Archives par mot-clé : Urdu

2023-2024 / 2024-2025 Ouvrages à lire – L2/L3 Ourdou INALCO

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Ouvrages et écrivain.e.s à lire par les étudiantes de L2/L3 Ourdou

INALCO, Paris

Année 2023-24 et 2024-25

 

 

 

N° Noms des étudiantes Ouvrages Écrivain.e.s
1. AFZAL Saadia اُداس نسلیں عبد اللہ

حسین
2. Mohammad Taiba خدا کی بستی

 

 شوکت صِدیقی
3. Saeed Aqeedat کُلّیات نظیر اکبر آبادی نظیر اکبر آبادی
4. Sauvet Sarah اللہ میاں کا کارخانہ محسن خان
5. Syed Sadia فسانہء آزاد رتن ناتھ سرشار
6. Yamani Raihana اپنا دُکھ مجھے دو  

راجندر سنگھ بیدی

 

 

Ressources : BULAC Catalogue BULAC

 

Rekhtah : Urdu Poetry, Urdu Shayari of Famous Poets – Rekhta

 

Telegram : Groupe « Novelistan »

 

Why the Urdu Script Is Crucial for India’s Cultural Diversity

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Published on 21 January 2023 by The Diplomat

Link to Read on The Diplomat : Why the Urdu Script Is Crucial for India’s Cultural Diversity – The Diplomat

 

-Shahzaman Haque

 

Sitting in my university office in Paris, I was recently surprised to be visited by a young French student wishing to learn the Urdu script. He had traveled to Turkey to study Indian Sufism, and his teachers had told him that learning to read Urdu was an essential first step on that path. It was another reminder of how that script preserves vital links to the past despite ongoing threats to its future.

Extract from a Hindustani textbook used at INALCO, Paris in 1833. Credit: Langues’O 1795-1995

In India, Urdu holds a prestigious position as one of the 22 official languages recognized in the Constitution. However, its unique Perso-Arabic script remains threatened by frequent calls for its abolition. Commentators and campaigners have long argued that replacing the Urdu script with either the Latin or Devanagari alphabets (used for English and Hindi, respectively) would forge links between different communities and promote communal harmony.

But despite being sometimes couched in talk of unity and progress, those calls are part of the ongoing “war on Urdu” in India. And replacing the Urdu script would do irreparable damage to the language and the links that it promotes with the exceptionally rich and complex culture of the subcontinent. To understand the threat that Urdu script faces and the importance of preserving it, it is necessary to look back at its history and forward at what its future might hold.

The history of Urdu script in India

The French font designer Ladislas Mandel once wrote that “a letter is not only a mere sound, it is the trace of mankind”. Indeed, script is one of humanity’s engineering marvels, and the development of the first writing system in ancient Sumeria around 5,300 years ago can be considered the dawn of history, allowing the spoken word to be set, sometimes literally, in stone. In the millennia that followed, hundreds of different scripts were developed, and around 300 of them are still in use today.

The Urdu script draws heavily on the Perso-Arabic script that developed in Persia after Islamization but also carries influences from Sanskrit. It spread into the areas that correspond to modern Pakistan and northern India, where it went on to play a major role in both the Muslim and the Hindu cultures of the region.

The famous devotional ghazal poetry of Muslim writers such as Mirza Ghalib, Muhammad Iqbal, and Faiz Ahmad Faiz is unimaginable without the Urdu script. However, what is less well known is that the first poems on the Hindu festival Holi were also composed in that same script (by Makhdum Khadim in the 16th century).

Historical threats to the Urdu script

Nevertheless, despite such eminence, the status of Urdu, and its unique script, has long been threatened in India. The celebrated 19th-century Hindi poet Bhartendu Harischchandra called Urdu “the language of dancing girls and prostitutes,” an insult that endures to this day on the lips of anti-Urdu activists.

In the early 20th century, calls for the abolition of the Urdu script came from some surprising sources, including such literary giants as Saadat Hassan Manto and Ismat Chughtai. Despite their literary fame being dependent upon the Urdu script they used, both writers’ affiliations with the Marxist-influenced literary progressive movement led them to believe that conversion to the Latin alphabet was essential for the language’s future.

Perhaps they were also influenced by similar reforms that took place in the 20th century, most notably Ataturk’s Latinization of the Turkish language in 1928, which rendered the whole population illiterate for a decade and erased six hundred years of cultural and linguistic heritage in the blink of an eye.

Around the same time, 131 communist delegates at the Soviet Union’s Baku Turcological Congress voted to impose the Latin alphabet on the languages of over 50 ethnic minority populations living between Azerbaijan and the Arctic. A decision that would have sparked mass illiteracy, deprived the region’s many Muslims of their connections with the Qur’an, and, according to French journalist Xavier Montéhard, brought about the downfall of the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, despite the pressure placed on traditional scripts by modernization movements in the 20th century, Urdu’s script was championed by such towering figures of Indian history as Mahatma Gandhi. And Urdu’s esteemed place in Indian culture was recognized in the country’s 1949 constitution.

Modern threats to the Urdu script

However, neither that constitutional protection nor the evidence of the damage done by abolishing scripts elsewhere have stopped calls for the abolition of the Urdu script. Now that pressure appears to be coming from two very different directions: young Urdu speakers and Hindu nationalists.

The former group is showing increasing disenchantment with the script of their mother tongue in favor of using Roman Urdu on many social media platforms. However, the latter group poses a more nefarious threat, perpetuating the false belief that Hindi and Urdu are the same language and arguing that Urdu should abandon its script in favor of Devanagari, used for Hindi.

Proponents of such positions in India argue that the Urdu script is foreign, fraudulent, and restricted to Muslim culture. Moreover, the bête noire of Hindi chauvinists, Pakistan has adopted Urdu with its script as its national language.

But what would happen if such calls were to be heeded and the Urdu script formally replaced by an alternative? The historical evidence from Turkey and the Soviet Union suggests that the effect on literacy and culture would be devastating.

More recently, academics Shaira Narmatova and Mekhribon Abdurakhmanova have shown how Uzbekistan’s decision to shift from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet in 1993 led to a significant decline in literacy among young people. Meanwhile, the winner of the 2022 Sahitya Akademy prize for Urdu literature, Dr. Anees Ashfaq, has argued that the Urdu language will die if its script is converted.

So, what can be done to save the Urdu script and the centuries of cultural knowledge that it contains?

Urdu cultural day celebration in Paris, INALCO 2016 ©Shahzaman Haque

Saving the Urdu script

The threats Urdu faces are different in source and nature, but the remedy to them all is the same: cultivating an understanding of the unique value of the Urdu script and the precious role that it plays in Indian, and world, culture.

The first element of the script’s value is the perfect fit that it has with spoken Urdu. The Devanagari script used for Hindi is not suitable for the Urdu consonantal system. For example, many Urdu consonants have no equivalents in Devanagari, like khe خ  , zal ذ , Ze ز , Zhe  ژ  , ghayn غ , qaf ق .

Similar problems exist when trying to represent spoken Urdu in the Roman alphabet. Indeed, the Urdu lexicographer Rauf Parekh asked how the Roman alphabet can be used to write Urdu or any other language when it does not even represent all sounds that occur in English.

No script developed for another language can truly represent spoken Urdu. Any shift to another script would cause much of the vocabulary of Urdu to be lost, meaning its literary heritage would not be understood by the coming generation.

Any script is a precious reflection of human civilization and erasing any would also wipe out a part of our rich heritage. But the loss of the Urdu script would be particularly acute because the Urdu script opens a window to a vast part of Indian culture.

So, the attempt to preserve Urdu must emphasize its long and proud history on the subcontinent and how it is intertwined with both the Hindu and Muslim cultures of the region. Trying to represent its words with another alphabet would be like deconstructing the Taj Mahal and rebuilding it with different bricks, some surface similarities might remain but the building would no longer be the same.

India is a country whose wonderful diversity stems from the richness of its past. Attempts to forcibly cut elements of that diversity would sever our links with our past with grave consequences for our future. The more that people perpetuate myths that erase elements of Indian history, the more they cultivate the attitude that certain scripts, languages, cultures, and peoples do not belong in India.

The preservation of the Urdu script is an essential intellectual endeavor for Indian social democracy. It is no exaggeration to say that our cultural biodiversity depends upon it.

 

Shahzaman Haque is the Associate Professor of Urdu in the Department of South Asia and Himalaya at Institut des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO), Paris. Follow him on Twitter @shahzamanhaque

 

 

 

Nat-I-Sharif “O Muhammad, appelle-moi à Médine”

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Ecoutez ici 

Traduit par Denis Matringe

 

O Dieu, tant qu’il me restera dans le corps un souffle de vie,

Puisse-t-il T’être dévoué, être consacré à ton Bien-Aimé.

Que je vive ou meure, ô puissai-je toujours prier !

À l’heure de l’appel, puisse ma foi rester intacte !

 

Quand me vient aux lèvres le nom de Muhammad Mustafa,

Cela m’est un profond réconfort et me procure un grand apaisement.

Quel nom suprême aussi que celui de Muhammad Mustafa !

Il est secourable là où ne l’est aucun autre,

Seigneur et maître de Médine, au moins ce regret  s’en va,

Quand qui t’aime a vu ton âme lumineuse, son souffle peut le quitter.

 

O Muhammad appelle-moi à Médine,

Il n’est pas d’autre remède à ma peine.

Seigner qui invoquer dans l’affliction ?

Je n’ai personne d’autre que toi.

 

Écoute, ô écoute ma supplique, Envoyé d’Allah !

Sans cesse je t’invoque, digne Envoyé d’Allah !

 

Seigner, qui invoquer dans l’affliction ? 

Je n’ai personne d’autre que toi.

 

Le refuge de ceux qui sont frappés par le malheur, c’est toi !

Le refuge de ceux qui sont sans soutien, c’est toi !

 

Seigner, qui invoquer dans l’affliction ? 

Je n’ai personne d’autre que toi.

 

Tant que pèsera sur moi l’affliction,

Mon Seigneur je te supplierai.

 

Pour écouter ma plainte il n’est,

O Prophète Mustafa, personne d’autre que toi,

O, écoute ma plainte !

 

Je te parlerai, tu m’écouteras,

Tu protégeras mon honneur.

 

Écoute ma plainte !

 

Si tu ne m’écoutes pas, qui le fera ?

Écoute donc maintenant.

 

Écoute ma plainte !

