tariq rahman
Urdu as an Islamic Language
Abstract
Urdu,
presently the national language of Pakistan and the identity
symbol of Indian Muslims, is associated with Islam in South Asia. This
association was forged during British colonial rule when modernity first
impacted India. The British replaced Persian, the official language of
Mughal rule, with Urdu at the lower level and English at the higher one in
parts of North India and present-day Pakistan. Urdu was disseminated by
networks of education and communication in colonial India. It became
the medium of instruction in the Islamic seminaries (madrasas) and the
major language of religious writings. It also became part of the Muslim
identity and contributed, next only to Islam itself, in mobilizing the
Muslim community to demand the creation of Pakistan, which was carved
out of British India in 1947.
In Pakistan, Urdu and Islam are the main symbolic components of the
Pakistani Muslim identity that resists the expression of the ethnic identities
of that country based upon the indigenous languages of the people. This
Pakistani Muslim identity is supported by right-wing politics and is
antagonistic not only to ethnic identification but also to the globalized,
liberal, Westernized identity based upon English which is the hallmark of
the élite. In India, however, Urdu supports the Muslim minority against
right-wing Hindu domination. In short, Urdu plays complex and even
contradictory roles in its association with Islam in Pakistan and parts of
North India.
*
Urdu is the national language of Pakistan as well as the language of wider
communication in that country. It is also associated with the Muslim
101
102 • The Annual of Urdu Studies
community in India. Urdu is not considered sacrosanct in itself because it
is not Arabic, though it is written in the Persian nastaʿlīq script which, in
turn, is based on the Arabic calligraphic style called naskh. It also has a
number of Arabic loanwords, though, for that matter, it has even more
words of Persian and some of Turkish origin. For all these importations of
Muslim lexicons, it is a derivative of Hindui or Hindvi, the parent of both
modern Hindi and Urdu (Rai 1984). The oldest names of Urdu are:
ìHindvi,î ìHindi,î ìDihlavi,î ìGujri,î ìDakani,î and ìRekhtah.î In the north,
both ìRekhtahî and ìHindiî were popular as names for the same language
from sometime before the eighteenth century, and the name ìHindiî was
used, in preference to ìRekhtah,î from about the mid-nineteenth century.
(Faruqi 2003, 806)
Indeed, the name Urdu seems to have been used for the first time, at least
in writing, around 1780 (ibid.). In short, during the period when Urdu
became the language of Islam in South Asia, it was called Rekhtah, Hindi
and, only sometimes, Urdu. The ordinary, spoken version (bazaar Urdu)
was and still is almost identical with popular, spoken Hindi. Thus, in
sheer size, the spoken language is a major language of the world (see
Appendix).
As it is associated with the Muslim identity in both pre- and post-Partition India, with Pakistani nationalism in Pakistan, and with Islam in
South Asia in general, the key to understanding the relationship between
religion, language and modernity is to study the rise of Urdu as the language of Islam in British India and its role in Pakistan. As Urdu was not
the mother language of the people of the area now called Pakistan, this
study of Urdu as the language of South Asian Islam will take us to North
India, the home of Urdu, and the British role in India when both modernity and Urdu first became social forces to reckon with in the construction
of the contemporary Muslim culture and identity.
Review of Literature
The paradigmatic work on the language of politics in Islam is Bernard
Lewisís book The Political Language of Islam (1988). Lewis looks at the
way words are used to express political ideas, including modern ones
such as ìconstitutionî and ìnation,î in the major languages of the Muslim
worldóArabic, Turkish and Persian (the order in which the author writes
Tariq Rahman • 103
about these languages). Lewis, however, does not touch upon Urdu
except when he defines ìthose who are ruledî in the context of British
rule in India. These, he notes, were called ìryotî by the British in India
(ibid., 61). The other major text about language and Islam, Muzaffar
Alamís book The Languages of Political Islam (2004), studies Persian texts
dealing with governance and traces out the relationship between Persian
and Mughal power. Islam, of course, shapes the texts as well as the
relationship mentioned above, and it is interpreted by the exponents of
the Sharīʿa and the Sufis. Unlike Lewis, Alam does not study the political
terms as used in India except when they occur in relation to something
else. More to the point, like Lewis, he too does not study the use of Urdu,
or any indigenous language of the Indian Muslims, in any of these
contexts.
The only major works about Urdu as an Islamic language that use
modern scholarly methods are those by the French Scholar Marc
Gaborieau (1993 and 1995). Other scholarsóTroll (1978), Pearson (1979),
and Lelyveld (1978)óhave scattered, though insightful, references to the
subject. The major works in Urdu are Abdul Haqís study of the role of the
Sufis (1977) and A. D. Nasīmís work on the role of the Chisti Sufis in the
evolution of Urdu (1997). Ayub Qādrī has written a similar study of the
role of the ulema in the evolution of Urdu prose (1988). There are also lists
of the translations (Khan 1987) as well as the exegeses of the Qurʾān in
Urdu (Naqvī 1992). All of these books follow the style of the chronologically arranged dictionary giving biographical entries with samples from
prose and poetry, in the case of writers, and details of writings, in the case
of translations and exegeses.
There are also some other isolated studies of Islamic writings in other
languages of South Asia (Naeem 1986). These studies provide lists of
individual works and help trace out the history of the use of these
languages in writings about religion. However, they lack analytical
insights about the changes in identity, perceptions about languages or the
culture of the Muslims of South Asia as a consequence of the use of these
languages.
This article intends to present such an analysis but, like earlier works,
most space will be given to tracing out chronologically how Urdu came to
be associated with Islam in the area now called Pakistan. Attention will
also be given to North India in passing as far as the evolution of Urdu as
an Islamic language is concerned.
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The Emergence of Urdu as an Islamic Language
Unlike Arabic, but like Persian, there was nothing intrinsically holy about
Urdu. It was part of the Islamic culture and Muslim identity in India
because it was the language of the dominant élite. When this élite lost its
political power in the wake of British colonialism, it consolidated its
cultural power through the techniques and artifacts of modernity. The
most important changes created by modernity were a formal chain of
schools, the printing press, an orderly bureaucracy and the concept of the
unity of India. Schools in North India used Urdu as a medium of instruction (Rahman 2002, 210ñ11). The printing press created and disseminated
books in Urdu in larger numbers than could have been possible earlier.
Indeed, as Francis Robinson points out, ìthe ulema used the new technology of the printing press to compensate for the loss of political powerî
(1996, 72). The lower bureaucracy, especially the courts of law and the
non-commissioned ranks of the army, used some form of ìHindustaniî (or
Urdu) in the Persian and the Roman scripts respectively. And the idea of
ìIndiaî or ìHindustanî was spread widely by the British sahibs and memsahibs who spoke a few words of ìHindustaniî wherever they traveled by
rail or otherwise over India as if the language of the Subcontinent was
somehow Urduóor, at least, some bazaar variant of it.
The Sufis had started using the ancestor of Urduóvariously called
Hindvi, Hindui or, in regional forms, Gujrati or Dakkanióin informal
conversation and occasional verses. Khvāja Banda Navāz Gēsū Darāz
(1312ñ1421), who was born in Delhi and lived there for 80 years, migrated to
Gulbarga when Amir Taimur destroyed Delhi in 1400. Sultan Feroz Shah
Bahmini (1397ñ1421), who himself is said to have composed verse in Urdu
(Sharīf 2004, 85), was the ruler and he welcomed the saint. Khvāja Gēsū
Darāz gave sermons in Dakkani Urdu, since people were less
knowledgeable in Persian and Arabic, and has left behind both prose and
verse in this language (ibid., 59). Beginning from this early start in the
fourteenth century, there are a number of malfūāt, recording the conversations of Sufi saints, containing Hindvi words (examples given in
Nasīm 1997). This language was not, however, considered appropriate for
religious writing so Shāh Mīrāñ Jī (d. 1496) writes in a didactic poem in
Hindvi that this language was like the diamond one discovered in a dung
heap. He makes it clear that the poem is intended for those who knew
neither Arabic nor Persian. Then, in easy Hindvi verse, which contemporary Urdu readers can understand with some effort, the author explains
mysticism through questions and answers (Haq 1977, 48ñ50). Another
Tariq Rahman • 105
mystic, Shāh Burhānu íd-Dīn Jānam, wrote a Hindvi poem composed in
1582. He too apologizes for writing in Hindvi but argues that one should
look at the meaning, the essence, rather than the outward form (ibid., 62ñ
63).
The attitudes of these fifteenth and sixteenth century mystics is similar
to that of the Mehdavisópioneers of a new religious sectówho followed
the teachings of Saiyid Muḥammad Mehdī of Jaunpur (1443ñ1505) which
were considered heretical at that time. In a poem written between 1712ñ56
in Hindvi, the Mehdavis say that one should not look down upon Hindi as
it is the commonly used language of explanation (in Shērānī 1940, 207).
Indeed, even earlier than this period, there were poems in Urdu explaining the rudiments of Islam such as Saiyid Ashraf Jahāñgīr Samnānīís (d.
1405) ìrisālaî (treatise) on ethics and mysticism written in 1308 (Naqvī 1992,
23). There is also Shāh Malikís Sharīʿat Nāma (1666ñ67) in Dekkani verse.
