Languages don’t belong to any religion

EVERY Saturday, I go to Lonavla near Pune for teaching. While going by train, I often buy an Urdu newspaper to read during the hour-long journey. A few days ago, while reading an Urdu daily, I heard a group of youngsters chanting Jai Sri Ram. I ignored it until the chant became very loud and irritating. I was baffled until an elderly man told me that seeing me read an Urdu daily, these guys assumed that I was a Muslim.

This surprised and saddened me. Why should one’s preference for a language be seen through the prism of religion? This is not only ridiculous but also shows utter ignorance. It was the second instance when I was booed for this reason. In 2015, a group of young men on Delhi Metro accosted me and told me not to read an Urdu newspaper. I was flabbergasted. Almost a decade has elapsed and now things have only worsened. I consider myself fortunate that so far no one has thrashed me for reading an Urdu book or newspaper in a public place! But that day may not be too far, taking into account the ever-rising polarisation in our society.

Languages don’t belong to any religion or community. In Punjab, many elderly Sikhs still read Urdu newspapers. Will they also be booed for reading Urdu newspapers in public? Moreover, the bigots must realise that Urdu is not an alien tongue. It’s a language of the Subcontinent (zubaan-e-sarzameen-e-Hind), spoken by Muslims as well as Hindus. Just because Urdu rasmul-khat (script) is based on the Persian script, which is written from right to left, and there are Persian, Arabic and Turkish words in its lexicon, it doesn’t become the language of ‘others’. So many words of Persian and Arabic roots and origins are now part of our everyday conversation. Dil, deemak, dehaat, chaprasi, zukaam, azad, muft, gulaab (gul aab) and other words are nonchalantly used even by hardcore Hindus and lovers of Hindi. Do they use the synonyms of these Persio-Arabic words? I dare say many people won’t even be aware of the Hindi equivalents of these ‘foreign’ or ‘Mughal’ words.

What has happened to us? Why have we become so petty and parochial in such a short time? Those who are chanting Jai Sri Ram when someone reads an Urdu daily/magazine might also do the same when they come to know that Sampooran Singh Kalra ‘Gulzar’ writes poetry in Urdu. Such people may be under the impression that ‘Gulzar’ is Muslim, as his Persian sobriquet suggests! Munshi Premchand, whose birth anniversary fell on July 31, was a Hindu-Kayastha from Uttar Pradesh who first wrote drafts of his works in Urdu and then transliterated them into Devanagari script. Indeed, these are bad times for our country.