Years have passed
our Urdu language has stopped creating words and expression of life. Urdu’s
focus on adapting influence from foreign languages has been far greater than
its native influences, which have been progressing towards a dying culture and
expression of self for the speakers, writers or other representatives. This
tragedy can be felt through numerous instances of lacking or lacking the use of
words and expressions in Urdu even if they existed or not.
How many of us
are able to express ourselves in Urdu? Knowing that only a handful of people
associated with the language might only be the ones left with such expressions
and would really know their language. According to the popular myth often
taught in our institutes is that “Urdu is a camp language (زبان لشکری or lashkari zaban) because of its presumed origin in the army camps
of the Mughal emperors. That is where Urdu met its ancestors such as Arabic,
Persian, Turkish, English, Sanskrit and Hindi. Historical evidence rejects this
presumed origin of Urdu and we are left with another counter argument that the
word ‘Urdu’ is of a Turkish decent and it literally means ‘lashkar’ or ‘army’
or ‘army camp’. But if we look deeper through cultural and social grounds we
learn that cultural conflict and societal associations have been the basis of false
historical grounds of Urdu and the loss of Urdu language till today.
Interestingly,
there is hardly any language in the world that has not absorbed words from
other languages but they have survived the cultural domination. English, being
most ‘open’ of them all, has, according to David Crystal, borrowed from over
100 languages, but nobody has ever associated English as a subordinate to other
languages, since it has retained its social, cultural and literary value.
Mir Amman
(1750-1837) was among the first who presumed that Urdu is a camp language
originated in Shah Jehan’s reign when he named a bazaar Urdu-e-Moalla, and that
was never questioned in our textbooks till today and words stopped evolving
ever since. The practice of enriching Urdu slowed down for the next few
centuries, till the freedom movements of 1857 and 1947 drove the language into
a cause. The overwhelming freedom movements established Urdu as what we know it
today, the language was solely associated with Muslims of India only. Urdu was
denied its cultural value by the people of subcontinent till it was run over by
press. The dialect was largely under the influence of a political stance as
socially empowering tool for the Muslims of India and not as a culturally
evolving dialect.
This has been
the basis of our lost interest in the language. The few existing literary
grounds focused on an expression largely associated with the partition of India
and the political turmoil it carried, the other influences existed as a dying
poetic plea that generations refused to carry forward. The institutes of India
and Pakistan also failed to establish the need for Urdu’s progression by touching
the hearts of people. The obsolete curriculum was the final blow to the
language, since other social influences like theatre, art, science, literature
were never really taken up as a reforming element by the flag bearers of Urdu
language. Deprived of historical accounts we still fail to rule out the
political influence on the language almost entirely on our society. We still
know Urdu as a camp language while ignoring poets like Ameer Khusrow who died
in 1325 who had been composing poetry in Urdu, way before the Mughal era that
began in 1526 after Babar’s success at Panipat. Khusrow’s life explained Urdu
exactly like a chapter that was torn off from a book, he highlights the idea
that only the interested students may take up as a conscious affiliation
towards the language.
A language takes
centuries, even more, to evolve. It is a slow, long, constant, complex and
natural process. A language ‘invented’ to serve a specific purpose doesn’t last
centuries. Only a cultural influence holds the strength to carry a language
through centuries of evolution. Many such artificial attempts have failed among
nations trying to communicate with each other. Esperanto, a language formed
with the basic roots of some European languages, died despite its early
success. That’s where British stepped in and did the job for us.
Muslims came to India as traders,
conquerors/soldiers and as sufis/mystics. Out of these traders and conquerors
learnt a handful of Urdu to communicate with the locals and being most
dominating and authoritative leading power. The fate of the language rests in
the historical account, the language needs to be treated like a language and
not as a social cause. Associating a language with a socio-political cause
takes away the prestige of any language. Urdu speaking people in Pakistan still
lack that and fail to realize the product they have become.
The tragedy of losing a rich dialect is a
loss of rich culture, if we replace مصنف with ‘authors’ people will not be
reminded of Muhammad Hussain Azad, Syed Ahmed Dehlvi,
Chiranji Lal, Imam Bakhsh Sehbai, Hakeem Shamsullah Qadri.
