urdu medium schools, it is because of the insensitivity of the Urdu speaking community. "Unless the community is aware of its duties, the government will not act." ----- Harmonious Bond: The Bangla versus Urdu Debate Has a Nasty History By Salman Khurshid 19.02.23, 04:01 AM “There was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Kingsley Amis’s famous statement made in the modern classic, Lucky Jim, is most appropriate in any discussion related to Urdu, a language known for its literary finesse and remarkable linguistic ability to adapt from other languages but also for being occasionally overshadowed by nasty politics. In this regard, the Bangla versus Urdu debate in erstwhile East Pakistan may rank as the nastiest, with Pakistani politics using the Urdu language as one of the oppressive forces, along with military power, to capture the resources of the East Pakistan province, now Bangladesh. Pakistan has a history of erroneously claiming Urdu as the language of Muslims. The worst was that in the provinces governed by Pakistan, the new settlers in Karachi who claimed Urdu as their language were not all Urdu speaking. Most of the North Indian migrants were native speakers of regional languages, many of which did not even have a script of their own. This is with the exception of some who migrated from the urban areas of western Uttar Pradesh, where Urdu was the language of the educated lot. The dust of Urdu settled in East Pakistan after the end of the month-long Bangladesh Liberation War on December 16, 1971, almost 23 years after M. A. Jinnah’s explosive speech in impeccable English at the Dhaka University Convocation on March 24, 1948, proposing that Urdu be made the one and only national language of Pakistan — another cruel joke at the expense of Urdu by the politician who had nothing to do with the language even remotely. The whole region of Bengal, whether in India or Bangladesh, has been caught up in this dichotomy of languages. Most syllabus books that arrive from North India in the Dini Madaris of West Bengal and Bangladesh are in Urdu. These are Urdu translations of the syllabus books in the high standard Arabic, whose teaching challenges the teachers due to their non-proficiency in Arabic. West Bengal, though tolerant as far as religious freedom goes, is culturally and linguistically quite territorial. Urdu and other languages have, meanwhile, accepted Bangla for practical and functional reasons, and enriched its linguistic and literary horizon. Contemporary politics has been forced to spare languages despite the law of nature that old habits die hard; occasionally, we see some unruly assertions to capture power using languages also. We recently witnessed the arrest of a government school principal in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district after a video that was circulated on social media showed school children singing “Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua Banke Tamanna Meri” during the morning assembly, a poem penned in 1902 by the Urdu poet, Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938). This is disturbing because it was very much a prayer sung during morning assembly throughout my childhood in the whole of North India and, in later years too, whenever I visited a school, I joined the students in singing it. Fortunately, Urdu was not part of any separatist movement after Partition, even by Muslim politicians. The Urdu-speaking masses too tried to keep a safe distance from atavistic politics. But they also made a blunder in not supporting the languages that were suppressed by major languages. And for this, they paid the price — whenever Urdu was bulldozed, especially in North India after Partition and thrown out of the formal education system, no language group came forward to support it. The most pleasant development in the last hundred years has now come from West Bengal. Earlier, every language asserted its worth. Some of them not only tried but also captured the space of other languages. In North India, especially languages whose grammatical structure was close to dominant languages were usurped by these dominant languages. In West Bengal, since Bangla has not tried to submerge Urdu, those who claim Urdu as their language, despite the functional language being Bangla, have demanded that Bangla be taught as a compulsory language in the state’s government-run Urdu medium schools. This sane demand, under the banner of the Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind), indicates that there is a wind of change in West Bengal politics through culture which is revolutionary, as Anjuman has never indulged in any politics in the last hundred and forty years. In matters related to language and culture, its stance is always progressive. At least Muslim politics is no longer likely to use the Urdu debate. Of course, West Bengal’s education policy, which does not make it compulsory for the state’s principal language to be taught in every school, is quite surprising. It is a blunder, paving the way for separatism through language politics if a major political party were to be in a position to exploit it. Only a powerful organisation with a progressive outlook on Urdu can act as a harbinger of peace. On November 20, 2022, a historic step was taken by the Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind), the organisation established in 1882 by none other than Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. The organisation enjoys the same status as Académie Française or the French Academy in canon formation. The Anjuman was the first organisation to take steps towards the standardisation of Urdu orthography keeping in view its Indian roots as the majority of words are from the local languages. Contrary to the impression that Arabic and Persian overly influence Urdu, in fact hardly 10% of Urdu vocabulary consists of Arabic and Persian words; even those 10% often differ in meaning and pronunciation from the source languages. The Anjuman’s 50 branches have now been given a new lease of life in West Bengal. The organisation is actively working towards reviving all its 650 branches across the country, focusing on including Urdu in the school curriculum, which is paramount for the survival of any language in the common civic space. True to the nature of Bengalis, of showing solidarity and standing up for their beliefs, an audience of 20,000 demanded the inclusion of Bangla in Urdu-medium schools at the convention held at Calcutta. Since the organisers did not anticipate such enthusiasm for the cause, most of the people had to wait outside the auditorium, which could hardly accommodate 500 people. One can only hope that the message reaches the country’s policy planners and that the government of West Bengal is also listening. I cannot believe that divisive forces locking horns with Bangla are blind to the developments and would remain silent, especially now that some noise in favour of harmony between Bangla and Urdu has been made. ----- Salman Khurshid is a senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India and former external affairs minister of India Source: Harmonious Bond: The Bangla versus Urdu Debate Has a Nasty History URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/bengal-urdu-state-apathy/d/129146 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism