Whose Urdu is it anyway?

Literature 2025-09-07, 11:15pm

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Sudhirendar Sharma

Sudhirendar Sharma

Historian Audrey Truschke argues that any attempt at identifying a language with religion, and its subsequent delinking, is fraught with a cruel denial of heritage. And as long as language gets yoked to a religion, in this case Urdu and Islam, neither does the language grows nor it gets understood in its entirety.

A supple and expressive language, Urdu was born out of the cultural hybridization in the Indian subcontinent during 18th century. What we know as Urdu today can be traced back to Turkish, Arabic, and Persian influences, all of which arrived in the country through waves of trade and conquests. It became the preferred language for poets and writers who used its elegance and smart diction not only in literature but in performing arts too.

Whose Urda is it Anyway

But urdu is seen today as a muslim language, moreso as it is the official national language of Pakistan. Identifying urdu with muslims has political implications although there is no empirical evidence to support urdu and muslims are mutually exclusive. Can language belong to a religion, or can a geographical claim be laid over a language? Literary historian Rakhshanda Jalil explores the question through sixteen carefully selected urdu short stories by non-muslim writers that help in busting stereotypes and persistent misconceptions.

Stories by well-known progressive writers like Krishan Chander and Rajinder Singh Bedi and film writers like Ramanand Sagar and Gulzar speak of glorious diversity of issues in different tones and tenors. The idea of carefully selecting these stories affirm the ‘idea of India’, showcasing that urdu as a language is alive and that it does not belong to muslims only. Including these short stories, there is a vast treasure of urdu literature that can still reach the nooks and crannies of popular imagination.

Whose Urdu Is It Anyway? is a loaded query on a hybrid language that borrowed words from many languages - mostly from Persian – and became the elite lingua franca of medieval India. And it acquired different names over its evolution: Hindavi, Hindi, Urdu or Rekhta. Curiously, there are more who intend communicating orally than those who may pursue it as written language. If the annual ‘rekhta’ congregation is any indication, it has s following that is growing irrespective of its religious identity. It locates urdu in the heart of Hindustan.

Do handful of stories address the question on so-called proprietorship over the language? Rakhshanda Jalil has tried to be objective in selecting stories that remain representative of the time and the people. Most narratives haven’t missed the small person who lived on the margins of public consciousness in eking out a living, and when gender indiscrimination was more of a norm than exception. While most stories are located in the early years after independence when a new kind of nativism was being talked about, and when the fledgling nation was grappling with issues of identity and nationhood. It reminds us starkly of the present times when a similar surge of hyper-nationalism is being witnessed.

The collection of short stories by non-muslim writers represent the region to which they belong, and not their religion. That’s why muslims in Kerala speak malayalam whereas those in Bengal feel at home in bengali. Not without reason, urdu is and continues to be language in Punjab. As a region and not as a state. That is why urdu as a language is not confined to a religion. ‘It belongs to whoever is willing to embrace it and in their capable hands, it is willing to be molded like pliable clay.’

Rakhshanda Jalil leaves the reader take his/her time for the essence of these stories to sink in. After all, urdu has evolved as a language by the people. It does not belong to any state or religion.