Urdu in India
- II
By Dr. Rizwana Rahim
Chicago, IL
Article
351 of India’s Constitution states: “It
shall be the duty of the Union to promote the
spread of the Hindi language, to develop it so
that it may serve as a medium of expression for
all the elements of the composite culture of India
and to secure its enrichment by assimilating,
without interfering with its genius, the forms,
style and expression used in Hindustani and in
the other languages of India specified in the
Eighth Schedule, and by drawing, wherever necessary
or desirable, for its vocabulary, primarily on
Sanskrit and secondarily on other languages”
[emphasis added]. One of the questions is how
does (or can) this “enrichment” take
place “without interfering with its (Hindi’s)
genius,” and without gradually blurring
and defusing the identity of another language.
Most languages are alive -- they grow and draw
from other languages. However, since ‘Hindustani’,
again a category not used in Census since 1961,
is itself a blend of both Urdu and Hindi, any
siphoning off from “the forms, style and
expression used in Hindustani and in the other
languages” further dilutes an already diluted/defused
Urdu, and for which it receives little or no credit
and recognition. It seems more like the growth
of one at the expense of other languages, as opposed
to a symbiosis.
Illustrating this Hindi-Hindustani-Urdu ‘mentalite`,
Paul R. Brass in his “The Politics of India
Since Independence” (1994) cites a complaint
by Syed Hamid (President, Anjuman-e-Taraqqi),
published in the Times of India (4 September,
1991). It has to do with Uttar Pradesh (UP), a
province which had already discarded Urdu through
its Official Language Act (1951), even though
till Independence, Urdu was one of the two official
languages of the State (with Hindi). According
to the 1971 census, UP was listed as having 11.6
million Urdu ‘speakers’ (or 10.5%
of the State’s population). In the 1981
census, these figures were reduced to 10.8 million
Urdu ‘speakers’ or 9.7% of the State
population. Hamid suspects that census enumerators
were “deliberately listing declared Urdu
speakers as Hindi speakers.” More complaints
against census, e.g., in The Times of India report
of February 2001: http://www.timesofindia.com/230201/23mpat8.htm.
These involve Hindi.
Hamid’s charges seem supported by more reliable
statistics provided in an exhaustive paper by
A. R. Fatihi (in ‘Language in India’,
March 2003). Based on this, it was clear that
Urdu population maintained its level of growth
(NOT declined) from 1971 to 1991, and that from
1971 to 1991, the decennial population of Muslims
in the State showed a steady growth “ranging
between 22 to 26%” (NOT a decline). Only
a small minority of UP’s Urdu speakers are
bilingual (23.2%; much lower than the State’s
average) and among them, the other language is
generally Hindi: 18% or less than 1 out of every
5 Urdu speakers can also claim Hindi as their
2nd language. It is true that Muslims have contributed
heavily to Urdu and its growth, but to exclude
the contributions by non-Muslims would be a mistake.
The fact that about half of Muslims do not claim
Urdu as their mother tongue explodes the ethnic-linguistic
identification myth, not just in UP but all over
India. Given the Hindi-Hindustani-Urdu mentalite`,
it would be highly misleading to believe that
Muslims speak only Urdu; any growth in Urdu benefits
only Muslims.
Perhaps bending somewhat to the growing image
of disparity in equal treatment and seeing the
chinks in the prevailing ‘Urdu = Muslim’
myth, Indian government decided in March to provide
funds for the recruitment of Urdu teachers for
primary and other schools in UP and Bihar. This
initiative, mere tokenism as some critics think,
should still be a significant boost to the language,
which has so far only suffered at the hands of
these States. In the UP, to facilitate polling
in its 27 districts and where the Urdu-’speakers’
exceed 20 per cent, the Election Commission in
2004 published even electoral lists, for the first
time in Urdu. Muslims formed about 19% of the
State’s population, and were spread (over
20%) over these districts. About 85% of the Urdu-speaking
population lives in UP, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh
and Maharashtra, but with the possible exception
of Bihar, Urdu is virtually absent from the school
syllabi. Not surprisingly, this is filtered into
the Census, and the figures for Urdu over the
past 3 decades were sluggish and not encouraging.
The ‘Urdu = Muslim’ myth was exploded
over 3 decades ago when Bengali-speaking East
Pakistan fought, after years of linguistic conflicts,
to spilt from Punjabi-Sindhi-Urdu speaking West
Pakistan.
Urdu is even considered as a ‘dying language’.
This largely reflects the image presented in Anita
Desai’s 1985 book “In Custody,”
made into a movie of the same name (1994), directed
by Ismail Merchant of the famed Merchant-Ivory
collaboration of 40-plus years. It represents
an aging Urdu poet and his decline as an allegory
for Urdu’s fate in modern India: Deven,
an admirer of a famous Urdu poet, Nur sahib, gets
an assignment to interview his idol. When Deven
meets the poet, he is thoroughly disappointed
in the man who is reduced to drunken ramblings
and gluttony, surrounded by nagging wives and
his hangers-on/yes-men/ ‘toadies’.
A disillusioned Deven returns home after the interview
and finds a package of his works the poet had
sent him before he passes away. More than a hint
that a decadent Urdu is now dying! It may be too
early for such a prognosis, but to say that it
has been flourishing and would continue to do
so under the same conditions may be wishful thinking.
As a native-speaker of the language, Merchant,
in his AsiaSource interview of May 2001 claimed:
Urdu “cannot die out because it has very
strong roots in Persia,” and that popular
Hindi movie songs “are all written in Urdu.”
Others have taken a similar view, satisfied that
Urdu (the simplified kind) now flourishes in Hindi
movies and songs, thanks to some of its poets,
and that even non-Urdu “speakers”
use the language (thanks to ‘Bollywood’).
This is hardly an indication of Urdu’s survivability
and growth. In fact, the movies in which ‘this’
Urdu exists are classified and labeled as “Hindi,”
with Urdu not even listed among the credits for
its contribution. Rather, this is a good example
of how Urdu has been losing its identity, increasingly
subsumed in Hindi. This is not how most languages
survive!
Very few things would bring the point home better
than the fact that the FIRST “Hindi talking-movie”
was named (in Urdu). “Alam Ara” (1931),
a 124-minute movie was listed as a “Hindi-Urdu”
production, unlike the Hindi movies today that
contain lot of Urdu in songs and dialogues! [One
interesting trivia about ‘Alam-Ara’:
“Although Mehboob was scheduled to play
the lead in Alam Ara, Master Vithal from Sharda
Studios got the part. When Sharda sued Vithal
for breach of contract, he was defended by M.
A. Jinnah.”] (To be continued)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
