Urdu – its survival and constancy

(This essay was read  at Jashan´ Urdu, Bimingham, 13 February 2004)

                                                                                                         by Sain Sucha

Time and again the discussion about Urdu’s survival and its constancy flare up in the Indian periodicals[i] as well as among the custodians[ii] of Urdu elsewhere in the world.

Do the speakers of a language that is said to be understood and spoken by almost 700 millions[iii] people in the world need worry about its survival, and prosperity?

This question has arisen in my mind as often as I have picked up one of these periodicals or talked to one of its defenders. Related to this basic question the other questions are:

1.      Are the claims about the number of Urdu-speakers inflated?

2.      Are the fears of Urdu-speakers ungrounded?

3.      Does Urdu have any intrinsic flaw that makes it frailer than other major languages?

4.      Which conditions, besides its linguistic characteristics, makes a language durable and dominant in a certain area as compared to other existing languages within the same area?

I would deal with each of these questions to some length separately, and then summarise the whole discussion.

1. Two major current habitat of Urdu are India and Pakistan. India is its natal home and Pakistan it’s naturalized one. Besides, along with Punjabi and Hindi, today it is widely spoken by the emigrants from South Asia in Britain; Central and Northern Europe; Parts of Canada and USA; Middle East, Eastern Africa and, oddly enough, certain countries in South America[iv]. How many people may claim Urdu as their mother-tongue varies enormously depending upon who is putting up the claim, but the official estimate puts it to be about 25 millions in India[v] and 10 millions in Pakistan[vi]. However, if we remove the condition mother-tongue and just count the number of people who can easily converse in Urdu/Hindi and understand them then the figures leaps into great numbers i.e. 350 -700 millions. The basic difference between everyday Urdu and Hindi is the script[vii], but that difference can be further exploited by the staunch supports of the disparity between them by the addition of Arabic and Persian words to Urdu, and Sanskrit to Hindi. In their main vocabulary, grammar, syntax and mood the two are fully compatible. Although the major homes of Urdu are reputed to be the area around Lukhnow-Dehli-Agra belt and Hyderabad in India; and Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan, none of them compete with Mumbai as the greatest propagator of Urdu. It is the film industry in Bollywood in India and, to some extent, Lollywood in Pakistan that has put Urdu/Hindi in millions of home within South Asia and far away from there in Asia, Africa, Europe and Americas. Whenever we mention the names like Anis, Mir, Ghalib, Hali, Iqbal, Majrooh, Faiz, Sahir, Faraz, Gulzar, Javeed Akhter, Fahmida Riaz, Parveen Shakir and[viii] Kishwer Naheed as the elites who gave lifeblood to Urdu poetry we must not forget to pay tribute to Sehgal, Farida Khanum, Lata Mangeshker, Rafi, Talat, Makesh, Geeta Dutt, Asha, Mehdi Hassan, Ghulam Ali and Jagjeet Singh for taking the Urdu lyrics out from books and putting them in the ears and mouths of hundred of millions of people all over the word. Just as when we endorse Hali, Nazir Ahmad, Preem Chund, Sajjad Zaheer, Krishan Chunder; Munto, Bedi, Qurratul Ain Hyder, Ismat Chugtai, Meerza Adeeb, and Qasmi Sahib as mentors of Urdu prose, we must acknowledge with gatitude the pronunciation, enunciation and delivery of Urdu dialogues by Pirthvi Raj, Sehrab Modi,  Daleep Kumar, Raj and Shashi Kapoor, Dev Anand, Amitab Bachan, Nasir Ud Din Shah,  Nargis, Nautan, Meena Kumari, Mudho Bala, Waheeda Rehman, Rekha, Shaban Azmi, in India and Santoosh Kumar, Muhammed Ali, Waheed Murad, Nadeem, Sabeha, Shammem Ara and Nayyer Sultana in Pakistan. In both cases it is not the first batch who taught people to speak and pronounce the Urdu language, but the members of the second group who enhanced the accuracy in speech and its articulation. It is through their diction, songs and ghazals that Urdu has its greatest exposure for the people who do not have Urdu as their mother-tongue. And it is these people who form the bulk of Urdu speakers in the today’s world.

Thus, we have a rather odd situation before us: only 35 million persons claim Urdu as their mother tongue, but it is used, loved and cherished by over 350 millions people all over the world. As a spoken language it is probably the third or forth largest language in the world, but when it comes to reading and writing it the numbers fall rapidly into a few million. With literacy rate of about 18% for India and Pakistan[ix] the number of people who have Urdu as their mother tongue and may read and write is down to 6 millions[x].  And that puts it just above Finnish, Danish and Norwegian – each has about 5 million speakers.

