Urdu language is a product of the inter-mixing of various races, cultures and classes. It has its roots in as many as four classical languages, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian and Turkish. During the British occupation of India a large number of English words also made their way into it. Thus, Urdu is truly symbolical of the Indian national design.
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Progression of Urdu in India
Urdu started as a language of the people which was later elevated into a language of cultural and literary expression through the joint efforts of intellectuals, poets and writers drawn from different communities. Then in due time, it was called upon to meet the needs of modern journalism and interpret the urges of the national struggle.
Urdu blossomed into the most popular language of India and became the greatest medium of communication and understanding among its various parts and communities. It is now the mother-tongue of the many people of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar, Hyderabad, Delhi and their surrounding areas. After some of the more important English and Hindi newspapers, it is the journals, dailies, weeklies and monthlies appearing in Urdu language which enjoy the largest circulation in India.
British Attempts to Thwart Urdu’s Progress
Urdu was the second official language of the country under the British (standing next only to English). It was widely in use in schools, law-courts and Government offices. Hindi was introduced as a competitor against Urdu for the first time in 1900 when Sir Anthony MacDonald, the then Lieutenant Governor of Uttar Pradesh, conferred recognition to Hindi as a court language in adherence to British Policy of Divide and Rule. Thus the seed of discord was deliberately sown between the two languages and thereby, also between the people who spoke them.
Indian State’s Silent War against Urdu
Then came the Partition of India and Pakistan. The Constitution of the Indian Union decided in favour of Hindi as the official language and said “The Official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagri script.”
Indian Constitution on National languages
Apart from Hindi, 14 other languages were also recognized as national languages, one or more of which could be adopted by the Legislature of a State “as the language or the languages to be used for all or any of the official purposes of that State.”
The President was further empowered to direct a State to recognize officially a language spoken by a substantial section of its population as its regional language provided that he was satisfied that it was the mother tongue of a fairly large number of its inhabitants. (Article 343, 345)
Article 347 of the Indian Constitution reads:
“On a demand being made on that behalf, the President may, if he is satisfied that a substantial proportion of the population of a State desire the use of any language spoken by them to be recognized by that State, direct that such language shall also be officially recognized throughout the State or any part thereof for such purpose as he may specify.”
Deliberate Banishing of Urdu from Schools and Offices
In spite of these safeguards, Urdu was thrown out even from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh where it had been born and where it had flourished and attained maturity and which were its strongholds and natural home.
Urdu was deliberately expelled from schools as a medium of instruction at all stages, including the primary stage. In Uttar Pradesh, the Government got down to the job with such thoroughness that, practically a total ban was placed on Urdu in schools as well as Government offices and law-courts.
The sudden turn of events took the Urdu-speaking sections by surprise. They were greatly perturbed and agitated over the treatment meted out to their mother tongue.
Why Urdu was Banished from its Home
Muslims of India were particularly disturbed since for them in addition to the cultural and social loss, the banishment of Urdu had raised before them the question of the survival of their creed and religion also.
Urdu was their sole instrument of contact with the Islamic culture and civilisation, their entire religious literature was in that language, and its script being closely similar to the Arabic script, knowledge of Urdu considerably facilitated the reading of the Quran.
The calculated efforts to deprive the Muslims from the Urdu language were in fact to deprive them from their social and cultural identity and Islamic inheritance.
Pretense of Protection of National Languages
The Urdu-speaking people made a vigorous protest against the gross injustice by official policy towards their language with the result that a conference of Provincial Education Ministers was called at Delhi in August 1949, and the following resolution was adopted at it regarding the medium of instruction in schools.
“The medium of instruction and examination in the Junior Basic stage must be the mother-tongue of the child and where the mother-tongue is different from the Regional or the State language, arrangements must be made for instruction in the mother tongue by appointing at least one teacher, provided there are not less than 40 pupils speaking the language in the whole school or 10 such pupils in a class. The mother tongue will be the language declared by the parent or the guardian to be the mother tongue.
Discriminatory Treatment towards Urdu
The resolutions and promises unfortunately turned out to be nothing more than a pious declaration.
Hindi was taught in the Government and Municipal schools of U. P. not only as a compulsory subject, but it also continued to be the sole medium of instruction both at the basic and the secondary stages, and the teaching of Urdu was altogether stopped.
Children whose mother tongue was Urdu were totally denied the opportunity of learning it even in the junior basic classes. The Muslims and other Urdu-speaking people made repeated appeals to the Government to act on the resolution passed at Delhi in August 1949 and provide facilities for the teaching of Urdu to their children in the schools. In the city of Lucknow alone, 10000 parents and guardians -petitioned to the then State Education Minister, but nothing was done.
