Don't Pollute and Politicise Urdu
By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
09
November 2022
"Jis
ahad-e-siyasat ne ye zinda zabaan kuchli/ Uss ahad-e-siyasat ko marhoomon ka
gham kyon hai/Ghalib jise kahte hain Urdu hi ka shayar tha/Ghalib pe sitam dhaa
kar Urdu pe karam kyon hai"
-Sahir
Ludhianavi, from his nazm ' Jashn-e-Ghalib', written on the occasion of
Ghalib's centenary year, 1969
(The
political dispensation that bulldozed a living language/ why should that
political outfit care for those departed/ the man known as Ghalib was an Urdu
poet/ why on earth is this charade of eulogising Urdu and marginalizing
Ghalib?)
...
Today
is World Urdu Day and also the birth anniversary of Allama Iqbal. In fact, to
perpetuate his memory, his birthday is commemorated as World Urdu Day. Urdu or
Hindi Day comes every year. But with a few write-ups here and there, a
perfunctory lip service, a sheer tokenism, the day gets over.
What
Sahir wrote more than a half-century ago is still relevant. In fact, it's all
the more relevant in these turbid times and climes. Mind you, at that time,
Congress was at the helm and people have a misconception that Congress went the
extra mile to promote Muslims. But even at that time, Muslims and Urdu
suffered. And now things have gone south under the current government. Well,
here I don't associate Urdu with Muslims. To me, it's just a language, an
exquisite one at that. But the fact remains that Urdu has unfortunately become
a language of Muslims. Its right-to-left Nastaliq script, which is its
identity, is being looked down upon. But to be honest, even before this
government, Urdu failed to get political patronage. It's indeed a matter of
pity, nay shame, that a language needs political backup to survive in this
country. But this deplorable fate has befallen Urdu and today, it's a pariah
language. A language is not a prerogative or preserve of a particular
community. It's a means and mode of communication one chooses to express
himself or herself.
Yours
truly's father tongue is Bangla and mother tongue is Pahalavi. I read, write
and speak both tongues with native sensibilities and dream in them. But neither
can be called my language of communication ( though both belong to my
linguistic consciousness) as I perforce express myself in English, a language I
started learning rather late and am still not at home with. In other words, English
became my expressional necessity, not my linguistic reality.
My
point is, any language can be picked up at any age or stage as a communication
conduit and the whole process should be totally apolitical.
The
moment you politicise a language, you kill its soul. Independent India
politicised Urdu and jettisoned it.
Moreover,
growing Hinduism is blocking Urdu's path and Sanatanis are calling it the
language of Mughals, not knowing that the Mughals spoke Persian!
Urdu
is zubaan-e-sarzameen-e-Hindustan (a language of the soil of the subcontinent).
It's as dear to Hindus as it has been to Muslims.
Don't
politicise and pollute it. Speak and spread love through Urdu.
...
A
regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative
religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to
world's premier publications in several languages including Persian.
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