“There was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Kingsley Amis’s famous statement made in the modern classic, Lucky Jim, is most appropriate in any discussion related to Urdu, a language known for its literary finesse and remarkable linguistic ability to adapt from other languages but also for being occasionally overshadowed by nasty politics. In this regard, the Bangla versus Urdu debate in erstwhile East Pakistan may rank as the nastiest, with Pakistani politics using the Urdu language as one of the oppressive forces, along with military power, to capture the resources of the East Pakistan province, now Bangladesh. Pakistan has a history of erroneously claiming Urdu as the language of Muslims.
The worst was that in the provinces governed by Pakistan, the new settlers in Karachi who claimed Urdu as their language were not all Urduspeaking. Most of the North Indian migrants were native speakers of regional languages, many of which did not even have a script of their own. This is with the exception of some who migrated from the urban areas of western Uttar Pradesh, where Urdu was the language of the educated lot. The dust of Urdu settled in East Pakistan after the end of the monthslong Bangladesh Liberation War on December 16, 1971, almost 23 years after M. A. Jinnah’s explosive speech in impeccable English at the Dhaka University Convocation on March 24, 1948, proposing that Urdu be made the one and only national language of Pakistan — another cruel joke at the expense of Urdu by the politician who had nothing to do with the language even remotely.
The whole region of Bengal, whether in India or Bangladesh, has been caught up in this dichotomy of languages. Most syllabus books that arrive from North India in the dini madaris of West Bengal and Bangladesh are in Urdu. These are Urdu translations of the syllabus books in the high standard Arabic, whose teaching challenges the teachers due to their non-proficiency in Arabic.
West Bengal, though tolerant as far as religious freedom goes, is culturally and linguistically quite territorial. Urdu and other languages have, meanwhile, accepted Bangla for practical and functional reasons, and enriched its linguistic and literary horizon.
Contemporary politics has been forced to spare languages despite the law of nature that old habits die hard; occasionally, we see some unruly assertions to capture power using languages also. We recently witnessed the arrest of a government school principal in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district after a video that was circulated on social media showed school children singing “Lab pe aati hai dua banke tamanna meri” during the morning assembly, a poem penned in 1902 by the Urdu poet, Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938). This is disturbing because it was very much a prayer sung during morning assembly throughout my childhood in the whole of North India and, in later years too, whenever I visited a school, I joined the students in singing it. Fortunately, Urdu was not part of any separatist movement after Partition, even by Muslim politicians. The Urdu-speaking masses too tried to keep a safe distance from atavistic politics. But they also made a blunder in not supporting the languages that were suppressed by major languages. And for this, they paid the price — whenever Urdu was bulldozed, especially in North India after Partition and thrown out of the formal education system, no language group came forward to support it.
The most pleasant development in the last hundred years has now come from West Bengal. Earlier, every language asserted its worth. Some of them not only tried but also captured the space of other languages. In North India, especially languages whose grammatical structure was close to dominant languages were usurped by these dominant languages. In West Bengal, since Bangla has not tried to submerge Urdu, those who claim Urdu as their language, despite the functional language being Bangla, have demanded that Bangla be taught as a compulsory language in the state’s government-run Urdumedium schools. This sane demand, under the banner of the Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind), indicates that there is a wind of change in West Bengal politics through culture which is revolutionary, as Anjuman has never indulged in any politics in the last hundred and forty years. In matters related to language and culture, its stance is always progressive. At least Muslim politics is no longer likely to use the Urdu debate. Of course, West Bengal’s education policy, which does not make it compulsory for the state’s principal language to be taught in every school, is quite surprising. It is a blunder, paving the way for separatism through language politics if a major political party were to be in a position to exploit it.
Only a powerful organisation with a progressive outlook on Urdu can act as a harbinger of peace. On November 20, 2022, a historic step was taken by the Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind), the organisation established in 1882 by none other than Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. The organisation enjoys the same status as Académie Française or the French Academy in canon formation. The Anjuman was the first organisation to take steps towards the standardisation of Urdu orthography keeping in view its Indian roots as the majority of words are from the local languages. Contrary to the impression that Arabic and Persian overly influence Urdu, in fact hardly 10% of Urdu vocabulary consists of Arabic and Persian words; even those 10% often differ in meaning and pronunciation from the source languages. The Anjuman’s 50 branches have now been given a new lease of life in West Bengal. The organisation is actively working towards reviving all its 650 branches across the country, focusing on including Urdu in the school curriculum, which is paramount for the survival of any language in the common civic space.
True to the nature of Bengalis, of showing solidarity and standing up for their beliefs, an audience of 20,000 demanded the inclusion of Bangla in Urdu-medium schools at the convention held at Calcutta. Since the organisers did not anticipate such enthusiasm for the cause, most of the people had to wait outside the auditorium, which could hardly accommodate 500 people.
One can only hope that the message reaches the country’s policy planners and that the government of West Bengal is also listening. I cannot believe that divisive forces locking horns with Bangla are blind to the developments and would remain silent, especially now that some noise in favour of harmony between Bangla and Urdu has been made.
Salman Khurshid is a senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India and former external affairs minister of India
