Urdu in India
By Dilip Adarkar, PhD
Manhattan Beach, CA
I have read with interest Dr. Rizwana
Rahim’s articles on Urdu in India.
I am a Hindu Indian American with family roots
in Maharashtra. I spent the first six years of
my life in Allahabad where the first language
I learnt was Hindustani. Now this goes back to
the late thirties and early fForties, i.e., well
before Independence.
I left India when I was still a boy. In my frequent
visits since then I have noticed that the “Hindi”
has become much more Sanskritized over the years.
One rarely hears the “Hindustani”
which was in common usage in films and on the
street years ago. I also notice that radio programs
from Pakistan have a growing increase in the content
of Arabic and Farsi words. These are typically
nouns; verbs seem to have not been affected as
much on both sides of the border! I also notice
that the time-honored “Khuda Hafiz”
seems to have been overtaken by “Allah Hafiz”
in Pakistan (but apparently not in Afghanistan
or Iran). All this does seem to have been a fallout
from Partition.
After leaving Allahabad we stayed in Simla and
then Delhi for a few years. My mother (who was
a doctor with many Muslim patients) had an interest
in Urdu, and a Maulvi used to come and give her
tuition at home. Her father, who was a solicitor
in Bombay, had had to study Farsi as a part of
his legal training. Accordingly both of them could
read the Arabic script of Urdu and Farsi. This
was something I had no occasion to learn.
I believe that the script is also an important
reason and explains why it has been difficult
for Urdu to retain a strong footing. Muslims would
tend to learn it as a matter of course as a result
of studying the Qur’an. All the North Indian
languages have alphabets and scripts which are
derived from the Sanskrit/Devanagri scripts. Hindi
and Urdu are closely related with grammar, sentence
structure and vocabulary derived from Sanskrit
(particularly the verbs). However, switching to
Hindi (which is also the national language) becomes
far more natural and easy for those Indians who
have not had the occasion to learn the script
of the Qur’an.
***
By Nara Mantrvadi
Via Email
The argument is skewed: if
Urdu is dying it’s not the fault of Hindi.
This way of looking at India - as if it does not
extend beyond Auranghazeb’s kingdom - is
neither fair nor correct. The same argument could
be put forth for any language in India, including
Tamil, my mother tongue. It is not right to claim
that somehow India/Indians are systematically
trying to bring Urdu to an end. The utility of
any language depends on its functionality.
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