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
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