An attack on a community often manifests as intense hatred towards their language. Urdu is a prime example of this. Once embraced by prominent Muslim and Hindu writers, who drew inspiration from its exquisite and diverse linguistic heritage, it is now disparaged by proponents of Hindu nationalism as a symbol of Islamist intrusion. The debate surrounding Urdu is both fierce and perplexing. Are Urdu and Hindi two distinct languages or do they share a common origin, later divided by toxic politics? Is Urdu foreign to India or is it an integral part of India’s heritage, transcending boundaries of religion and region? How did a language that was associated with love, romance, and social unity come to be linked with a particular religion?
One of the earliest myths surrounding Urdu is that it was a language spoken and possibly invented in the army camps of the Mughals by soldiers with Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hindustani backgrounds. These soldiers borrowed heavily from each other’s dialects and pioneered the formation of a common language. This theory was proposed by Mir Amman, an intellectual from the 18th century who translated “Bagh-o-Bahar,” a collection of allegorical stories believed to be written by Amir Khusrau. The fact that Urdu is derived from the Turkish word “lashkar” meaning camp added weight to Amman’s theory.
However, if Urdu was only invented in the 17th century, how do we explain its use in the compositions of Amir Khusrau, an Indo-Persian Sufi poet who died in 1325, or the presence of Urdu in the writings of Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty in 1526? Scholars like G.A. Grierson have challenged Amman’s theory and argued that a commonly spoken language, adapting to different eras, existed long before the arrival of the Mughals in the Indian subcontinent. Grierson emphasized in his “Linguistic Survey of India” that literary Hindustani (Urdu) is based on the vernacular Hindustani spoken in the Upper Doab and Western Rohilkhand.
While a definitive answer is not available due to the lack of scientific examination and research, many scholars believe that Urdu developed as a common language in the 11th and 12th centuries among people settled in and around Delhi. This development occurred through the assimilation of various dialects, such as Brij Bhasha, Mewati, Khari Boli, and Haryanvi, which themselves were offshoots of Prakrit languages.
Some scholars, including Akhtar ul Wasey, a recipient of the Padma Shri award, trace the origins of both Hindi and Urdu back to Amir Khusrau’s compositions. They argue that language has no religion; it is religion that needs a language. They point to non-Muslim writers like Firaq Gorakhpuri and Gopi Chand Narang, who have produced exceptional works in Urdu, as evidence of its inclusivity.
This perspective highlights the Indianness of Urdu, despite its evolution through contact with other cultures, much like how English has imported vocabulary from various languages. According to Pakistani linguist Rauf Parekh, Urdu nouns and adjectives have diverse origins, such as Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Pushtu, and even Portuguese, but the roots of ninety-nine percent of Urdu verbs can be traced back to Sanskrit/Prakrit. Thus, Urdu is considered an Indo-Aryan language, which belongs to the Indo-Iranian branch, a part of the larger Indo-European family of languages.
The Urdu-Hindi divide that persists today originated during the latter half of the 19th century, after the fall of the Mughal empire, when the British pursued a policy of divide and rule. They sought to create a wedge between Hindu nationalists and the elites of the Mughal era by promoting Hindi and the Devanagari script. The use of Devanagari script in courts, replacing the centuries-old Persian script, was a significant indicator of this policy. Hostility towards a common language for both Hindus and Muslims started to emerge as early as 1800 when the Fort William College was established. Reading materials were prepared in two different scripts: Persian for Muslims and Devanagari for Hindus. The idea of Hindi for Hindus and Urdu for Muslims, along with religious and ideological considerations, can be traced back to that time.
Various organizations advocating for Hindi and Urdu emerged rapidly in the 20th century, exacerbating the division. The Indian National Congress attempted to address the language controversy by endorsing Hindustani, written in both Devanagari and Persian scripts, but the Muslim League rejected this and rallied in favor of Urdu.
The negativity towards Urdu intensified during Partition, reducing the revered language to a symbol of “the other.” This hostility persisted in independent India, where the push for Hindi as the national language led to its Sanskritization, further marginalizing Urdu. Nefarious plots aimed at segregating Urdu continued, as seen in the 1967 riots in Bihar and the 1994 riots in Bangalore.
Since 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s electoral victories in the Hindi heartland have generated a political energy that openly seeks to humiliate and suppress Urdu.