 

C’est une histoire bien modeste que celle de mon coeur,

Écoute-la maintenant, par un effet de ta bonté,

Écoute donc maintenant.

 

Écoute ma plainte !

 

La plainte de mon coeur m’est venue aux lèvres,

Je t’en supplie, Seigneur au manteau,

Écoute donc maintenant.

 

Écoute ma plainte !

Pour écouter ma plainte il n’est,

O Prophète Mustafa, personne d’autre que toi.

 

Dans ta compassion, tu as tellement pris pitié,

Que ce que je demandais, je l’ai obtenu,

Personne n’a plus de générosité que toi,

Personne n’et plus indigent que moi,

Seigneur, Tu n’es que miséricorde et bonté !

 

O, Saint souverain, tu n’es que miséricorde !

 

Tu es miséricordieux, et le pauvre hère que je suis est à ta porte,

Mais je vis de ta générosité.

 

Saint souverain, tu n’es que miséricorde !

 

Il n’y a pas de fin à mes fautes, mais

Tu es si miséricordieux que je trouve refuge en toi.

 

Saint souverain, tu n’es que miséricorde !

Saint souverain, tu n’es que miséricorde !

 

Tu n’es que miséricorde et bonté,

Je ne suis qu’un pêcheur, sans personne et sans ressource,

Je te supplie au nom de Husain,

Je ne sais que prier.

 

O Muhammad, appelle-moi à Médine !

Il n’est pas d’autre remède à ma peine. 

 

Source : Source : Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan en concert à Paris

Radio France (OCORA) 1989.

Note de traduction : Dans les Qawwalis, la plupart des vers sont répétés plusieurs fois:il en va souvent de même pour certains mots ou groupes de mots. Ces répétitions n’ont pas été transcrites ni traduites. En outre, il arrive fréquemment à Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan d’introduire des passages chantés avec les “notes” de la “gamme” indo-pakistanaise : sa, ré, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni, sa. Il n’en a pas été tenu compte dans la traduction. Quelques passages incompréhensibles ont été indiqués par des points de suspension (…).

Indian language teaching at Inalco : A brief summary

Billets, , , ,

Visit of H.E. Mr. Javed Ashraf, Ambassador of India to France

INALCO

2, rue de Lille

75007 Paris

March 9, 2020

Speech title : Indian language teaching at Inalco : A brief summary

 

 

Shahzaman Haque

Co-director, Department of South Asia & Himalaya

INALCO, Paris.

 

 

Your Excellency,

President and Vice-Presidents of the University,

President of the Inalco Foundation,

And my dear, esteemed colleagues,

 

I am very honored to have the privilege to speak to you this evening on behalf of Inalco about the historical importance of Indian languages, a subject that is especially close to our institution’s heart.

As Edward Sapir once wrote, “Language is the most massive and inclusive art”. That wonderful art facilitates mutual understanding and continues to inspire thousands of French and international students to learn languages, especially Indian languages, at our esteemed institution. History is the witness that we have demonstrated through our energy and our efforts a deep commitment to promoting knowledge and mutual understanding by enhancing the study of all aspects of the East.

At Inalco, we are proud to offer the opportunity to meet and interact with people from over one hundred and twenty countries within our student body and faculty, and one of those countries is India. It is my very great pleasure to tell you that, for over 200 years, we have attracted students from France and beyond to study Indian languages, such as Sanskrit, Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Telegu, and Urdu, all of which are recognized as official languages by the Constitution of India.

Thanks in no small part to Inalco, the 19th century saw France become Europe’s central hub of Indian studies, attracting scholars who were motivated by an intense passion to learn Indian languages, which they intended to use to understand the mysteries of the subcontinent’s uniquely rich civilizations. Just as Nalanda University in India attracted students from abroad in the 4th century, so, from the early 19th century onwards, European intelligentsia flocked to Inalco.

One of the first Indian languages taught here was Sanskrit. Its early European students saw the language as the skeleton key to unlock the academic treasures, cultural knowledge, and religious insights of the subcontinent. Among their number were famous scholars, such as the German orientalist, Franz Bopp, who came to this very building in 1812, followed by his compatriots Julius Klaproth in 1815 and Auguste Schlegel in 1823. The celebrated Norwegian orientalist, Christian Lassen also spent three years here learning Sanskrit from 1823 to 1826.

Understanding Sanskrit remains of great importance for linguists and grammarians all over the world, as well as for scholars of India’s classical period and those who wish to understand the doctrines and rituals of Hinduism. We are proud to still teach it at Inalco to this day.

Hindi and Urdu have a particularly rich history and bond with our Institution. The two languages were first taught here under the name “Hindustani” in 1828. At that time, Inalco was the only European institution teaching this language.

The statue which we see in the courtyard is of Silvestre de Sacy, to whom we are indebted, as he had a great connection with Indian languages. It was his idea to create a Chair of Hindustani in 1830. Lessons in Hindustani were started in 1828 by his student, Garcin de Tassy, a great scholar of the language. De Tassy taught Hindustani using both the Devanagari and the Perso-Arabic scripts. He remains a towering figure in the history of Indian languages in France because he was the first Head of the Chair of Hindustani at Inalco.