These Sharīʿa guidebooks, as they might be called, can be seen in the
catalogs of the British Library (Blumhardt 1926; Quraishi and SimsWilliams 1978).
Religious Writings in Urdu After Shah Waliullah
Shah Waliullah (1703–62) is a major figure of Islamic reform and revivalism
in India and a pioneer of fundamentalist, puritanical Islamic practice as
well. Although be himself wrote in Arabic and Persian, he encouraged his
son Shāh ʿAbdu íl-ʿAzīz to learn idiomatic Urdu (Rizvi 1982, 77). His other
sons, Shāh ʿAbdu íl-Qādir (1753–1827) and Shāh Rafīʿu íd-Dīn (1749ñ1817),
translated the Qurʾān into Urdu (ibid., 104–5). An earlier venture initiated
by J. B. Gilchrist (1759–1841), the pioneer of Urdu studies at Fort William
College, was forbidden by the government in 1807 because the ulema had
been too incensed even with Shah Waliullahís Persian translation to countenance an Urdu one (Siddiqi 1979, 155–57). Aḥmad Khān mentions Qāẓī
Muḥammad Aʿam Sanbẖlīís translation into ìthe language born out of the
contact of Arabic and Persianî (by which he meant eighteenth century
Urdu) in 1719 and that of an unknown translator in 1737. Both are available
in manuscript form but were never published (Khān 1987, 12). Exegeses
came to be written as early as the end of the sixteenth century and some
of the early ones are anonymous. Gujrat and the Deccan fare prominently
as centers of Islamic writing in this early period (Naqvī 1992, 23). A notable
attempt is that of Murādu íl-Lāh Anṣārī Sanbẖlī who gives reasons for
having written his exegesis Tafsīr-e-Murādī (which ended in 1771).
106 • The Annual of Urdu Studies
Sanbẖlī argues that, since millions of people spoke Hindi and were keen
to learn from his explanation of the Holy Book, he was asked by many of
his companions to write this explanation for them. He, therefore, undertook the writing of this exegesis (ibid., 26). This, however, was the period
(middle of the eighteenth century) when there was a great increase in
religious writings in Urdu. While the popular poems such as Nūr Nāmas
and Jañg Nāmas continued to be written, serious prose literatureó
translations of the Qurʾān and the Ḥadīṡ, exegesis, collections of legal
judgments (fatāvā)ónow started supplementing Persian works in these
genres. Such literature is described in some detail by Gaborieau (1995),
Aiyūb Qādrī (1988), Naqvī (1992) and Khān (1987), but a study with reference to its production and consumption still needs to be done.
Among the most notable of these works are those by the pioneers of
the Jihad Movement against the Sikhs and the British. Saiyid Aḥmad (1786ñ
1831), who died fighting the Sikhs at Balakot, wrote two pamphlets
(risālas) in what he called ìHindiî to guide ordinary Muslims with regard
to saying their prayers and understanding the verses of the Qurʾān. The
work on prayers was published in 1866 and was part of this overall effort
to reform Islam in India (Qādrī 1988, 113ñ18). Shāh Ismāʿīl (1779ñ1831) translated his own pamphlet on the refutation of innovation and heresy into
Urdu renaming it Taqviyatu íl-Īmān (1821). This became an important
source of inspiration for the whole reform movement and was reprinted
several times (ibid., 124ñ25). Similarly Maulvī Saiyid ʿAbdu íl-Lāh translated
Shāh Rafīʿu íd-Dīnís Persian pamphlet Qiyāmat Nāma into Urdu calling it
Bābu íl-Ākhirat (1863) (ibid., 199). In short, Urdu, generally called Hindi in
those days, played an important role in the reformist movement
associated with Shah Waliullah and his family and disciples.
The Role of the Sub-Sects in the Spread of Urdu
While the major sects of Islam remained the Shīʿa and the Sunnī (for the
origin of Shīʿa Islam see Jafri 1979), with the latter in overwhelming
majority in India, the sub-sects of the Sunnīs (also called maslak) which
emerged during the British period were the Ahl-e Ḥadīṡ, the Deobandi
and the Barelvis. These sub-sects formed madrasas of their own, published pamphlets and indulged in oral debates where the major medium
of communication was Urdu. Thus their role in the dissemination of Urdu
needs to be given attention.