2. The above section shows that the fears of Urdu custodians are not unfounded; although, at times, they are overdriven. Presently the onslaught of English all over the world, as the commanding medium of Anglo-American dominance in financial, military and IT fields, is a disturbing factor for the speakers of many small languages. If I were to use Scandinavia as an example then we have the following situation:

Language          Country        Mother-tongue         Population                Literacy      Literacy

                                                  %                       in millions                                in millions

Swedish           Sweden              90                        9                      100%             8,1

Danish              Denmark            100                      5,4                   100%             5,4

Finnish              Finland               100                      5,1                   100%             5,1

Norwegian       Norway              100                      4,5                   100%             4,5

Icelandic           Iceland               100                      0,28                 100%             0,28

Urdu                India                   2,4                       1001                  18%               4,3

Urdu                Pakistan             7,6                       145                     17%               1,7

How the Scandinavians have tackled this problem? By being multi-linguists! Nearly all children in Scandinavia now learn English from the very beginning in their schools; but, at the same time the Scandinavian educationist have made it certain that all kind of knowledge that is available in other major languages of the world is also available to their children in their own languages. Thus, a Scandinavian child has a multiple choice to satisfy his hunger and curiosity in his pursuit for knowledge. The attitude of the Scandinavian scholars is to ascertain that the information given to the children, and other laymen, is in simple, straightforward and accurate language.

In other words their approach is not defensive but progressive and evolutionary.

If programmers in Microsoft and other computer companies can convert their programs in tiny languages like Swedish, Danish and Finnish then there is no reason to believe that they would be hesitant to offer their programs in Urdu once they know that there is a need and market for their products.

Currently In-page is the most widely used software in Urdu, and it is beneficial for all of us to help its producers standardise it by giving them financial as well as informative assistance. 

3. One major tragedy that I may associate with Urdu is that it lacks a home, where it could dwell and develop in its local surrounding free from all external pressure. In India, it is treated as a step-child because Pakistan adopted it as its national language. In Pakistan, despite its status as the national language, it is consider as an instrument of oppression used by the immigrants from India against the indigenous people. I have discussed this issue elsewhere[xi] in detail and would not take it up here.

In both cases injustice is done to Urdu. Urdu is a language meant to facilitate communication between people who comprehend it. Like any language it is a collection of words, with a grammar and syntax. As such it belongs to no religion or political system. If there are people who have deliberately taken steps to give Urdu religious or political colouring then the fault lies with these people not with the language which has no will or intention of its own but is merely a set of symbols in vocal or written form which, when appropriately used, brings people together.

As a matter of fact I would like to contend that as a language it is one of the most competent system to boost communication between people. It has benefited by the fusion of three great languages of the world: primarily Hindi, Arabic and Persian, and that merger was further augmented by the inclusion of several local languages and English. This provides an Urdu speaker, along with normal sounds that are produced by the use of mouth, lips and tongue, en enormous range of guttural, pharyngeal, aspirated and diphthongal sounds. Then, as a composite language its vocabulary freely borrowed words from the languages mentioned above, which means that it abounds with synonyms and has a very flexible syntax.

To elucidate my contention I would like to make certain comparisons by taking vaious linguistic groups:

The Latin languages – French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese – despite their popularity and mass as literary languages lack the hard palatal sound for D, R and T, along with the palatal and aspirated sounds (Bh , Ph, Th, Gh, Ch, Dh, Kh etc) of the Hindi group.

The Germanic group – English, Dutch, German – lacks the softer dental sounds for D and T, hard palatal R, along with the palatal and aspirated sounds (Bh , Ph, Th, Gh, Ch, Dh, Kh etc) of the Hindi group. Its speakers have further difficulty with the guttural and pharyngeal sounds of other languages.

The Semitic languages – Arabic, Hebrew etc – though they use many guttural and pharyngeal sounds, do not have the Hard D, R and T, soft P and other aspirated sounds of the Hindi group.

The Hindi group – Hindi, Punjabi, Gujrati etc – lack the sounds for Arabic Z ( zal, zeer, zuay, zuad) Q, Gh (Ghain), Kh (khey),  as well as the aspirated Th of Germanic languages.

Strangely enough an Urdu speaker learns to reproduce all these sounds because of the inclusion of words from most of the language groups; and, therefore, has it quite easy to learn any of these languages later on in life.

Urdu script, although it is based upon the nastaleeq style of the Persian, has also developed letters as well as additional signs to facilitate correct pronunciation of the written language.

I reiterate that when we look at the material written in Urdu there is no shortage of the so called elitist literature. It abounds with poetry and prose of high standard, but there is almost nothing in the non-fiction field. Somehow the promoters of Urdu ignored the normal everyday needs of the ordinary people and concentrated upon producing and composing for the educated. If we are talking about propagating Urdu, then propagation is done best through the coming generation. It is not a gathering of some old souls reciting Ghalib or Iqbal that would promulgate Urdu. If Urdu provides information to children who wish to repair their toys or instructions to use the computer; tells ordinary people how to fix a broken items at home, guides craftsmen who wishes to further their knowledge in their professional fields then Urdu would prosper, flourish and proliferate. Else these people would learn and use the language that fulfils their need.

