Mind this language, please

In South India, Muslims who migrated from north India have begun to assert their relationship with Urdu. This inclination surfaced in the contentious telecast of an Urdu bulletin in Bangalore in 1995, which resulted in communal riots. The aggressiveness of traditional Urdu speaking as well as non-Urdu speaking Muslims on the issue is not only an indication of their reaction to an adverse socio-political atmosphere and government policies, but also a reflection of the fact that state sponsored institutions like Urdu academies and Urdu departments of universities haven8217;t been able to provide the language with the support it needs.

The decline of Urdu has largely been caused by insensitive policies. Since Independence and Partition, it was undermined in all educational institutions of north India 8212; the region where it was born, where it flourished. North India8217;s culture had already suffered a blow with the migration of the educated elite and middle class Muslims to Pakistan. At present, the Urdu speaking people of India are mainly lower middle class Muslims who obtain their education mostly at dini madaris religious learning centres. They learn Urdu not because it8217;s a part of their cultural heritage and their social life, but because it appears to be the only avenue to the discovery of their religion. Their contribution to Urdu as a literary language remains negligible.

It8217;s an equally sad story at the university level. Most Urdu academics at universities are products of minimal competition. They have little exposure or opportunity to develop and finetune their academic skills and competence. And Urdu students at universities learn Urdu as an optional subject at the undergraduate level and barely know how to read or write the language. This situation will persist unless Urdu is included in the syllabi up to the senior secondary level education and is professionally taught.

Unfortunately, there is no consensus among Urdu-speaking people on advocating education through the Urdu medium, at least upto the secondary level. Some effort to understand the problem has been made in periodic newspaper articles, but they suffer from paucity of data and field work, not to mention the absence of a theoretical framework or an innovative vision. These articles harp on traditional arguments but fail to indicate a strategy for the revival of Urdu as a functional language in the common civic space.

The state8217;s myopia has also resulted in cultivating a breed of pro-establishment Urdu intellectuals and scholars now referred to as Urduwallahs. Most of these people spend their energies looking for a chance to enter the establishment and be absorbed. They are so preoccupied with their survival that they unwittingly become indifferent to Urdu8217;s survival.

There are innumerable people who love Urdu and are concerned at its grim prospects. Most of them are not necessarily part of the Urdu canon. Urdu makes its own converts: a person who enters the world of Urdu is charmed forever by its magic spell. But it will be a gross self-deception to hope that the use of Urdu language in popular films and ghazal singing will be adequate to revive and preserve Urdu culture, especially since younger generations are increasingly ignorant of the great literary tradition and heritage of Urdu.

To begin with, let8217;s introduce the language at every level of the education system. If future generations remain ignorant of the Urdu language and literature, it will result in an irrecoverable loss of our common cultural heritage. The survival of Urdu is necessary not merely for aesthetic reasons but also to save a valuable dimension of the secular character of the world8217;s largest democracy.

The writer is a Congress leader and grandson of former president, Zakir Husain, whose 106th birth anniversary falls today