To this day, Hindi continues to be the most popular course offered by the South Asian Department. The language now has over 600 million speakers worldwide, and our course attracts not only French students but others from European countries such as Poland, Italy, and The Netherlands. Last year, 110 students were enrolled on Hindi language courses, making it the fourteenth most popular language in terms of enrolment among the 100 oriental languages taught at Inalco.

Urdu was originally taught alongside Hindi, but from 1962, a separate course was established and a Chair of Urdu created, a position that I have been very honored to occupy since 2015.

Tamil language teaching started here in 1868, after Garcin de Tassy, argued in favor of its introduction. Due to a lack of professors, there was a gap from 1871 to 1879. However, from that date onwards, Tamil language teaching benefited from a growing interest in Dravidian studies and Classical Tamil. It was, at one time, used to train public servants for the French settlements in India.

Bengali was not introduced at Inalco until relatively late, 1930 to be precise. Coincidentally that was the very year when the great Bengali poet, painter, philosopher, and Nobel-prize winner Rabindranath Tagore came to Paris. Unfortunately, the teaching of Bengali was interrupted after just two years. However, it resumed from 1964 and remains a part of our Indian languages offering to this day.

The teaching of the Telegu language started here in 1973 and, from 1982, it has had its own chair.

Apart from the numerous renowned French professors who have taught Indian languages here, Inalco has had the honor of recruiting many Indian-origin professors to teach the five Indian languages that we offer. Our teaching staff have come from more than 10 different cities or states in India, including Agra, Allahabad, Almora, Kolkata, Nagpur, Pune, Simla, Bihar, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Madhya Pradesh, Pondicherry and Rajasthan.

Currently, we are the only European institution offering fully-fledged bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. programs in five Indian languages: Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Telegu, and Urdu. This means that we have the unique privilege of being the only place in Europe that can compete with the offerings of North American universities when it comes to Indian languages.

Your Excellency, building on our esteemed past and our unique present position, we are highly committed to forging further alliances with Indian universities, sending our students to India on exchange programs, and enhancing long-term, cutting-edge scientific cooperation in the fields of literature, language, and the humanities.

Thank you, once again, for taking the time to listen to the history of Indian language teaching here at Inalco. For over 200 years, we have been proud to be facilitating deeper connections between India and the rest of the world. We look forward to continuing to do the same in the future, forging ever stronger collaborations with our colleagues in universities across India to promote knowledge and the culture of the subcontinent for the common benefit of humanity.

Thank you.

Finger dena

Mots et Contextes, , , , , , ,

Finger dena

 

 

Shahzaman Haque
Laurence Lecuyer

 

L’une des expressions la plus courante parmi les demandeurs d’asile d’origine pakistanaise et afghane, ceux qui parlent notamment l’ourdou, est « finger dena ». Si le premier mot est un emprunt à l’anglais pour le doigt, le second signifie donner en ourdou. Cela peut donc signifier littéralement « donner son doigt » ce qui fait référence à la prise des empreintes digitales lors du parcours migratoire. Nous l’avons entendu cette expression, à plusieurs reprises aux terrains de recherche dans le cadre du projet ANR LIMINAL (Médiation linguistique et interculturelle dans un contexte de la migration internationale). Nous l’avons également entendu dans le passé par les migrants pakistanais ou afghans que nous avons croisé dans notre quotidien.

Le fait de « donner son doigt », afin que son empreinte soit marquée de façon indélébile dans les registres de l’administration des pays européens peut avoir de lourdes conséquences pour les individus. En effet, l’enregistrement des empreintes digitales permet de retrouver un individu entré sur le sol d’un pays européen et, le cas échéant, de le déporter. Ces dernières années, quelques individus ont été déportés dans le cadre de la procédure Dublin, autrement dit des « dublinés » notamment au Soudan, où ils ont trouvé la mort puisqu’ils étaient recherchés par les autorités de leur pays.

« Donner son doigt » n’est donc pas un acte anodin. Cela peut, indirectement, entraîner la mort. L’acte renvoie au fait d’être facilement identifiable et de laisser la trace indélébile de son passage dans un contexte de criminalisation de la procédure migratoire. Il s’opère un glissement sémantique de cet acte anodin dans le contexte migratoire contemporain.

En effet, dans le contexte indien par exemple, le fait de « donner son doigt » renvoie à la procédure de vote dans le contexte rural comportant une part d’individus n’ayant pas été alphabétisés en contexte scolaire. Leur signature est donc celle de leurs empreintes digitales, souvent le pouce. Dire de quelqu’un qu’il est « angootha chaap » ou ‘celui qui ne peut tamponner avec son pouce » renvoie à une distinction au sein de la population entre les individus sachant lire et écrire et ceux ne le sachant pas. Qui est plus, une marqueur d’humiliation pour ceux qui n’ont pas eu accès à l’éducation.

En ourdou, et aussi en hindi (langue proche), plusieurs expressions idiomatiques sont attribuées au doigt. Nous pensons notamment à « ungli karna » (faire le doigt), ce qui corresponde au sens d’embêter quelqu’un. Ensuite, « ungli dikhana » (montrer le doigt) signifie ‘menacer quelqu’un’ et puis, « ungli lagana » (poser le doigt) veut dire ‘attouchement. Il apparaît donc que l’invention du terme « finger dena » semble fusionner un contexte culturel déterminé et le contexte de l’exil. En effet, l’expression idiomatique qui renvoie au fait de « donner son doigt » a été conservée, mais le terme « doigt » a été remplacé par le terme anglais « finger ».