Tariq Rahman • 107
The Ahl-e Ḥadīṡ: The Ahl-e Ḥadīṡ, in common with many eighteenth
century Muslim thinkers inspired by Shah Waliullah, wanted to reform
Indian Islam. This was their response to the political weakness of the
Muslims in India. The Ahl-e Ḥadīṡ, moreover, were also inspired by ʿAbdu
íl-Vahāb (1703ñ92) of Saudi Arabia who was completely antagonistic to the
veneration of the tombs of saints and Sufism as it flourished in his day.
The Ahl-e Ḥadīṡ or Wahabis as they were called in India, wrote learned
treatises in Persian but they also understood the value of spreading their
message in Urdu and other languages, especially Bengali, to the laity.
Vilāyat ʿAlī (b. 1790), one of their leaders in Patna, taught the rudiments of
the Faith in simple Urdu. He got the translation of the Qurʾān by Shāh
ʿAbdu íl-Qādir as well as some writings of Shāh Ismāʿīl in Urdu printed
locally and ìdistributed among the numbers of the gatherings, which
included some women alsoî (Ahmad 1994 [1966], 84). Another Ahl-e Ḥadīṡ
thinker, Hājī Badru íd-Dīn, wrote his fatwa in Bengali verse which, of
course, must have appealed to ordinary people (ibid., 237).
As the Wahabis fought the British as well as the Sikhs in the NorthWest Frontier Province, they emphasized jihad. Some of their tracts, such
as the Risāla Jihādiya and Hāriqu íl-Ashrār (1866ñ67), praised the concept
of the ìjust war.î Both of these works, as well as other tracts, were in Urdu
and were, therefore, easily accessible to the public. The British were well
aware of the ìRebel camp on the Punjab Frontierî as W. W. Hunter calls it.
It was established in 1831 and finally defeated in 1868 (1871, 3). The main
leader of the fighters, Saiyid Aḥmad, preached between 1820ñ22 and
Hunter reports that a number of Urdu poems foretelling the downfall of
the British were in circulation (ibid., 53ñ54). The itinerant Wahabi
preacher whom Hunter describes must also have preached in the same
language. The Ahl-e Ḥadīṡ created prose literature in Urdu which has
been described as follows:
Addressed mainly to the common people the manner of presentation is
geared to their mental level. The narrative is simple and conversational. It
is in sharp contrast to the ornamental rhymed prose then generally in use.
Arguments are backed with quotations from the Qurʾan and Hadith, translated in Urdu. Didactic stories and similes are used to illustrate the points.
(Ahmad 1994 [1966], 282)
Thus, at least by 1820, as the Avadẖ Akhbār of 15 January 1870 noted,
ìreligious works of fifty years are now all being compiled in Urdu.î However, as Gaborieau has pointed out in his well-researched study on this
108 • The Annual of Urdu Studies
subject, most Wahabi writings were in Persian. It was only after 1857 that
ìthe ratio of Persian to Urdu is reversedî (1995, 172). However, the fact that
there were Urdu writings at all from the 1820s onwardsóGaborieau identifies Khurram ʿAlī Bilhaurīís (d. 1855) Naṣīḥatuíl-Muslimīn written in 1822ñ
23 as the first book in Urdu in this categoryósuggests that Urdu was considered by the Wahabi preachers as having the potential to advance their
cause.
The Deobandis: The famous madrasa established at Deoband in 1867
which pioneered this movement was the brainchild of Muḥammad Qāsim
Nānautavī (1833ñ77) and Maulānā Rashīd Aḥmad Gañgōhī (1829ñ1905). The
Dāru íl-ʿUlūm, as it was called, used Urdu as a medium of instruction.
Thus, as Barbara Metcalf has pointed out, it ìwas instrumental in establishing Urdu as a language of communication among the Muslims of
Indiaî (1982, 102ñ3).
Indeed, so successful was Urdu as the language of Indian Islam that,
according to one scholar, the Bohras of Western India shifted from
Gujarati to Urdu in this period, for example, and some Tamil Muslims
made the same transition shortly after (Mines 1973). However, this shift
was in some domains only because the Bohras do use Gujrati (Rahman
2002, 447) and Tamil Muslims use Arwi, which is Tamil in the Arabic script
and with some Arabic words (Alim 1993, 125), as languages of identity even
now.
The Deobandi interpretation of Islam, which is strict and puritanical,
goes against the saint-ridden, folk Islam of ordinary Indian Muslims.
However, it spread widely as the graduates of Deoband occupied
mosques and the Bahishtī Zēvar of Maulānā Ashraf Ali Tẖanvī (d. 1943), a
detailed and comprehensive Sharīʿa guidebook primarily meant for
women, became a household name in North India and the areas now part
of Pakistan.
