THIS is apropos of ‘50 years ago today’ (Jan 30) wherein it was reported that BBC in its news bulletin described Ghalib as a Hindi poet while reporting a reception in Delhi which was held in honour of visiting Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip.
On the occasion, a wishing couplet of Ghalib was recited for the guests that he presumably wrote for Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar. The couplet said: “May you live for a thousand years and may every year have fifty thousand days.”
It was no fault of the BBC reporter because Urdu was, in fact, renamed in India as a Hindi language with a view to claiming its propriety and ownership.
By writing Urdu in the Devnagri script and with the mixing of Hindi and Sanskrit words here and there, it has been named Hindi in our neighbourhood. The same startling description of Urdu and Urdu poets, writers and movies continues today as well.
The deliberate and vicious attempt becomes more evident when films like Ghalib, Mughal-i-Azam, Anarkali, Umrao Jan, Sahab, Bibi aur Ghulam, Chaudhween ka Chand, Barsaat ki Raat and hundreds of other films were issued censorship certificates by describing them Hindi films.
This is known to everyone that Urdu is not an original or basic language like Arabic, Sanskrit or some other languages of the world. It is, in fact, based on amalgamation of words and phrases from many languages, including a dominant role of Hindi, Persian and Arabic.
The Hindi language has no letters for many that are found in Urdu; such as sey, khey, zal, ze, swad, zuwad, tuey, zuey, ain, ghain and qaf.
It can be argued that any of these letters that is component of any so-called Hindi word is surely not a Hindi word, even if it is written in a revised form like that of ‘ze’ in the word ‘jahez’ (dowry) or ‘jahaz’ (aeroplane). It is because Hindi has no substitute for Urdu letter ze or English letter ‘z’.
Moreover, for the purpose of writing some words in Hindi script, their pronunciation was changed to suit the Hindi letters such as khey, ghain and qaf.
Furthermore, there is only one letter in Hindi for sey, seen and swad. Any word that is written in Urdu with the help of any of these letters can never be a Hindi word.
As such, any word which is written in Urdu with no corresponding letter in Hindi is absolutely an Urdu word.
With all this description in mind if the current Hindi in India or the dialogues and songs of the so-called Hindi films are analysed, one reaches the conclusion that describing Urdu as Hindi is nothing but a jugglery, narrow-mindedness or a religio-political stunt.
This is also an open secret that, for its ability and capacity to absorb words in its body from other languages, the Urdu language is widely understood in the length and breadth of India while Sanskritised Hindi is mainly confined to a few states like UP and Bihar.
A. SIDDIQUI
Islamabad
Source: Dawn
Date:2/1/2011