Dans le contexte de l’exil, l’expression idiomatique « finger dena » renvoie de façon abrupte à la condition de l’exilé, pour lequel laisser une empreinte peut faire basculer tragiquement son destin. La différentiation entre le fait d’être analphabète ou éduqué cède la place à une condition commune de l’exil où le destin des individus est scellé par le fait d’avoir, ou non, laissé ses empreintes digitales.

Le cas de cet homme nous ayant confié lors d’une observation dans les centres d’accueil parisiens qu’il allait se brûler les deux mains après avoir appris que sa demande d’asile avait été rejetée et qu’il allait être expulsé illustre en force cet exemple. Un exilé pakistanais en situation irrégulière en France a évoqué lors d’une de nos rencontres le fait de se brûler les deux mains de façon à ce que les traits de ses mains disparaissent de façon irrévocable. Sorte d’immolation symbolique visant à faire disparaître son identité aux yeux de la société, faire disparaître jusqu’à ses empreintes digitales renvoie à la façon dont certaines sociétés européennes traitent la question de l’exil : l’autre, l’étranger, doit brouiller les pistes, jusque dans les replis de son propre corps. Le désir de faire disparaître cet autre jusqu’à provoquer son involution à l’intérieur de lui-même.

L’une des expressions la plus courante parmi les demandeurs d’asile d’origine pakistanaise et afghane, ceux qui parlent notamment l’ourdou, est « finger dena ». Si le premier mot est un emprunt à l’anglais pour le doigt, le second signifie donner en ourdou. Cela peut donc signifier littéralement « donner son doigt » ce qui fait référence à la prise des empreintes digitales lors du parcours migratoire. Nous l’avons entendu cette expression, à plusieurs reprises aux terrains de recherche dans le cadre du projet ANR LIMINAL (Médiation linguistique et interculturelle dans un contexte de la migration internationale). Nous l’avons également entendu dans le passé par les migrants pakistanais ou afghans que nous avons croisé dans notre quotidien.

Le fait de « donner son doigt », afin que son empreinte soit marquée de façon indélébile dans les registres de l’administration des pays européens peut avoir de lourdes conséquences pour les individus. En effet, l’enregistrement des empreintes digitales permet de retrouver un individu entré sur le sol d’un pays européen et, le cas échéant, de le déporter. Ces dernières années, quelques individus ont été déportés dans le cadre de la procédure Dublin, autrement dit des « dublinés » notamment au Soudan, où ils ont trouvé la mort puisqu’ils étaient recherchés par les autorités de leur pays.

« Donner son doigt » n’est donc pas un acte anodin. Cela peut, indirectement, entraîner la mort. L’acte renvoie au fait d’être facilement identifiable et de laisser la trace indélébile de son passage dans un contexte de criminalisation de la procédure migratoire. Il s’opère un glissement sémantique de cet acte anodin dans le contexte migratoire contemporain.

En effet, dans le contexte indien par exemple, le fait de « donner son doigt » renvoie à la procédure de vote dans le contexte rural comportant une part d’individus n’ayant pas été alphabétisés en contexte scolaire. Leur signature est donc celle de leurs empreintes digitales, souvent le pouce. Dire de quelqu’un qu’il est « angootha chaap » ou ‘celui qui ne peut tamponner avec son pouce » renvoie à une distinction au sein de la population entre les individus sachant lire et écrire et ceux ne le sachant pas. Qui est plus, une marqueur d’humiliation pour ceux qui n’ont pas eu accès à l’éducation.

En ourdou, et aussi en hindi (langue proche), plusieurs expressions idiomatiques sont attribuées au doigt. Nous pensons notamment à « ungli karna » (faire le doigt), ce qui corresponde au sens d’embêter quelqu’un. Ensuite, « ungli dikhana » (montrer le doigt) signifie ‘menacer quelqu’un’ et puis, « ungli lagana » (poser le doigt) veut dire ‘attouchement. Il apparaît donc que l’invention du terme « finger dena » semble fusionner un contexte culturel déterminé et le contexte de l’exil. En effet, l’expression idiomatique qui renvoie au fait de « donner son doigt » a été conservée, mais le terme « doigt » a été remplacé par le terme anglais « finger ».

Dans le contexte de l’exil, l’expression idiomatique « finger dena » renvoie de façon abrupte à la condition de l’exilé, pour lequel laisser une empreinte peut faire basculer tragiquement son destin. La différentiation entre le fait d’être analphabète ou éduqué cède la place à une condition commune de l’exil où le destin des individus est scellé par le fait d’avoir, ou non, laissé ses empreintes digitales.

Le cas de cet homme nous ayant confié lors d’une observation dans les centres d’accueil parisiens qu’il allait se brûler les deux mains après avoir appris que sa demande d’asile avait été rejetée et qu’il allait être expulsé illustre en force cet exemple. Un exilé pakistanais en situation irrégulière en France a évoqué lors d’une de nos rencontres le fait de se brûler les deux mains de façon à ce que les traits de ses mains disparaissent de façon irrévocable. Sorte d’immolation symbolique visant à faire disparaître son identité aux yeux de la société, faire disparaître jusqu’à ses empreintes digitales renvoie à la façon dont certaines sociétés européennes traitent la question de l’exil : l’autre, l’étranger, doit brouiller les pistes, jusque dans les replis de son propre corps. Le désir de faire disparaître cet autre jusqu’à provoquer son involution à l’intérieur de lui-même.

