Partition of tongues

Urdu has a rich tradition among non-Muslims in north India. It is only in recent years that the language is becoming confined to Muslims alone

Hasan Syed Kamaal Delhi

Urdu, a graceful tongue steeped in Indian culture and history, lost its traditional moorings in the country after Independence and was tagged with a particular religious community, the Muslims. Was this deliberate? Or did circumstances dictate the sorry turn of events for this language? The answer lies, perhaps, somewhere in between.

Urdu was never and still isn't entirely the language of Muslims alone. In Tamil Nadu, the language of Muslims is Tamil. Former president Abdul Kalam, a Tamilian Muslim, neither reads nor writes or speaks a word of Urdu. In Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh as well, most Muslims speak only the local languages of their respective states.

The world of Urdu literature includes many non-Muslim names — novelist Ratan Nath (Sarshar) who is a Kashmiri pundit, poets Raghupati Sahay (Firaq Gorakhpuri) and Balraj Komal, fiction writer Gulshan Nanda, critics Malik Ram and Kali Das Gupta (Raza), short story writers Krishan Chander, Rajendra Singh Bedi, Surendra Prakash, Balraj Menra and Sharwan Kumar Verma to name a few. Some of the best ghazal (Urdu romantic poetry) singers are Jagjit Singh, Bhupinder Singh and Pankaj Udhas, none of them a Muslim.

However, this is only one side of the story. The other side, unfortunately, is not so bright. Most of the names mentioned above belong to a generation born before or around the time of Partition and Independence of the sub-continent. The scenario has changed quickly and significantly since. The generation that came from the partitioned Punjab and North West Frontier (NWF) was 'Urdu-knowing', or rather, 'only Urdu-knowing.' To cater to it, Urdu newspapers like Aryavrat, Milap and Pratap were published from Jalandhar and Delhi. The publishers and editors were Hindus. But the next generation of these migrants opted for Punjabi with the Gurumukhi script, if they were Sikhs who had settled down in the Indian side of Punjab, and Hindi, if they were Hindus. Consequently, the children of many Urdu writers and poets, including those mentioned above, can neither read nor write Urdu. The reason for this circumstance is not any sort of bias or prejudice but the simple fact that Urdu is no more a good prospect for employment.

Why did Urdu decline in the north Indian states? For some time, it ruled the roost in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. It also flourished in strong pockets like Bhopal and Indore in Madhya Pradesh, and Jaipur, Tonk and Udaipur in Rajasthan. The story in these states was slightly different and the Congress, even before Independence, had a very strong role to play in the demise of Urdu here. Congressmen like Madan Mohan Malviya, Govind Ballabh Pant and Dr Sampurnanand were dead against Urdu. In their opinion, Urdu was responsible for the partition of the country. They propagated their point of view with a vengeance. Even the socialist movement of Ram Manohar Lohia, which was apparently opposed only to English, disapproved of Urdu.

These anti-Urdu Hindus forgot that the largest treasure of Arya Samaj literature had been written in Urdu before the Partition. They also ignored the fact that in the early 20th century, a Hindu from Lucknow, Munshi Naval Kishore, had started a printing press in Lucknow to publish the 18 Puranas and the Mahabharata in Urdu. Or perhaps they just thought that Hindi would not grow and find its rightful place in national life if Urdu was allowed to flourish.