The Urdu language written in Persio-Arabic script is the 19th major language of the world spoken by 104 million people.The Urdu language was developed during the 12th century. Urdu formed from Khariboli- a Prakrit spoken in north India by adding Persian and Arabic words to it.
The word ‘Urdu’ is derived from the Turkic word ‘ Ordu’ meaning army.The name Urdu was first used by the poet Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi around 1780. Hazrat Amir Khusrav is considered as the first Urdu poet. During the British period Hindustani written in Persian script by both Hindus and Muslims came to be known as Urdu. Hindustani or Urdu has been one of the most widely spoken languages during the 19th and 20th centuries in the Indian Subcontinent. The partition of British India in 1947 on the basis of religious majority, did a great harm to the Muslims of India and their second language i.e. Urdu.
Although the Urdu language is the mother tongue of a small proportion of Muslims in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, yet it was spoken widely by the Muslims as their second language.The Urdu language was being spoken by Sikhs and Hindus of North India in large numbers and Sikh and Hindu poets and writers like their Muslim brethren have enormously contributed to the development of this language over the past centuries. The recognition of Urdu as a national language by the Pakistan Government has definitely helped in the promotion of Urdu language in that country although, it is the mother tongue of just 8% population of that country.
In East Pakistan the Bengali nationalists resisted the popularization of Urdu language as they treated it as the language of elite class of West Pakistan.The largest number of Urdu speaking people live in India but unfortunately it was perceived as a competitor to Hindi language written in Devanagari script.Urdu is officially recognized language in India and has official status in National Capital Territory of Delhi to which the language has remained deeply attached through out the medieval history of Muslim Sultanates and Empires.
The Urdu has the recognition of an official language in the Indian states of Utter Pradesh, Bihar, Telangana and Jammu and Kashmir. As per the census of 2001 there were 85,061,078 Urdu speaking people in the country out of which 38, 272, 080 speakers live in Uttar Pradesh alone.Bihar with 17, 757,548 Urdu speaking people is the second largest state followed by Telangana and Andhra Pradesh with a total of 8, 575, 033 Urdu speaking people.The other states having 1.5 million to 5.5 million Urdu speakers include Karnataka, Jarkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Gujrat and Tamil Nadu. The states with more than 3 lakh to 6 lakh Urdu speakers include Orissa, Uttrakhand and Haryana.The states having above 50, 000 Urdu speakers include Chhatisgrah and Goa. Keeping in view the large size of Urdu speaking people in the country the Government of India did establish the National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language.
The Central Government has also established Maulana Azad National Urdu University at Hyderabad and has made provisions for Urdu medium education at Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Millia Islamia and several other Muslim Minority Educational Institutions in the country.The prestigious private and public schools in Delhi teaching the syllabus prescribed by NCERT and CBSE have however discriminated against the Urdu language because most of these schools allow the students to opt for Hindi, Sanskrit, French and German as the second language. The Delhi based private and public schools ignore the fact that more than 2.7 million people in the National Capital Territory are Urdu speakers whose educational needs need to be taken care of.
The Delhi Union Territory can’t be however singled out for discriminating against the Urdu language, the other states having a large number of Urdu speaking population are also undermining the importance of Urdu language.The number of persons having Urdu language as their mother tongue in Jammu and Kashmir State is less than 15,000 but Urdu being the official language in the state enjoys full government patronage. The net impact of this discriminatory language policy indirectly debars the Muslim students from taking admission at secondary and senior secondary levels.
Those Muslim students who seek admission in these schools at pre-primary and primary levels are forced by the circumstances to opt for other languages as their second language. The Sanskrit language which has hardly any speakers in the country is being taught by Delhi based schools because the upper caste Brahmin community of this country makes the use of this language in various religious practices and life cycle rituals.The Muslims constituting 15% population of India perform their religious duties and life cycle rituals by making use of Arabic language but there is no provision for teaching this international language as the second language in Delhi based private and public schools.The Muslim community in general and the Urdu, Persian and Arabic loving people in particular must come forward to demand the introduction of Urdu, Persian and Arabic languages as the second language in private and public schools of Delhi to make quality education in the country more inclusive.
Delhi being the national capital of India needs to be responsive not just to the educational needs of the Delhi Union Territory but also to the other lingual communities living in the country. Urdu, Persian and Arabic are not the languages of any specific locality or a region but the three international languages spoken by the Muslim community in India for past one millennium. So the preservation and enhancement of these languages is the responsibility of the central and respective state government.
Prof. G. M. Athar can be reached at ghathar@yahoo.co.in
