The Frigid Face of Urdu
Time and again impassioned pleas to save Urdu come from all quarters. Parliamentarians like Mr. Banatwala thunder about the step-brotherly treatment thrust upon Urdu ; Mr. Shahabuddin laments the decline of Urdu press and the shrinking strength of its students. The Congress has always extolled this fountain of ganga-jamuni culture, but done little beyond. Now in power the BJP considered it judicious to let an eminent Kathak dancer refocus on Ghalib in the lanes old Delhi. Whatever the quarter, the attitude is conservationist. Its proponents equate its development with jobs for its graduates. But there is hardly any effort to make it more useful in the contemporary scene. What has been forgotten is the force which gave it birth, growth and resilience, namely its erswhile vitality to interact and mix with other languages; its historical usefulness for the lower middle class to communicate with corridors of power and high tradition when rulers prided in Turkish, Persian and Arabic..
Urdu was never the language of the elite or the masses. It is difficult to convey this bit of linguistic history to modern Indians or even Pakistanis as false stories about languages and scripts are a powerful influence. Many well educated people have to be told that Sanskrit was not always written in Devanagari before the 19th century, but in all the scripts associated with regional languages today. One script for one language is a creation of print tehnology. Films like Mughle- Azam and a host of tv serials that thrust Persianised Urdu into the mouth of every Muslim character from King to fisherman or chaste Hindi (Sanskrit infested) into the speech of every Hindu , have left no room for linguistic history in the common imagination..
Urdu was also not the official or court language in medieval India except at the sunset of the Mughal empire. The place was occupied mostly by Persian. As is well known Urdu began as a pidgin in the eleventh century with the interaction between the local Hindi that prevailed at the time. The sufis used it to create their syncretic expression for devotees of mostly the lower classes. Its early literature was a mixture of medieval Hindi, from Dingal to Brij, Avadhi, Punjabi and Mewari etc. The "sufiana kalam" extant today got refurbished in the process of aural transmission and musical performances. Across the Vindhyanchal it developed as "dakkhini"..
Using different languages in a single text or composition is an age old tradition in India. Ancient plays used Sanskrit, Shaurseni, Magadhi etc., all together. Compositions with some lines in Sanskrit and some in Prakrit constituted the "manipravala" style. Sufis carried forward this tradition by mixing lines of Brij and Persian. Centuries later in the twilight of Aurangzeb's rule, dakkhini and khari boli were heavily weighed down by Persian-Arabic vocabulary and imagery to make a style which is regarded as elite or adabi glossary of Urdu. Wali , Mir, Bedil and Darda consolidated this style in Delhi, Insha. Sauda and others in Lukhnow. Further into the nineteenth century when parochialism and ornamentation became rampant in all arts and cross country movement of artists obtaining earlier under Mughal patronage came to an end, Urdu poetry leaned too heavily on Persian. Yet it was not disitinguished generically from Hindi. Dreaming of attaining immortality through his Persian poetry, Ghalib called his vernacular writing "kalame- hindavi" loaded with all the topographic ambivalence of the word "hind"..
The advent of print marked out Urdu as visually separate. By the end of the last century, the elitist Urdu of the court poets of the last emperor and the Luknawi literati, was slowly given an ethnic connotation by the western sociological system in which groups are defined by the building blocks of religion, language, script, food and clothes. In another half a century, the nexus of Islam- Urdu-arabic script-nonvegetarianism-shalwar-kameez was formalised. Urdu was no longer a medium of approaching the new ruling class and its language (now English), or other languages of India as in the past. The westernised Urdu elite , not the lower middle class, now called the shots. Urdu became the medium of constructing modern Muslim identity and also a separate nation. This is evident most in the fact that the Urdu of All India Radio is no different (except for the accent) from that of Radio Pakistan. In both the countries formal Urdu shrinks from contact with Sindhi, Punjabi, Hindi, Gujarati and Marathi. Movement by some writers on both side of the border to make it open and flexible recieves little encouragement..
Identity phobia in persons, traditions, and languages alike generates first frigidy and then hostility towards others. Collections of great Urdu poets are sold in devanagari editions in huge numbers, some day an Urdu newapaper may try the same, or a Hindi daily may experiment with two Urdu pages. The script is a matter technology and should be left to evolve as per demand for all Indian languages. But exchanges between languages make them richer and stronger. It is more a matter of attitude, whether to be open or close minded. The point (nuktaa) of identity if pushed too far can isolate (judaa) us from even God (khudaa) let alone other beings but if used judiciously, it can end our egoism (josh) and bring sanity (hosh).
Pioneer (Second Opinion), 8/6/98