4. For any language to prosper it requires the love and effort of its ordinary speakers as well the protection and patronage of the ruling/dominant class within a certain area. The preference of any language among the elite has always play been important in its role at various courts: French was once spoken as a leading language among the elite of Britain, just as Persian was the official language in the Mughal court. Urdu, as compared to other imported languages, was actually a local product that evolved in Old India by the mixing of people of various origins and their languages. Unfortunately, because of traditional low literacy in India[xii] it primarily remained a spoken language. The gentry that could read and write Urdu did no menial jobs and, therefore, concentrated upon literary aspects of the language; while those who worked with handicrafts, agriculture or other menial jobs were illiterates. Then, the absence of copyright and patent rights resulted in the dearth of written material in subjects like medicine, chemistry and other technical fields. Extremely learned and capable persons did not write down their formulas and data; and knowledge was passed on, if and when it was passed on, at person to person basis. Therefore, while Urdu is a great literary language it is extremely poor in the technical and other non-literary aspects. The artisans in various areas where Urdu was spoken used words from other local languages for different implements and tools, just as they used English word when the British took over India. When, subsequently, Urdu literacy was spread among street people dictionaries were composed to fill this huge gap. Even here the composers, instead of using or developing words ordinary Urdu or other local languages, chose to import words from Arabic and Persian making it even more difficult for the semi-educated working class to grasp the meaning of a given text. It appears as if the edifice of Urdu has a magnificent roof in which the brilliant names of Mir, Ghalib, Zoaq, Dagh, Iqbal, Faiz, Sahir, Minto and Qasmi are embedded, but its walls are left bare and its floor is still unpaved. For the survival of such a linguistic structure it is vital to immediately reinforce it with such knowledge that is not only supportive but also easily grasped.

The basic purpose of using a language is to facilitate communication between individuals. But a language can also be implemented to selectively retard communication between individuals of different groups. That is when a language, instead of bringing people together, becomes an instrument that divides people. This knowledge is not new and has been used in the past many time: Romans, in the conquered areas, deployed soldiers from various nations who could not communicate with the local people to suppress them. The Spaniards used Spanish as the official language in South America to hinder the Indians from freely communicating with each other and also competing with emigrants of European origin. Before the partition of India Urdu played a prominent linguistic role in the offices of Northern British India. After 1947, when India was divided into Bharat and Pakistan, Urdu received an extremely odd treatment: it was declared secondary to Hindi in its home grounds in Bharat; while it was imposed as the primary language in Pakistan. Overnight millions of Bengalis, Punjabi, Sindhis, Pathans and Balochis were left speechless and told to learn and master Urdu if they were to receive official jobs in the future. The man who supposedly declared Urdu as the national language of Pakistan did not speak Urdu himself! Obviously the reasons for this double treatment for Urdu were political and not linguistic. Bharat, with a Hindu majority, filtered out the Urdu speakers and writers from the competition; whereas, in Pakistan, the immigrant Urdu speakers ensured their hegemony by filtering out the local languages. It did not go well for Urdu in both places – In Bharat it lost its strength and charm where Hindi became the necessary medium for the job seeker; while in Pakistan the domination of the Urdu speaker lead to the contempt for Urdu by the indigenous people, eventually leading to the break away of Bangla Desh and later on to the turmoil and communal riots in Karachi in the nineties.

Thus, as said above, the crucial reasons for the fall of Urdu in Bharat and resistance to it in Pakistan are social and political. The added religious dimension to Urdu, where it is at times claimed to be the language of Muslims, made things only worse in Bharat where the non-Muslim advocators of it were put into a very difficult position by the opponents of Urdu[xiii].

Still, the fact remains that despite all the faults and follies of its supporters it continues to be the most widely spoken and understood language in South Asia[xiv]. It is a wonderful language that has benefited by the knowledge and skill of eastern as well as western scholars[xv]. Today Urdu speakers are spread all over the world and its supporters have laboured hard to make it one of the languages that has adapted well to the computers technology ­– today a must for a language if it were to survive in tomorrow's world!  Only time will tell if Persian script is vital for Urdu; or, like Turkish, it could move on to the Roman script. Much has been written against such transformation; but unfortunately such opponents of the Roman script have mainly English as the comparative script. English, despite its popularity in the world, is not a very good written language when it comes to accuracy in articulation and enunciation. Other languages have developed better methods for the precision in pronunciation of various letters of the alphabet[xvi].

Living in Sweden I do not believe that there is any danger for Urdu’s demise. It is one of the major languages in today’s world, and with adaptation to the computer language there is little chance that it would fall into disgrace. What is needed is that more attention should be paid to accommodate the needs of children and ordinary human being to make it a necessary source in their pursuit of knowledge and information. Obviously it would be a great leap forward if in areas where the interests clash its speakers learn to co-exist by teaching their language to other people and in return learning their languages. Multi-lingualism would be a vital asset in the future world, and it is never too late to start now!