Urdu is in a league of its own

IT was Dagh Dehlvi who extolled the greatness of Urdu: “Urdu hai jiska naam hami jaante hain ‘Dagh’, Hindostan main dhoom hamari zuban ki hai.” There’s no denying the fact that not only north and central India, but to an extent, even southern states had had a feel of this language, which originated from Persian roots but flourished in India.

Film star Devika Rani, who gave Yusuf Khan (rechristened Dilip Kumar) a break in Bombay Talkies productions, selected him for his masterly Urdu diction, besides his handsome looks. I remember a Pakistani TV programme in which bets were decided on the basis of tallafuz of certain words, as pronounced by Dilip Kumar. There is a couplet that talks about propriety in Urdu, “Woh Urdu ka musafir hai, yahi pehchan hai uski; jidhar se guzarta hai, saleeqa chhod jaata hai.”

The Supreme Court was spot on when it said recently that “language is not religion” and "it is a pitiable digression" to view Urdu as a language of the Muslims. It’s true that scripts alone don’t make languages; their semantics and grammar matter a lot. Languages are not static; they keep evolving. Any effort to derecognise any medium is not conducive to the healthy growth of a society and its people. The other day, lyricist Javed Akhtar lamented the bias against Urdu. He observed that the only difference these days between Hindi and Urdu was that, while speaking Hindustani, if you understand it, it is Hindi, and if you don’t, it becomes Urdu.

I am reminded of another couplet, “Jis shahar main Urdu ka chalan aam ho ‘Javed’; Us shahar ka har shaks shareefana lage hai” (loosely translated as: In a city where Urdu is the norm of life, every person belonging there seems to be thorough-bred). I am fond of watching a poetry competition called Baitbazee, in which couplets are recited taking a cue from the last consonant sound of a sentence. Likewise, there used to be Tara-Misra, where a word or a phrase was given as a challenge to write on, impromptu, to the poets assembled at a poetic congregation.

The composite culture of our country doesn’t identify itself with biases, especially against languages. In a multilingual society, languages should be allowed to flourish and not stunted in any manner. The best poetry in the subcontinent owes much to Urdu, which has helped unite people, especially through the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, which is the hallmark of cohesive cohabitation, goodwill and bonhomie, besides tolerance among various faiths and creeds.

Urdu poetry has many forms to keep its lovers engrossed — ghazal, nazam, ashaar, etc. Some compositions need to maintain a strict discipline of meter, rhyme scheme, behar, rukun, kafia, radeef, wazan, takhayyal and tallafuz. Unfortunately, the once-famous qawwalis are dying out, largely because of the trend of associating language with religion.