In Pakistan, the number of Deobandi madrasas increased from 1779 in
1988 to nearly 7000 in 2002. These are also the madrasas associated with
militant and extremist Islam since the Taliban, who imposed a very stringent version of the Sharīʿa in Afghanistan (Rashid 2000), were students of
these madrasas. They are concentrated in the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan that are also associated with Islamic radicalism. The
language of the Deobandis, even in the North-West Frontier Province
where the mother tongue of most students is Pashto, remains Urdu. Thus
Urdu remains the main carrier of the Deobandi ideology in South Asia.
Tariq Rahman • 109
The Barelvis: The Barelvisóor Ahl-e-Sunnat as they call themselvesó
centered on the work of Ahmed Raza Khan (1856ñ1921). Aḥmad Raẓā,
belonging to an ashrāf family of Pathan origin from Bareilly, belonged to
the Urdu culture of Uttar Pradesh. He founded a madrasa called Manaru
íl-Ịslām. By this time Urdu was the established language of Islam in India
and, therefore, the Barelvis used it in their sermons, popular poetry and
theological debates with their rivals the Deobandis and the Ahl-e Ḥadīṡ.
They also had two major presses in Bareilly, the Ḥasanī Press and the
Mabaʿ Ahl-e-Sunnat wa íl-Jamāʿat. They published almost all the fatāvā
of Aḥmad Raẓā Khān (Sanyal 1996, 83). Aḥmad Raẓāís own poems are in
the lofty tradition of the Urdu poetry of his times (see example in ibid.,
146ñ48). The main text of the Barelvi maslak is devotion to the Prophet of
Islam and many of the verses are about this subject (ibid., 155ñ58). In addition, there are a large number of Nūr Nāmas, and not only in Urdu but in
all of the major languages of South Asian Muslims, on this theme. Barelvi
Islam, affirming the intercession of saints, is the folk Islam of South Asia
and fulfills the spiritual needs of the people. Its tenets and interpretation
of Islamic law were spread widely by an Urdu work, Amjad ëAlī Aʿamīís
(Bahār-i-Sharīʿat, which is the equivalent of the Deobandi work Bahishtī
Zēvar.
Other Schools of Islamic Thought
In Lucknow, the Farangi Mahal family of religious scholars had been
teaching Islamic studies since the eighteenth century. Mullā Niāmu ídDīn, the inventor of the curriculum called the Dars-e-Niāmī, was a
speaker of Urdu (Robinson 2002, 46ñ52). In 1905 Maulānā ʿAbdu íl-Bārī
created the Madrasa-e ʿĀlīya Niāmīya which continued its work till the
1960s (ibid., 71). Urdu was taught separately in this ìCambridge of Indiaî
to those who did not undertake the study of the full Dars-e-Niāmī (ibid.,
126). The Farangi Mahal family of ʿālims had ìproduced some of the earliest Urdu newspapers which still exist, ilism-e Lakẖnau, which appeared
in the year before the 1857 uprising, the so-called Mutiny, and Kārnāma,
which appeared in the three decades after itî (ibid., 133).
So common was the use of Urdu as a religious language that sects
considered hereticalósuch as the Ahmedis (or Qadianis)óalso used it for
writing and missionary work. Although Mirzā Ghulām Aḥmad (c.1830ñ
1908) wrote in Arabic and Persian for authenticity, he also wrote extensively in Urdu to disseminate his message among the masses (Friedman
110 • The Annual of Urdu Studies
1989, 135). His spiritual successors also continued to write in Urdu.
Another sect, considered heretical by mainstream ulema, the Ahl-e
Qurʾān, argued that the ḥadīṡ literature is not reliable and, therefore,
guidance can only be obtained from the Qurʾān. Ghulām Aḥmad Parvēz,
the most well-known proponent of the sect in the twentieth century,
wrote extensively in Urdu. He even argued that prayers can be said in
Urdu instead of Arabic (Muṣafā 1990, 241). This idea occurred off and on
to many dissident thinkers, whether from heterodox sects or otherwise,
and Muḥammad Masʿūd (1916ñ85), a government officer famous for his
individualistic, even eccentric, views on many issues, argued that prayers
should be said in a language one understandsóhence in Urdu and, later
in his life, Punjabi (Malik and Salīm 2004, 18ñ19). 1
Urdu is also the language of Islamic revivalism. Saiyid Abu íl-ʿAlā
Maudūdī, (1903ñ79), a pioneer of revivalist Islam through the efforts of his
Jamāʿat-e Islāmī, wrote his entire work in idiomatic and accessible Urdu.
