Sorry, Gulzar saheb, Urdu is not thriving

Perhaps no other Indian language has been a subject of such relentless speculation about its future than Urdu with periodic rumours about its imminent death swiftly followed by a breathless buzz about its big revival. It’s going through one of those phases again amid excited talk that it’s on a grand comeback journey.The Jnanpith Award given to lyricist Gulzar for Urdu literature is seen as a recognition of its continuing presence in India's cultural life despite attempts over the years to undermine it by casting it as a foreign language and identifying it with Muslims.The award is the oldest and the highest Indian literary honour bestowed on Indian writers writing only in Indian languages recognised in the Constitution. That should disabuse conspiracy theorists of any lingering notion that it is a 'foreign' language. Gulzar took a swipe at Urdu's detractors reminding them of Mahatma Gandhi's assertion that Urdu was very much a "Hindustani language" and it "belongs to Hindustan". "Urdu is a wonderful language that is inherently Indian and still very much alive and thriving. It's not foreign. As Gandhiji said, 'Leave aside the Hindi-Urdu debate, call it Hindustani... because it belongs to Hindustan'", Gulzar told TOI after receiving the award. Gulzar shared with us this poem he wrote around two months ago—before the Jnanpith Award came calling—that sums up his sentiments about how languages adapt and endure… pic.twitter.com/LcyXukXBHA

— Mohua Das (@mohuadazz) February 25, 2024 To those who quibble over the fact that its script – written from right to the left like Persian and Arabic – makes it a concoction of foreign languages, he said: "Like it happens in the growth of any significant language, Urdu's phonetics derive from various languages like Awadhi, Prakrit, Braj Bhasha and Dakhini, yet it remains essentially Hindustani."Gulzar also dismissed fears about Urdu's future saying, "I don’t agree it’s a dying language nor am I worried about its future. Jis zubaan mein aap se main baat kar raha hun, aap sun rahe hai, yeh Urdu nahin toh kya hai? [The tongue I’m speaking to you in, what do you call it if not Urdu?]."His optimism is understandable having just bagged the country's most prestigious award for a language of his choice, sharing it with Jagadguru Rambhadracharya who received the honour for Sanskrit. medium108230047Revival or not? So, is Urdu really 'thriving'? It's true that currently it is enjoying a bounce on the back of a spike in popularity of ghazals and literary festivals such as Jashn-e-Rekhta.But to read in this a great Urdu revival is wishful thinking.First, the current fascination for Urdu is restricted mostly to ghazals, especially filmi-style ghazals, popularised by celebrity singers like Jagjit Singh, Pankaj Udhas, Ghulam Ali et al. There's very little interest in or curiosity about other aspects of Urdu literature. It's one of the most diverse languages rich with a range of genres but the modern Urdu lover is mostly indifferent to anything outside of light romantic poetry. Even interest in great Urdu poets like Ghalib and Mir is limited to those about 'ishq, ashiqui', 'jaam-o-meena' , and 'sharaab aur shabab' (love, wine, beauty). Go to any Urdu literary festival like Rekhta and you'll find everyone making a beeline only for poetry recitals or interviews with Bollywood poets. medium108229670This is not to negate a renewed interest in Urdu, but it is essentially an urban phenomenon and doesn't reflect the real state of Urdu. The reality is that Urdu is living on borrowed time in the absence of any sign of a change in the barely concealed official hostility towards it. And this hostility predates the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) arrival on the scene. The main culprit is the Congress, once dominated by Hindi chauvinists. It was on its watch that Urdu's decline began as it was effectively banished from the classroom and job market ensuring that people had no incentive to learn it.The most lethal way to kill a language is to make sure that it ceases to have economic utility, especially in a country where education is so closely tied to its usefulness as a gateway to economic and social mobility. And that's exactly what happened to Urdu. Once it ceased to be of any use in people's socio-economic advancement, nobody wanted to waste time learning it. Traditionally Urdu-speaking north-Indian Muslims were also quick to abandon it. The younger generation of Muslims, even in its once-heartlands like Lucknow, now barely has nodding acquaintance with it or its literature. Today, Urdu resides only in literary saloons and festivalsAs Qatar-based academic and critic Rizwan Ahmad wrote recently: "This elite has a romanticised and orientalised view of the language of love, beauty, politeness, tahzeeb and romance." It is seen as something "exotic" evoking nostalgia for a culture that is no more.The success of festivals like "Jashn-e-Rekhta", Ahmad argued, is not so much an indicator of the "health of the language and more about the marketing of the event" with Bollywood celebrities roped in to promote it. He likened the hype to “the popularity of sarson ka saag and makke ki roti in elite hotels and restaurants where the dish is an exotica – an occasional item on the menu rather than a lived experience of a villager”. ShowBlurbs Research by well-known academic Sudha Pai has revealed a "consistent decline in patronage and support" for Urdu, especially in its erstwhile stronghold of UP. She called it a "victim of an increasingly communalised political arena in UP", pointing out that barring two Urdu medium schools run by Aligarh Muslim University, the state didn't have a single Urdu-medium school.Last summer, the All India Urdu Convention held in Ranchi expressed concern over its slow death and resolved to fight to "save" it. It flagged up closures of Urdu-teaching schools and a lack of any incentive to learn Urdu as among the factors behind its decline.A glaring example is the famous Urdu Bazaar in Delhi's Jama Masjid area which was once the 'go to' place for anyone looking for Urdu books, journals and newspapers. Today, only a handful of bookshops are left and instead the area is dotted with tawdry fast food joints. Even the name of Urdu Bazar Road is reported to have been quietly renamed Jama Masjid Road. "If you are visiting there after a few years, you would observe a sea change as many former bookshops (also known as kutub-khana) are now occupied by rows of shops selling meat delicacies. It is anybody’s guess for how long the remaining kutub-khanas would survive," writes journalist Vivek Shukla lamenting the real state of Urdu in the age of Jashn-e-Rekhta. A language thrown out of the classroom, banished from the job market, and even stripped of its script – the heart and soul of a language – the image of a thriving language is the last thing that comes to mind.Read more articles by the writer here