Language Chauvinism Can Harm Our Bol

Hindi’ is an Urdu word for people from/around the Indus region and ‘Urdu’ itself is a Turkish word.

Language has been a defining factor in setting the tone of Indian politics.

(Photo: Vibhushita Singh/The Quint)

(This piece was first published on 12 August 2017 and is being republished in light of recent calls for ‘One Nation, One Language’.)

Language has been a defining factor in setting the tone of Indian politics. In early 19th century, continuing with their ‘Divide and Rule’ policy, British divided the most widely spoken language, Hindustani, into two — Urdu and Hindi.

Taking some clues from the perils of British language chauvinism, in 1947, India adopted Hindi and English as “Official Languages” of the Indian Union. But, in the 1960s, when New Delhi tried to impose Hindi as the sole official language, non-Hindi speaking regions vehemently opposed this linguistic imposition.

Later, in order defuse the situation, the Indian government allowed the indefinite use of English as well as Hindi as official languages of the central government. Now, in 2017, when we have a nationalist party at the center, Hindi imposition is once again gaining momentum.

A Lesson in Perils of Language Chauvinism

In a bid to thrust administrative, political and linguistic uniformity over the country's local cultures, just like Hindi in India, Urdu in Pakistan has been a victim of linguistic majoritarianism.

A forced spread of any language is, literally, a disservice that language chauvinists can do to their own language; you’ll end up alienating your own people and language. In 1948, Pakistan declared “Urdu” as national language to assert its ‘Muslim’ identity, which is one of the reasons why people associate Urdu with Muslims.

Now, if we look at the proportion of actual speakers or native Urdu speakers in Pakistan, it’s just 7.59% of the population or 13,120,540. While 44.17% speak Punjabi, Urdu is 5th most more popular after Pashto (15.44%), Sindhi (14.12%) and a dialect of Punjabi called “Saraiki” (10.42%) spoken in the south-western Punjab.

The seeds of secession in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) were sown when Jinnah announced in 1948 that Urdu alone would be the state language of Pakistan. Pakistan tried to impose Urdu on Mashriqi (Eastern) Pakistan, which ultimately resulted in the creation of a separate state called Bangladesh.

Languages define cultures, you can’t mess with it. The problem with language chauvinism is that you start demeaning and demonising people who resist this forceful language imposition. Native Bengalis in the Eastern Pakistan were considered second class citizens in their own land. Urdu was an alien language to them, but Pakistani establishment thought if you are a subcontinent Muslim, Urdu is your de jure lingua franca.

Apart from the cultural perils, language imposition has socio-economic perils which make things worse for native speakers. All the government and high paying skilled jobs, along with the bureaucracy and the judiciary in the Eastern Pakistan were under Urdu speaking western Pakistanis. Local Bengali speaking population was at the nadir of socio-economic structure, second class citizens in their own land.

‘Hindi’ is an Urdu word for people around the Indus region and ‘Urdu’ itself is a Turkish word. Urdu evolved during the early 19th century as zaban-e Urdu-e mo’alla (language of the court) or zaban-e Urdu (language of the camp) in Persian, derived from Turkic Ordū meaning “camp”.

Urdu has more than 51 million (native) speakers in India and that’s 3.5 times greater than the number Urdu speakers in Pakistan. Urdu is not Pakistani, it was born in the lanes of Shahjahanabad (Old Delhi), as Ali Sardar Jafri, noted Urdu poet puts it,

hamari pyari zabaan Urdu
hamari naghmon ki jaan Urdu
hasin dilkash javan Urdu
zabaan vo dhul ke jis ko ganga ke jal se pakizgi mili hai
avadh ki thandi hawa ke jhonke se jis ke dil ki kali khili hai
jo sher-o-naghma ke khuld-zaron mein aaj koyal si kukti hai.

That being said, the land of origin of any language has no exclusive rights over the language, languages transcend geographical boundaries. Problem arises when you start imposing a foreign language on your people for political gains.

We have a living example in our neighborhood of ‘what happens when you impose a language on non-native speakers’. As much as I admire the beauty of Hindustani (a mix of Urdu and Hindi) and it’s poetic nuances, I can’t force it on someone who’s from a different culture and region.

Hindustani is *my* culture, not theirs, it is sacred to me, but for a Tamilian it would be Tamil, not Hindi, not Urdu. Not even English, because English is a utility, not a culture.

Resisting the imposition of a language (Hindi) doesn’t makes you anti-national because, a) there’s no concept of a National Language in the Indian Constitution; b) languages are tools for communication and not tools for division.

But sadly, as much as language can unite people, language chauvinism is capable of inflicting irrevocable damage to the social fabric of society.

(The data provided in this article is from Pakistan Bureau Of Statistics, 1998 Census titled " Percentage Distribution of Households by Language Usually Spoken and Region/Province,1998 Census").

(This article was sent to The Quint by Salik Khan for our campaign, BOL – Love your Bhasha. Salik is a Hindustani enthusiast and heads Digital/Social Media & Communication at Talk Journalism. You can reach him on Twitter at @ baawraman)