The tragedy is that Hindu intellectuals, activists, and leaders, of the day, talk of Hindu nation, Hindu Rashtra, but forget that a nation must have a national language and that it had been decided hundred years back, early years of the 20th century, by our national leaders of the time, including Gandhi. It is a different matter that, after 1920, Gandhi resiled in favour of Hindustani, i.e. Urdu written in Devanagari and Persian scripts both, to be on the right side of the Muslims.
Gandhi's legatees got the political power, along with the power on all wings of the State, including propaganda. They used every means to demean Hindi and promote Urdu. Many among us are also the victims of that propaganda.
The origin of Urdu is a mixture of Turkish, Persian, and Hindi. In its original form, used by Amir Khusro, there was not much difference between Urdu and 'Khari Boli' variant of Hindi, around the 13th century. At that time, Hindi had four main branches (variants), 'Avadhi, 'Braj', 'Bundelkhandi' and 'Khari Boli'. 'Avadhi' and 'Braj' were the main languages of literature, because all literary compositions were then done in verses. 'Khari Boli' was used for prose. Since the 19th century, when press came into being and prose became more important, the Khari Boli rose in importance. In 19th century itself, for political reasons, Muslims declared 'Urdu' as their religious and 'Kaumi', meaning national language and started replacing Hindi and other indigenous words by Persian or Arabic ones. So much so, it has now become radically different from the original Urdu of Amir Khusro's time. Just listen to Urdu news broad-cast on the Doordarshan and see that pronunciation of over 75 per cent words are un-Indian. I wonder if you know that the first poet of Khari Boli (modern Hindi) and Urdu is one, namely, Amir Khusro. Muslims' first separatist battle was to attack introduction of Hindi, by the British government of the time, as a subsidiary official language in its own home State of United Provinces (UP) in 1901.
Urdu in its origin form was not a foreign language, but its growth since late 19th century has been Islamic and Arab centric. Now, if you write a verse in Urdu, you have to address God as "Allah" or "Khuda", not "Ishwar" or "Parmeshwara" and praise prophet Muhammed. Otherwise, you have no place in an Urdu Mushaira. In all Islamic madrasas, from Bengal to Gujarat and from Kashmir to extreme South, Urdu is the medium of education. Here is what a distinguished Pakistani scholar, Abdul Haque, speaking on the role of Urdu in the making of Pakistan, said in Karachi on February 15, 1961:
"Pakistan was not created by Jinnah, nor was it created by Iqbal. It was Urdu that created it. For, the fundamental reason for the discord between Hindus and Muslims was the Urdu language. The entire two-nation and all other difficulties of this nature issued solely from Urdu".
No wonder, Urdu is the official language of Pakistan and of J & K in India. Support to Urdu is support to Islam and Islamic rule.
Whilst Urdu may be what ever it is, the fact is that there is also another Indian language called Hindi, which seems to have been forgotten, overstepped, and dismissed. We should remember that for whatever Urdu is, was or is trying to be, Hindi is supposed to be the national Language of India, and not Hindustani, a misnomer for Urdu. Whilst the observation that just because you speak a language does not mean to say that you partake of the various ideologies associated with it may be true. We should remember that there is a language in India called Hindi, it is supposed to be its national language and it's script & vocabulary is different to Urdu.
Sadly I have had various encounters with people of different Indian cultures e.g. Gujaratis, Bengalis etc who speak beautiful Urdu thinking it to be beautiful Hindi. They had unfortunately watched many Bollywood films studiously, putting in a lot of extra hours after work, weekends etc., in their effort to learn a language which was anything but that Hindi. Can you imagine the pain they must have suffered having to sit through all that, for want of a better word, ? All that crying, singing, dancing & melodrama for hours and hours? The affect it must have had on their families, mothers in law etc. must have been devastating.
Most lovers of Urdu also happen to be lovers of Gazals a tradition of little or no literary merit. Whereas e.g. Haiku, a Japanese Literary art form is studied throughout the world I have yet to encounter translations of these Gazals though I believe they should be translated so we can all say wah! wah! are kya baat hai? after reading them with the prerequisite glass of whisky in our hands. Anyway when we were young and at school, there was a girl named Gazala, and we used to say, Oh look, here comes Gazala with the ears of a Gazelle, I know it was cruel, but there you are.
The compiler of the valuable Hindi/ Urdu Vocabulary list, next needs to add columns showing the words in some different Indian languages e.g. Gujarati, Bengali, and also one with their Sanskrit roots. On the whole it is a good composition.
Finally Sanskrit and Hindi words in Urdu? Surely you're having a laugh |