He was himself from Delhi and spoke idiomatic Urdu at home (Nasr 1994,
3). He was also a pioneer in using easily comprehensible Urdu rather than
the Arabic-laden jargon of maulvis which was used by writers on religious
subjects earlier. He was also an Urdu journalist of note whose journal
Tarjumānu íl-Qurʾān appealed to the middle class of the urban areas of
North India and Pakistan. Maudūdīís books were read by middle class
professionals in Pakistan who had a tremendous influence in the Jamāʿat.
These people supported Urdu in Pakistan against all other languages.
All the debates of the Pakistani and the Indian ulema in the last
century and at present are in Urdu. Their writings, refuting each otherís
beliefs, are in the same language. For instance, both the criticism of
Maudūdī and its reply are in Urdu (Yūsuf 1968); the narratives of all
religious arguments (between Barelvis and Deobandis for instance) are in
the same language (Ludẖyānvī 1995) and so are all the writings of the
ulema whether against Western philosophies (ʿUṡmānī 1997) or other
matters.
1
Imām Abū Ḥanīfa (699ñ767 c.e.), founder of the Ḥanafī school of Islamic
jurisprudence, is reported to have said that languages other than Arabic, such as
Persian, could be used for prayers. The Hidāya which records this opinion also
adds that the Imām eventually agreed with the other scholars of law and that the
overwhelming consensus now is that prayers may only be said in Arabic (Ali
c.12th century, 349).
Tariq Rahman • 111
Urdu in the Elegies
The elegies (marṡiyas) about the martyrdom of Imām Ḥusain during the
Battle of Karbala (680 c.e.), became an important part of the culture of
both the Shīʿa kingdoms of the Deccan and of Oudh. Indeed, they were
an important part of the poetic sensibilities of even Sunnī Muslims all over
North India and present-day Pakistan. Such elegies were written in Urdu
by poets, such as Hāshmī Bījāpūrī (1656ñ72) Mullā Vajhī, etc., in the Deccan (Sharīf 2004, 767; Ṣiddīqī 1967, 716ñ17). Later, in Lucknow, Mīr Anīs (d.
1874) and Mirzā Dabīr (d. 1875) became famous marṡiya poets whose
Urdu verses were part of the mourning for the martyrs of Karbala during
Muharram (Ṣiddīqī 1967, 721ñ92).
In short, Urdu became the language of Islam in South Asia because
of: the high number of translations and exegeses of the Qurʾān available
in it (Khān 1987, 18; Naqvī 1992); its association with teaching in the
madrasas; the Urdu elegies commemorating the martyrdom of Ḥusain
which is central to the Shīʿa faith; and the Urdu writings of revivalists and
Islamic pressure groups in Pakistan and India. Let me now turn to the
implications of these facts for Pakistan.
Urdu, Muslim Identity, and Pakistan
Islam and language both contributed to the creation of Pakistan, a state
for the Muslims of British India, in 1947. Islam was the principal identity
symbol of the Indian Muslims who mobilized to put up a united opposition to the Hindu majority in order to obtain maximum political and
economic advantages (Jalal 1985) and then, under the leadership of
Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876ñ1948), brought about the partition of British
India to create Pakistan and Bharat (India). Urdu, which had become a
symbol of Muslim identity during the nineteenth century, was the subsidiary symbol of the Indian Muslim identity (King 1994) which helped
establish the new state. In short, South Asia is witness to the adoption of a
local language, Urdu, as the language of Islam, rather than Arabic. This
would not have occurred without the British intervention which brought
modernity to South Asia. Indeed, the idea that numbers are politically
significantófor quotas in jobs, admissions to educational institutions,
government patronage, etc.ówas created by the British who introduced
modern concepts like representation of the people, equality before a
secular legal system, and the creation of an ubiquitous public service
112 • The Annual of Urdu Studies
system across India. When Indians experienced the census, they found
that the category ìMahomedanî (Muslim) could be disempowered or
empowered, impoverished or enriched, deprived or benefited depending
on a number of factorsóand the only factors they understood were numbers and loyalty to the rulers. This game of numbers created the
perception of a monolithic Muslim communityósuppressing sectarian
(Shīʿa, Sunnī, Āghā Khānī, Bohra, etc.), class (ashrāf = gentlemen versus
ajlāf = commoners), and linguistic or ethnic divisionsówhich was held
together by Islam and Urdu. The mirror image of this was the construction
of the Hindu ìotherî held together by Hindutva and Hindi (Dalmia 1997).
Besides investing political and economic significance in the categories of
ìMuslimî and ìHindu,î modernity also made it possible to disseminate
language much more widely than ever before. The printing press, the
schooling system, the textbooks, the political speech and pamphlet, and
later the radio, all spread standardized versions of languagesómostly
Hindi and Urdu in North India and the areas now comprising Pakistanó
which created communities (Muslims and Hindus) much as literacy created nationalistic identities in modern Europe in a process described by
Benedict Anderson (1991 [1983]).