Case

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Publié précédemment le 10.06.2019 sur https://liminal.hypotheses.org/771

 

 

Mera case kon likhega ? Mera case bahut petchida hai –  « Qui va écrire mon récit ? Mon récit est très compliqué ». Cette phrase exprime l’inquiétude des migrants pakistanais lorsqu’ils comprennent qu’ils doivent produire un récit, écrit d’abord dans leur langue, puis en français.

Les exilés originaires d’Asie du sud, particulièrement ceux venant du Pakistan et de l’Afghanistan, mais aussi du Bangladesh, du Népal et de l’Inde emploient le terme anglais « case » /kεs/ qui signifie pour eux « récit ». Le récit est un élément crucial lors d’une demande d’asile. Il comporte des informations sur la nécessité de protection face à un parcours personnel, au sens de la Convention de Genève de 1951 qui stipule que le terme réfugié s’applique à toute personne qui « craint avec raison d’être persécutée du fait de sa race, de sa religion, de sa nationalité, de son appartenance à un certain groupe social ou de ses opinions publiques ». Il  est également normé, avec des attendus explicites ou implicites. Plusieurs associations mais aussi des “aidants” interviennent et avec l’aide d’un interprète, un récit est rédigé et traduit. On peut aussi signaler le « marché » parallèle des récits, où ceux ci, stéréotypés, sont revendus à différents tarifs. Le demandeur d’asile doit apprendre par cœur les informations racontées dans le récit.

Aucun dossier sans récit ne pouvant être accepté par l’Office Français de Protection des Réfugiés et Apatrides (OFPRA), le terme « case » prend une conséquence une connotation spécifique dans le langage des migrants. Il renvoie également au statut du requérant. Le « case » est en quelque sorte une clef de voûte sur laquelle repose tous leurs espoirs d’obtention de la protection du pays d’accueil.

En anglais, le terme « case » signifie ‘incident’, ‘situation’, ‘problème’. Dans le sous-continent indien, il est utilisé également dans le sens de « faire le procès de », il fait donc un lien avec le tribunal. Le glissement du sens premier « faire le procès de » au « récit » par des exilés pourrait venir de cet usage spécifique :  en dernier recours, les exilés peuvent avoir recours en France à la Cour nationale du droit d’asile (CNDA).

Il est possible de trouver le mot « case history » en anglais, qui désigne la trajectoire pathologique d’un patient suivi par un psychologue. Ainsi, la phrase Mere jo case ka story hai qui signifie « c’est l’histoire de mon récit », prononcée par des demandeurs d’asile pakistanais dans des Centres d’accueil de demandeurs d’asile (CADA) comme introduction à leur récit.

Dans l’usage familier, on désigne par « case » quelqu’un qui est « lourd » ou  « idiot ». Il existe un équivalent en français ‘cas’ : « ce type est un cas », un cas social, particulièrement stupide, problématique, incongru et inadéquat. Expression très courante en ourdou et en hindi « bahut bara case hai », elle n’a pas été entendue dans les centres d’hébergement plus qu’ailleurs, mais cette proximité est à souligner.

Shahzaman Haque (Inalco / Liminal)

 

Kashmir’s potential language war in India: time to rightfully recognize Urdu

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Previously published at India Resists on 16.11.2019

Shahzaman HAQUE

War and occupation can be destructive in ways that go beyond the headlines, and one such way is how normally important issues can be ignored and pushed aside or just receive a fraction of the attention they should. In other words, one war can hide another one. This seems to be happening in the Indian part of Kashmir. While the mass arrests and physical and human rights abuses are, rightfully, front and center, what is being lost is how right-wing politicians and officials in India may use this crisis to marginalize within Indian Kashmir the Urdu language, important for numerous reasons to even non-native Urdu speakers. And indications are that this actually is the plan for those in power who are hostile to Urdu.

On August 5, 2019, the government of India by presidential order repealed Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution, and, just like that, Indian Kashmir lost its autonomy. Hundred days have passed since the region entered an unprecedented state of restriction and curfew, with a total shutdown of the Internet. Schools are still closed and landline telephone connections and post-paid mobile phones were only restored just recently. Twenty-three European parliamentarians mostly from far-right political parties arrived in Kashmir on 29th October to observe the situation, but no Indian lawmakers from opposition parties were allowed to visit Kashmir.

With these unfortunate developments in the region, the question about Urdu as the official language in Kashmir has resurfaced. Everyone speaks Urdu as a second language. But what is troubling is that Urdu, the favored language of Muslims in Kashmir, is emerging as a language of resistance. Azaadi, the Urdu word for independence, has long been a treasured word in the minds of the people of Kashmir. It has reverberated loudly on many university campuses in India, particularly at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, but the word is labelled as “anti-Indian” by India’s far-right groups.

The Indian nationalist party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been in power for more than five years now, and in May, 2019, it won a second consecutive mandate. If Urdu has so far not been explicitly and intensely targeted by the central government, one may ask if such central government-initiated suppression is now the beginning in Kashmir. Urdu has, though, been the official language of Kashmir since 1889, thanks to the Hindu kingdom of Dogra.

