Hot off the presses, hope for Urdu

Urdu newspapers made vital contributions to the national cause during the struggle for independence. Having realised the importance of Urdu, national leaders responded well to slogans like Inquilab Zindabad (Subhash Chandra Bose) and songs like Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mein hai (Ram Prasad Bismil) or Sare jahan se achha Hindustan hamara (Iqbal). Urdu was then the lingua franca, and this state continued till the late 60s.

This language was not the preserve or prerogative of Muslims alone – several publishing houses of the language were run by non-Muslims. Some of the greatest Urdu litterateurs have been Hindus, like Firaq Gorakhpuri, Krishna Chander, Jagan Nath Azad, Tilok Chand Mehroom, Fikr Taunsvi, Rajinder Sing Bedi and Professor Gopichand Narang. But political hawks have pigeonholed Urdu as a Muslim language. A fallacy, since it is a language of composite culture. Urdu, meaning lashkar, (a conglomeration of people from various backgrounds), was created within the army ranks of the Mughals. Just like Hindi is today, Urdu was a bridge between Hindus and Muslims. If at all there is a `Muslim’ language, it is Arabic.

Few non-Muslims realise that the largest surviving group of victims of Partition are the Muslims who chose to stay in the land of their birth with Maulana Azad’s motto in mind- Jo chala gaya usko bhool ja / Hind ko apni jannat bana (Forget those who left for Pakistan / Make India your garden of Eden). Post-Partition, Muslims have come to be misunderstood, mistrusted and despised, and nothing symbolises this more than the treatment meted out to Urdu. Hindus have been misled into believing that Urdu is an alien language, that it is the language of foreign invaders that was forced on to the conquered Hindus. The truth is, the foreign invaders were Turks, whose language was not Urdu since it never existed then. Urdu grew on Indian soil as a language of the bazaars and the chhavnis (military garrisons) of north India as a confluence of Sanskrit, Persian and Hindi.

Today, Urdu is mistrusted as it has been adopted as the national language of Pakistan. Which itself is ironic, since Urdu is considered an alien language in Pakistan as well as it is spoken by a handful of Mohajirs (Indian immigrants). The brand of Urdu spoken by the Pakistanis is most pathetic, tinged as it is with Punjabi, Baluchi, Multani, Sindhi or some North West Frontier Province dialect. The real Urdu speaking people are in India alone. Languages the world over are mostly region-specific rather than being religion-specific. Similarly, Hindi may not be the mother tongue of all Indians.

There have been some reasonably well-circulated Urdu dailies from the South – Siasat, Rehnuma-e-Deccan, Munsif, Nasheman, the East – Azad Hind and Akhbar-e-Mashriq or the West – Inquelab, Urdu Times, Hindostan. But there has been no Urdu daily in the north that is a patch on any of these papers. In Delhi, publication of the Aljamiat Ronamah collapsed in the 60s. Pratap, Hind Samachar and Milap were never popular with Muslims.

It’s ironic that Delhi, the cradle of several civilisations and the city adored by Ghalib, Zauq, Momin, Mir, Dagh and Hali has had no dignified, sustaining Urdu daily to cater to the educational, political, social and intellectual tastes of citizens. There was the Qaumi Awaz, which was a mouthpiece for the Congress party.

In fact, the Congress has exploited the Muslim community by making tall claims of uplifting `their’ Urdu – something that has remained unfulfilled. The Congress leaders and the so-called Muslim representatives kept diverting the real issues confronting Muslims like educational, social, and economic upliftment to political ones, like the Shah Bano case, the Aligarh Muslim University’s minority character and Salman Rushdie. Muslim intelligentsia too has been responsible for the poor showing of the community.

The Urdu press has been accused of yellow journalism. That is true to the extent that they want to sell by sensationalising issues. It was keeping this in mind that the Urdu Rashtriya Sahara daily was launched from Lucknow, disseminating news and views throughout the country and abroad as well. But the fact remains that the Urdu press is bereft of a single big paper or one whose daily circulation is more than 75,000.

Most Urdu dailies are either medium or small. They also suffer from discrimination, particularly from lower-level officials who are prejudiced against the language. Owing to lack of resources and advertisements from the private and public sector, many have closed down, like Blitz Urdu Haftrozah (a weekly from Bombay), Milap (Hyderabad daily) and Nizam Gazette (Hyderabad weekly). The list goes on.

Now, with the launch of the new daily, there’s hope that those who love Urdu and wish to see the language survive will have something to pick up every morning.

(The author is a freelance journalist and specialises in topics on Urdu and Muslims).