Almost a century of the Hindi-Urdu controversyófrom the middle of
the nineteenth century till the creation of Pakistan (King 1994)ómakes us
realize how potent the symbolic value of language was in the creation of
the politicized modern Muslim and Hindu identities. But these constructions came at the cost of suppressing aspects of the communal self which
were manifested later.
The Politics of Urdu and Islam in Pakistan and North India
Both Urdu and Islam came to play different, and even opposing, roles in
the power dynamics of post-Partition Muslim communities in Pakistan
and North India. In Pakistan the ruling élite, which was mostly Punjabispeaking, continued, in the name of Islam and Urdu, to consolidate its
dominance over the different ethnicities comprising Pakistan. The Bengalis, who were a majority in the new state, reacted to this dominance by
mobilizing the symbol of language to present a united front to the West
Pakistanis. This movement, the Bengali language movement, culminated
in the deaths of protesting students on 21 February 1952 and laid the foundation for separatist nationalism (Umar 2004, 190ñ229). Finally, after a
bloody civil war in 1971, the state of Bangladesh was created. In West
Tariq Rahman • 113
Pakistan, the Sindhis, Baluchis, Pashtuns and Siraikis have all used their
respective languages as ethnic identity symbols to procure influence and
a more equitable distribution of power and resources in the state (Rahman 1996). Thus, in Pakistan Urdu came to be associated with the ruling
élite as far as its domination over the weaker ethnic groups was concerned. The strongest religious influence on the educated, urban lowermiddle and middle classes is that of the Jamāʿat-e Islāmī which was a
strong supporter of Urdu. According to Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr:
The party [Jamaʿat] Ö much like the Muslim League had viewed Urdu as
the linchpin of the two-nation theory and a cornerstone of Pakistani
nationalism. Allegiance to Urdu was therefore an article of faith in the
Jamaʿat. The rural and urban poor are as deeply rooted in vernaculars such
as Baluchi, Pakhtun, Punjabi, Siraiki, and Sindhi. Outside of the Muhajir
communities of Sind, Urdu is not used below the lower-middle class.
(1994, 85)
Because of the religious rightís support of Urdu, both the ethnonationalists, using the identity symbols of the indigenous languages of the
people, as well as the Westernized élite, using English, oppose Urdu. The
latter feel that Urdu would empower the religious lobby which, in their
view, would suppress women and probably inhibit creativity, the arts and
research. Hence Khaled Ahmed, a well-known liberal intellectual from
Lahore, argues that Urdu is intrinsically not a progressive language,
whereas English is (1998).
While in Pakistan Urdu is pro-establishment and right wing, in India it
is anti-establishment and stands for the autonomy, identity and rights of
the Muslim community. Though spoken only in parts of North India, and
that too in the urban areas, it is a symbol of Muslim identity. Because the
Hindus are in a huge majority, the Muslims feel that the fight to preserve
Urdu is part of keeping India a pluralistic democracy.
The Political Uses of Language Planning of Urdu in Pakistan
Since the state used Urdu as a symbol of Islamic identity, its language
planning activities revolved around it. One instance of legitimizing West
Pakistani domination of East Pakistan was the Islamization of Bengali.
The central government established adult education centers in East Pakistan to teach Bengali through the Arabic script (Pakistan Observer
(Dhaka) 4 October 1950). The Language Committee set up in 1950 recom-
114 • The Annual of Urdu Studies
mended non-Sanskritized Bengali and the teaching of Urdu (Legislative
Assembly Debates of East Bengal 31 October 1951, 25).
Another area in which the Islamic identity was associated with Urdu
and its script was in neologismóthe coining of new terms to express
modern concepts in the languages of Pakistan. Here, to begin with, Urdu
itself was purged of Persian and Hindi elements (Allāh Ḥāfi replaced
Khudā Ḥāfi during Zia ul Haqís Islamization [1977-88] because Khudā is
the Persian word for God whereas Islamic purism required the Arabic
equivalent. The Urdu script was considered the desiderated script for
languages without an old established script such as Punjabi, Siraiki, Baluchi, Brahvi and, of course, the unwritten languages of the country. In
Baluchistan, the convention held in September 1972 regarding the Baluchi
script became a battleground between the left-leaning ethno-nationalists
and the right-leaning Pakistani nationalists. The former rejected the Urdu
script, even preferring the Roman script to it, while the latter insisted
upon the Urdu script (Rahman 1996, 166).