The importance of Urdu in Indian Kashmir

Urdu does not resemble any of the roughly 30 other languages spoken in the Jammu and Kashmir region, but it found its place smoothly even with only 0.13% the population being native speakers (Census India 2011). It was, in fact, precisely its alienness to the region that allowed it to carve out its place.

Of Indian origin myself, I did not even understand during my childhood how Urdu could become the official language of this region, where Kashmiri is spoken by 6.5 million persons, followed by Dogri, which has 2.5 million speakers (Census India 2011). The answer is very simple: if these two local languages had been recognized as official languages, speakers of other linguistic communities would have felt betrayed and excluded. This also explains why Hindi, with over 322 million speakers (Census India 2011), has not so far been accepted as a national language in India.

Urdu is considered a lingua franca in the entire region of Indian Kashmir. In the oral form, it serves as a linking language between the Kashmir & Indian administrations, for which capacity it is modified into a slightly Hindi-influenced version understood by leaders in Delhi. It is spoken in various forms, not only by Muslims but also by high-caste Hindus and also Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, and people from other religious and ethnic backgrounds.

Javaid Rahi, renowned scholar of Gujari in Kashmir, mentions in his book Tribal groups of Jammu and Kashmir and its languages (2015) that “many of Kashmir’s and Ladakh’s ethnic groups, like Gujjars, Balti, Dards, Beda, Mon, Gara, and Changpa, use the same Persian-Arabic script of Urdu to write their own languages.” Many words of Urdu have also been borrowed by these languages, making Urdu accessible and transcendental while also being inclusive, preserving much of indigenous cultures in the region.

Urdu enjoys particular prestige and status among both Muslims and Hindus in the Kashmir Valley. Muslim parents want their children to speak Urdu rather than Kashmiri, their mother tongue. Tellingly, the generation born after 1990 prefer to converse among themselves in Urdu to facilitate assimilation into India in terms of both education and employment, according to Mehdi Khawja, author of the article “How Kashmiris are resisting linguistic exclusion” in The Caravan.

The claim for the Kashmiri language

Members of the BJP and more extreme supporters of their agenda have recently claimed that Urdu should no longer be the official language of the region. In addition, they want the Kashmiri language to be stripped of the Persian-Arabic alphabet, which is also used for Urdu; rather, they want to revive the Sharada script, used in ancient religious writing dating back to the 8th century.

The Kashmiri language is perceived differently by Kashmiri Muslims and Kashmiri Hindus. Muslim Kashmiris generally have a poor image in the media and everyday life for them is relatively hard in Indian-administered Kashmir. The problem for Muslim Kashmiris is not the Kashmiri language per se. The problem is, rather, their religion, Islam; the main religion of Pakistan, the enemy and rival of India. “The Kashmiri language has become, for them, a marker of humiliation,” says a young student of Kashmiri origin in New Delhi. “With Urdu, close to Hindi, they can show their willingness to integrate into the Indian system,” says another young Kashmiri, an engineer looking for work in Rajasthan. His heavily Kashmiri-accented Hindi cost him his first job after just fifteen days. The switch to another language has become, in their eyes, a question of survival.

Hindu Kashmiris fled their homeland in 1989, under the pressure of terrorism and Muslim-instigated militants of the liberation movement. They, on the other hand, can claim the Kashmiri language with a lot of pride. Their loyalty to India cannot be doubted.

The time now is felt by some to be propitious to settle the language issue in Kashmir in order to align with ideas of forced integration, especially if one considers the remarks of a high-ranking Indian officer, reported by the Indian Express daily paper on September 4, 2019: he asserted specifically that “Hindi is the national language, so it would be an official language of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Urdu will also be given its due place.” In reality, there is no national language in India, though Hindi is the official language of the Union of India, but the comment of the officer implies that Urdu might lose its official status in Kashmir, perhaps in favour of Hindi.

This language crisis may seem insignificant in the face of the major geopolitical crises that are shaking the region. However, let us not forget that India has been, since its independence, a cradle of linguistic conflicts even while it is supposed to be an example the promise of a non-Western nation practicing multiparty democracy with an ethnically, religiously, and linguistically diverse population. The last is not indicated to be least: several States have been created on a linguistic basis and language-related riots and deaths have occurred repeatedly. For many, language is a matter of life and death, of economic and social identity and survival.

Considering all this, the removal of Urdu from the Kashmiri linguistic landscape is likely to provoke an uproar among its many Urdu speakers and other speakers of lesser known languages hoping to use Urdu as a way of advancement. This possible disaster could erupt while Kashmiris are already suffering deeply because of the overall situation there and recent drastic actions taken by the Indian government. Is it really an appropriate time to throw boiling oil on these deep wounds through a language debate whose risks are not sufficiently measured? The answer is no, and no decision on language should be taken lightly or without respect for the many views and many languages that have defined India since even before independence.

Finally, it must be recognized that, as Urdu is a force that brings people together across divides—including bridging the leaders in Delhi with the people living on the ground in Kashmir—and that any effort to push aside, minimize, or delegitimize Urdu will only lead to more unrest, strife, and violence in the very troubled region of Kashmir, increasing the terrorism risk and even war with Pakistan.

It is high time that Indian leaders, from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to his BJP associates rightfully recognize Urdu as the unifying factor it has been for centuries. Doing so could be an important step forward for defusing Kashmiri and regional tensions and even for advancing the cause of peace.

