[DarkStar]

Originally Posted by Neo

(1) In 1867 there was a conflict between Hindi and Urdu, again in 1952 there was a conflict between Bengali and Urdu, in 1972 there was a conflict between Sindhi and Urdu, almost in every conflict Urdu proved to be the language of the minority voice. No nation in Pakistan spoke Urdu, yet Urdu became the language of the Pakistan Movement. How do we explain this anomaly?

Conflicts between different languages and their speakers, is nothing new, happens the world over, especially in these post-modern times when language has been given a mistaken 'sanctity'.

The anomoly is that Urdu was the lingua franca of North/East/West India. When a Bengali met a Pashtun, they spoke in Urdu (Hindustani), when a Gujurati met a Nepali, they spoke in Urdu.

Historically, this was due to the patronising of the language of Urdu by successive Mughal Emperors, and then the use of it by the British as the official language of business in states ranging from the Deccan to the Punjab and Baluchistan.

Has it also escaped the article writer, that Urdu was the language of almost all religious, historical, scientific, and recreational literature for the past 300 years in most of India, with even Hindu religious literature having been written in Urdu? Up until the early 20th century, much of northern Indian Hindu scholarship was also in the Urdu language, as can be seen from taking a look at prominent books written in the early 20th, or throughout the 18th, 19th centuries.

Urdu was not just the language of a minority of muslims, but was the language of huge swathes of India, albeit with different dialects. It was only after the war of 1857 that Hindi as a language was pushed forward as an alternative to Urdu, and great strides were taken in its scholarship, and the scouring of sanskrit texts to find words to replace the ARaboPersian vocabulary.

To forsake the lingua franca of most of India, especially that of what was to become Pakistan, and choose Persian above that would have been folly...which is why it did not happen then, and will not happen in the future.

(2) Before the advent of British era Persian was official language of the sub-continent. Persian spread to such an extent that even noted Hindus Chandra Bhan Brahmin became poets of Persian. In fact apart from our mother tongue all our ancestors were fluent in Persian as it was the language of learning and culture.

This was true for a time, but by the late Mughal period, Urdu had supplanted Persian as the language of the elite, and the language of the royal court, too. This was because Urdu was a language of the soil, a true amalgamation of the local grammar based on a proto-prakrit with the borrowed vocabulary of the Aabs,Turks,Persians. It was not the language of just the elite, but rather the language of the king and pauper, the merchant and farmer, hence its popularity in comparison to the beautiful, yet foreign, Persian.

(3) In view of the above, it is established, that Persian had great impact on our culture and society, it was this superier unifying Persian culture and language and Islam/the structure and superstructure that was the driving force in our correcting and ruling Hindus and Sikhs in the region. The Turco-Afghan catchment area was our ever-eager recruitment ground for brave hardy warriors from the mountains west of Hindustan, so whenever the polytheist Hindu raised his head, there were always Muslims warriors ready to come down and defeat the Hindu.

This is a fantasy, and some dangerous rewriting of history.

I'd say that Urdu has a much more unifying effect upon the Indian muslim nobles, than Persian ever had. While the elite spoke Persian, they considered themselves as AFghans, Mongols, Temuris, Turks, Arabs, Persians, TAjiks, etc, and many kept their homeland languages alive in their homes and with othres of the same background. But when Urdu had become established, the nobles became more 'Indian', and those divisions in terms of Afghan, Turk, Arab, etc. were not seen.

The over simplification of muslim rule over the majority hindu India, is far from reality, and sees the events of muslim rule from a paradigm that is false...indeed laughably so.

(4) Again our cultural and linguistic affinity with the Turco-Afghan nation was our “strategic depth” which was our “security” and an element of awe for the other-nations,Hindus and Sikhs.

Another false argument, and a bit of wishful thinking. First of all, Persian has nothing to do with Turkic people, and not much affinity can be seen there, whether cultural, or otherwise, except that they are neighbours, and sectarian rivals.

Was it this same linguistic affinity, that did not stop the likes of Temur, a turk, and Nadir Shah, a persian, come charging into Lahore and Delhi, utterly decimiating the population, stealing the wealth, and fatally weaking the muslim kings and emeroros of INdia? Which finally led to its easy defeat by the British?

It is whisful thinking that just by us speaking persian, or even Arabic, we will gain some kind of strategic benefit out of it.

(5) The English outsmarted us by disbanding Persian and hence declaring “illiterate” the Muslims of India, they thus encouraged and Urdu to further divide and vivisect us from our Turco Afghan bretheren and use us in their ensuing great game.

Wrong again. Persian was already a dying language, and the only 'encouragement' that the British gave to Urdu, was sustaining the status quo...again Turco Afghan...more than half the Afghan population was not persian speaking, while the Turks have a language of their own...it's called, Turkish, which is a very different language from Persian.

I'm sorry to be the bringer of 'harsh realities', but the fact that muslims in India spoke Urdu rather than Persian (which was never more than an elitist language) couuld never be considered a reason for muslim division (whatever that means, since the Afghan and Iraanian Empire had been seperate from India for quite some time) or helping the so-called great game.

(6) We now became a subservient minority in British India, how cunning? Since we had been decapitated our head and heart in the trans-Indus region and a listless body in the cis-indus region.

more ramblings...this wannabe poet blames all that on Urdu?

(7) With all the above in mind, I recommend that we restore Persian again as one of our if not ‘the national language’, it will again give us the depth talked about, again we shall be a Muslim monolith and the awe of the past will cast pallor once more on Hindudom, in fact Kashmir may then become more accessible too. Our original lingua franca, Persian has the potential to aid us in ways intangible at this point in time and has the elements to metamorphose into an undefeatable cultural force of unification and integration.

What a complete fantasy, and a complete waste of time, for him to dredge up this red herring.

We should get rid of Urdu, because a minority of it speak it as their first language, but almost everyone speaks it as their second?

While we should make Persian official, when almost no one outside of academia understandsd the language (let alone speak it fluently), and it is no one's first language, nor second, nor third?

Even going with ARabic might hold 'some' benefit, in terms of allying with the Arab block, but completely overhauling the Pakistani system, to make persian the official language, we'll be doing exactly what the writer complained of "make 99 percent of the population illeterate again, untill we spend the next 100 years teaching everyone persian".

I'd just had laughed at this preposterous article, if it hadn't wound me up so much.