When these efforts proved fruitless the Urdu-speaking people decided to submit a memorial to the President of the Republic under Article 347 of the Constitution. A vigorous campaign was launched in the State of Uttar Pradesh for this purpose, under the direction of Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu, and signatures of no less than 20,50,000 adults and 20,00,000 children were obtained for the memorial in a voluntary and peaceful manner.
A deputation consisting of eminent public men and educationists, both Hindu and Muslim, was formed with Dr. Zakir Husain, the then Vice-Chancellor of Muslim University Aligarh and President of Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu as its leader. It waited on the President till February 15, 1954 to present the memorial demanding the recognition of Urdu as the regional language of U. P.
Demands from Government for Restoration of Urdu
Following points were made in the memorial for the restoration of Urdu language:
- Facilities should be provided for children whose mother tongue was Urdu to receive instruction in that language at the primary stage.
- Urdu teachers should be appointed where there were at least ten pupils with Urdu as their mother tongue in a class or forty in a school.
- Petitions and applications etc. written in the Urdu script should be entertained in Government offices and law courts and given full consideration.
- All government notifications, bills, handouts and other publications should be brought out in Urdu as well.
- Continuing the former practice, awards should be granted by the Government to Urdu writers on producing works of outstanding merit and their books should be bought by Government libraries, academies and reading rooms to give them adequate encouragement.
- Status of court language should be restored back to Urdu.
The deputation was received cordially by the President who gave it a patient hearing and showed a sympathetic interest in its demands, but that was the end of it. No action was taken on the demands of Urdu speaking people and the position of Urdu did not improve.
Impact of Destruction of Urdu on Muslims
Urdu continued to be treated in a step-motherly fashion by the government authorities, and Urdu speaking children remained deprived as before of the right to receive instruction in their mother tongue with the result that the link with their cultural past and the creed of their ancestors became weaker and now such a stage has been reached where the currently rising generation of Muslims, is finding itself separated, as if by centuries, from its spiritual and cultural roots, and it is proving exceedingly difficult to take it back to its moorings since the connecting bridge between the past and the present, which in this case was Urdu, has been purposely destroyed.
Repeated Injustice to Urdu
In August 1961, a Conference of Chief Ministers of different States was called by the Union Government in Delhi and a Three- Language Formula was evolved. According to this formula, students at the secondary stages were required to study three languages—Hindi, English and an Indian language other than Hindi. It was hoped that in this way Urdu speaking students will get an opportunity of studying their mother-tongue in Secondary schools.
But the U. P. Government thought otherwise and in utter disregard of the claim of Urdu, it decided that the Formula did not apply to it. It held that the third language has to be one of the South Indian languages. This curious interpretation, manifestly, is another act of gross injustice to the unfortunate Urdu language since with three compulsory languages and the other subjects of study the prospects of offering Urdu have become very dim. It is going to mean practically the ejection of Urdu from the secondary stage of education as well.
Again in 1961 a committee was set up by the U. P. Government under the chairmanship of Acharya J. B. Kripalani to investigate into the popular grievance that the Government orders and directives with regard to the protection of Urdu were not being implemented and suggest suitable remedies in that connection.
The report submitted by the Committee proved to be thoroughly disappointing. Instead of containing a single suggestion for meeting the grievances of the Urdu-speaking people it has concerned itself mainly with Muslim maktabs, Islamia schools and Arabic and Persian madrassas.
If the recommendations of the Committee are accepted, the position of Urdu will be weakened further and it will gradually lose its separate existence. The Muslim theological institutions which have been functioning in the State for over a century will also come to an end if the recommendations of the Kripalani Committee which have been made with the avowed object of their betterment and reform are acted upon.
Discrimination and Exploitation Must End for Establishing Peace
Denial of justice to Urdu has, in brief, thrown the Indian Muslims in a quandary. It has put them under a tremendous strain. They are in danger of losing their personality in their own homeland. An enlightened political consciousness is required in India to find a fair and just solution to the problem if nothing more, of satisfying the linguistic and cultural aspirations of Muslims and other Urdu-speaking sections of the population.
It is not hard to see that an essential prerequisite of national progress and prosperity is that a climate of hope and confidence is created for the different communities that inhabit the country in respect of their language, religion and culture.
The minorities must be made to feel that the days of arbitrary discrimination and exploitation are gone now and that freedom has been won, and no language even if it be Hindi, will be allowed any more to stand in the way of the development of other languages.
The Indian National Congress had guaranteed unequivocally the protection of the social, religious and cultural rights and interests of all communities and groups when it had raised the banner of revolt against the British, and the Indian people had marched unitedly in the fight for freedom in the hope that after the battle will be won, the right of religious and cultural self-expression that had been snatched away from them by the alien rulers would be restored back and they would be free to develop and flourish according to their needs and genius.