People's Democracy

  Urdu ‘Promotion’ During The BJP Regime

  Nalini Taneja

MANY of us think that the RSS agenda on education had primarily to do with rewriting history and making sure that this rewritten history finds proper place in school textbooks. In fact, the BJP government accomplished much more with funds allotted from the ministry of human resources development, and through its prerogative in giving new direction to policies, through committees filled with its own people. One such example is the ‘National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language’ (NCPUL), which found its agenda reversed and geared for serving the RSS’s political interests during the tenure of Murli Manohar Joshi It needs hardly be emphasised that the new minister has not yet managed to undo what Mr Joshi accomplished.

The memorandum of association establishing the council as an autonomous body dates back to 1994, and it started functioning with effect from April 1996. It is registered as a society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, and functions under the guidelines of a supreme body designated as council, constituted by the government of India. Its primary objective, as the name of the body implies, is primarily, “to promote, develop and propagate Urdu language,” and “to take action for making available in Urdu language the knowledge of scientific and technological development as well as knowledge of ideas evolved in the modern context.” The budget for it, quite inadequate by any standards, is Rs 1100 lakh annually.

RSS INTERPRETATION OF GUIDELINES

And how did Mr Murli Manohar Joshi interpret these guidelines? And how was this budget utilised? Some idea of this can be ascertained from the document ‘National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language: Profile and Programmes,’ culled from an actual speech made by the former minister, which was verbatim incorporated as part of this document, and which became the basic agenda paper for this body.

According to the former regime’s interpretation, ‘promotion’ of Urdu could best be done by “rediscovering the roots of Urdu language in the multilingual realities of India.” This is its “vision” statement, put forward clearly on page 3. Given that India is the birth place of the language, which emerged and grew in this very country, what this mischievous declaration means can only be that the roots of Urdu are now to be shown elsewhere, in ‘foreign’ languages, or, if Urdu speaking people agree to fall in line, then in Sanskrit! Or, it could be what the RSS in its hypocritical stance of representing the ‘nation’ says: that all Muslims in this country are converts from Hinduism and that Urdu is a dialect of Hindi!

In the RSS logic, India is a Hindu nation by virtue of common Hindu and Sanskrit roots, even as today people of various racial and linguistic origins people this country, and adhere to multireligious beliefs.

That this is not a far fetched interpretation of the said agenda can be gauged from the lines following the main declaration of intent: “During the last few years there has been a new consciousness of identity and in this context the re-discovering of the roots of Urdu in culture of our own country has been a very important endeavour of National Urdu Council.”

Further, the document goes on to link “the minority educational institutions and Urdu institutions to the national objectives and national standards,” as if the objectives of the minority educational institutions and Urdu institutions have been separate from, de-linked from or opposed to national objectives before the BJP came to form the government.

POLITICS OF LANGUAGE

It reinforces the tendency, promoted by official circles in India, of identifying Urdu with Muslims --- a process set in motion by ruling class policies, as manifested since 1947 in the politics of language and census. The council was, therefore, also required to be “networking among the minority and Urdu organisations so as the policies of the government could be implemented in all Urdu speaking areas of the country.”

Coming to the actuals, these government policies resulted in the council promoting and getting translated the NCERT textbooks based on the “new,” ie, BJP sponsored National Curriculum Framework (p 8). Murli Manohar Joshi ensured that Urdu medium schools should learn their history from the RSS inspired history texts brought out by the NCERT during his tenure as minister. Incidentally, this linking of the NCPUL’s mandate with the NCERT had not been realised while the old secular history texts were in circulation.

The promotion of Persian and Arabic was also incorporated into the agenda of the NCPUL. One can only wonder why. Perhaps to minimise expenditure on subjects that are seen as pertaining to Muslims! Or that funds earmarked for Urdu can take care of the other two languages as well; and there is no need for treating Arabic and Persian with a status anywhere nearing their own special classical language, Sanskrit, which gets special funds.