This horizontal (ethnic) conflict is not the only one in which Urdu
plays a political role. It is also part of the vertical (socio-economic class)
conflict in the country. In this role it favors the mostly Urdu-educated
lower middle class against the English-educated upper-middle and upper
classes (the middle class falls unevenly in both divides). While the élites
of wealth and power can buy English schooling, the masses are educated
either in Urdu (in interior Sind also in Sindhi) or not at all. While Englishmedium schooling tends to disseminate liberal views making students
more tolerant of religious minorities and sensitive towards womenís
rights, it also alienates students from their culture and makes them look
down upon their compatriots who are not as Westernized as themselves
(Rahman 2004, 71, 161ñ76). In short, Urdu and Islam are used to subordinate the ethnic élites in favor of the Punjabi élite but, ironically enough,
both are in fact subordinated to the interests of the Westernized, Englishusing, urban élite.
The political uses of Urdu as a part of the Islamic and Pakistani
nationalist identity are, therefore, complex and contradictory.
Political Vocabulary in Urdu
Although this is not the place to undertake a study of the political
vocabulary of Urdu à la Bernard Lewis (1988), it is possible to point out the
religious and political implications of some of this vocabulary. This
Tariq Rahman • 115
vocabulary borrows extensively, and self-consciously, from Arabic and
Persian rather than from the indigenous tradition. Thus words like
ìčunā̦ōî (election) and ìrājî (rule), common between Urdu and Hindi,
are studiously avoided, while their Perso-Arabic equivalents ìintikhābātî
and ìḥukūmatî are used. Sometimes there is no term corresponding to
the one used in English. A notorious case in point is ìsecularî for which
the term used in Urdu is ìlā-dīnî (without religion).
In this context, Bernard Lewis tells us that such a term did not exist in
Arabic or Turkish. In Turkish, as in Urdu, the neologism used was
ìlādīnī.î This term, coined by Zia Gokalp (1875/76ñ1924), was often taken
to mean ìirreligiousî or even ìantireligious,î and these interpretations
further increased the hostility with which the notion was received (Lewis
1988, 117). This is exactly what has happened where Urdu is used for the
same purpose. Modern Turkey does, however, have the word ìlayik,î ìa
loanword from the Frenchî (ibid.). Arabic has a more satisfactory term,
first used by Christian Arabs, ìʿālamiānīî from ìʿālamî (the world). Urdu
could use the word ìduniyavīî from ìduniyaî (the world) with the same
meaning. It would be far less biased than the term ìlā-dīnî which, in
effect, implies that those who support secular democracy are apostates.
Conclusion
Except for Arabic, there is no special language of Islam. However, a language used by a community of Muslims can become the language of
Islam and of Muslim identity in a specific time period and region. With the
advent of modernity, Urdu, a language of North Indian origin, became
such a language with political, social, educational, economic and cultural
consequences. It became part of (ashrāf) Muslim identity replacing Persian which occupied that position earlier. It became a symbol of the
Muslim political identity next only to Islam itself during the struggle for
the creation of Pakistan out of British India. Then, in Pakistan, it became a
part of the Pakistani (as opposed to the ethno-nationalist) and Muslim (as
opposed to secular and Westernized) identity. In these roles it opposed
the aspirations of the language-based ethnic élites on the horizontal
(regional) level and that of the lower-middle classes for power on the
vertical (socio-economic class) level. It also became a language of education, again divided along ideological and class lines: Urdu-medium
schools and colleges being mostly for the lower-middle and middle
classes and catering to right wing political and cultural views, while Eng-
116 • The Annual of Urdu Studies
lish caters mostly to the upper-middle and upper classes and liberal
political and cultural views. In journalism too Urdu is associated with the
rightóthe indigenous languages with ethnic nationalism and English with
liberalism. Thus, in Pakistan, Islam is associated with Urdu in complex
ways which express how identity is constructed with reference to new
realities created by modernity. The Indian Muslim community also perceived Urdu as part of their collective identity. This makes it an antihegemonic, liberal force acting on behalf of pluralism and liberal democracy in India, while in Pakistan it is mostly seen as a symbol of the
domination of the center over the provinces; that is, the hegemony of the
Punjabis over other ethnic groups of the country and, generally, with
right-wing, religious orientation. The association of Islam with language,
then, is a complex, multi-dimensional and even contradictory phenomenon in Pakistan and North India.
Appendix
Speakers of Conversational Urdu/Hindi
Mother Tongue Speakers
Second Language Speakers
Hindi
366,000,000
487,000,000
Urdu
60,290,000
104,000,000
Total
426,290,000
591,000,000
Grand Total: Mother tongue + Second language = 1,017,290,000.
Source: Grimes 2000 (see ìPakistanî and ìIndiaî entries).
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