WEANING THEM AWAY

In the name of modernisation of Urdu, the document emphasises “transfer of information technology to Urdu language,” and equally on transforming “Urdu speakers into productive human resource” (p 4). Information technology in Urdu will, it is claimed, help in the modernisation of Urdu and “the people who speak [these] languages.” Therefore, in order to make Urdu speakers “modern” and “employable,” they are to be taught diploma courses in computer applications and multilingual DTP through the medium of Hindi and English.

In other words, funds meant for promotion of Urdu were utilised for weaning Urdu speakers, and those with potential for working in Urdu, into using other languages instead! While there is merit in arguing that information technology must become part of the lives of those working in all languages of the country, one cannot use the funds meant for promoting a language for actually weaning people away from that language. The need for employment in information technology sectors must be an all round concern with regard to all young people, and has no particular relationship with Urdu. In fact, like speakers of other Indian languages, most Urdu speakers are bilingual, if not trilingual. If anything, mono-lingualism is greatest among Hindi speakers, and not among educated Urdu speakers or those of other languages, who cannot get by without a working knowledge of another language. As such, spending on setting up computer centres is a diversion of funds from their actual purpose. It also belies the prejudice of the Birla-Ambani report on education, where computer training becomes a gateway to affluence and being modern, while downgrading social sciences and science education.

Similarly, one can say the same for training centres in calligraphy and design, and centres for diplomas in “multilingual type and shorthand,” which can in no way constitute the promotion of Urdu.

As one can guess, these centres, particularly those run by NGOs, have become avenues for patronage and building political connections. Only recently The Indian Express brought to light a virtual scandal with regard to the NCPUL where by grants meant for the NGOs in J&K were being disbursed to organisations run by or linked with specific political leaders of the state.

“MAINSTREAMING” THE URDU PRESS

Among other frankly stated purposes is the scheme for “Urdu Press Promotion” and grants to specific Urdu newspapers for “the mainstreaming” of the Urdu press. It is stated that this is an “important programme,” and that it has helped “in harmonising news and views in Urdu press.” It has helped the “Urdu press to reproduce the news and views in Urdu without undergoing the arduous task of translation as well as in discouraging of publication of materials prejudicial to national interest.”

Small pittances were used by the BJP regime for making sections of the Urdu media fall in line; but such a stated purpose also betrays the BJP’s prejudices about Urdu speakers and readership and about Muslims in general. The assistance was to be used for availing of the UNI’s Urdu Service by the favoured newspapers, while the UNI is a government service already dedicated to this purpose! The UNI (Urdu Service) itself was upgraded technologically from the NCPUL funds to fulfil this noble task. In short, funds for promotion of Urdu were used for “mainstreaming” the Urdu press and technologically equipping the UNI, which was its instrument for doing so.

Huge projects were sanctioned by the NCPUL during the BJP regime: one, which involved a massive survey of Urdu speakers, institutions, etc, which was spurious on grounds of being given to people not associated with reading and writing of Urdu or with a reputable social science background. It has been dissected in detail in a write up by Athar Farooqui in two issues of Milli Gazette. Similarly, a huge project was sanctioned based in Kashmir University to rediscover the “Sanskrit roots of Kashmiri language.”

In a move reminiscent of the survey of Christian institutions in Gujarat, the NCPUL took upon itself the task of monitoring madrasas, on grounds that education in them is in Urdu, Arabic or Persian and so falls within the purview of Urdu language! A number of radio and TV programmes were sponsored and numerous publications brought out, about which there are stories regarding how the grants meant for these were used for promotion of council members themselves, which included Gulzar and Rafiq Zakaria who went along with Joshi’s agenda.

The council has of course been reconstituted by the new government, which has asked for an inquiry into the basic agenda of the previous government with regard to ‘promotion’ of Urdu, whether that agenda is in the interests of Urdu speakers at all, as well as scrutiny of the major projects sanctioned during those years. But as in most other aspects relating to the MHRD, undoing what the previous regime did is not proving to be easy.