Shahzaman Haque is the Co-director of the Department of South Asia and Himalaya at INALCO in Paris. He can be joined at @shahzamanhaque

L’ourdou en péril au Cachemire ?

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L’ourdou en péril au Cachemire ?

Shahzaman Haque

Une guerre peut en cacher une autre. C’est ce qui semble arriver en Inde, au Cachemire. Soixante-quinze jours se sont écoulés. La région est soumise à un couvre-feu sans précédent avec la coupure totale de l’Internet. Le 5 août 2019, le gouvernement indien a abrogé les articles 370A et 35A de la Constitution. Le Cachemire indien a donc perdu son autonomie.

Dans ce contexte, la question de l’ourdou comme langue officielle du Cachemire émerge de façon brûlante. Dans cette région, tout le monde parle l’ourdou comme deuxième langue. Mais, ce qui est troublant, c’est que l’ourdou, langue privilégiée des musulmans au Cachemire, apparaît comme une langue de résistance. L’ourdou devient alors la bête noire des autorités indiennes.

Le parti nationaliste indien de tendance extrême-droite Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), est au pouvoir depuis plus de cinq ans désormais pour un nouveau mandat consécutif. Si l’ourdou n’a jusqu’à présent pas essuyé de tirs de la part du gouvernement central, il semble que cette situation puisse être remise en jeu au Cachemire. L’ourdou en est la langue officielle depuis 1889.

L’importance d’ourdou au Cachemire indien

L’ourdou, langue venue de l’extérieur, ne ressemble à aucune de la trentaine de langues parlées dans la région du Jammu et Cachemire. Elle y a trouvé sa place sans heurt, avec seulement 0,13% de locuteurs (selon le recensement indien du 2011). C’est justement son origine étrangère qui l’a permis. Le persan était, en effet, présent dans la région depuis le XIVème siècle. Elle y reste comme langue officielle jusqu’à l’arrivée, en 1845, des Britanniques. Or, ces derniers ont toujours incité les dirigeants du Cachemire à utiliser l’ourdou afin d’harmoniser et faciliter la communication. D’origine indienne, j’avoue ne pas avoir compris, pour ma part pendant mon enfance, comment l’ourdou avait pu devenir la langue officielle d’une région où le cachemiri, suivi par le dogri, était parlé majoritairement. La réponse est très simple : si ces deux langues locales avaient été reconnues comme langue officielle, les locuteurs des autres communautés linguistiques se seraient sentis trahis et exclus. Ceci explique aussi pourquoi, face à la résistance farouche, entre autres, des dravidiens, le hindi n’a pas à ce jour été accepté comme langue nationale en Inde.

L’ourdou est perçu comme une langue véhiculaire dans tout le Cachemire indien. Il est parlé, en ses formes diverses, non seulement par les musulmans mais aussi par les hindous des hautes castes ainsi que par des sikhs, des chrétiens, des bouddhistes et d’autres groupes ethniques. L’ourdou a donc réussi à rapprocher différents peuples tout en préservant leurs cultures indigènes.

Il jouit également d’un statut de prestige parmi les musulmans dans la vallée du Cachemire. Les parents veulent que leurs enfants parlent l’ourdou de préférence au cachemiri, leur langue maternelle. La génération née après 1990 préfère converser entre elle en ourdou pour faciliter son assimilation en Inde, tant sur le plan de l’éducation que de l’emploi.

La revendication pour la langue cachemirie

Les partisans du BJP ont revendiqué récemment que l’ourdou ne reste plus la langue officielle de la région. De plus, ils veulent que l’alphabet arabe ne soit plus employé pour écrire le cachemiri. Ils préfèrent que soit utilisée l’écriture sharda, une écriture ancienne à caractère religieux datant du VIIIème siècle.

Les Cachemiris musulmans ont une mauvaise image dans les medias et la vie quotidienne en Inde. La langue cachemiri devient pour eux un marqueur d’humiliation, raconte un jeune étudiant d’origine cachemirie à New Delhi. Avec l’ourdou, proche du hindi, ils peuvent montrer leur volonté d’intégration au système indien. Le basculement vers une autre langue est devenu, à leurs yeux, une question de survie.

Les Cachemiris hindous ont fui leur région natale en 1989 sous la pression du terrorisme et d’insurgés musulmans militant pour le mouvement de libération. Ils peuvent donc revendiquer la langue cachemirie avec beaucoup de fierté. Leur loyauté ne peut être mise en doute ; d’abord parce que l’hindouisme est la principale religion pratiquée en Inde, ensuite parce qu’ils privilégient déjà l’écriture dévanagari et non l’alphabet perso-arabe.

Pour les Cachemiris musulmans, la langue cachemirie ne constitue pas un problème en soi. Le problème est plutôt lié à leur religion, l’Islam, principale religion du Pakistan, ennemi et rival de l’Inde. Le peuple cachemiri, majoritairement musulman, est considéré de facto, comme proche du Pakistan.

Le temps serait alors venu de clarifier la question des langues afin d’entériner et parfaire cette intégration forcée. C’est probablement ce qui est prévu, si l’on se réfère aux propos d’un officier indien de haut rang repris par le quotidien Indian Express le 4 septembre 2019.

Cette guerre des langues peut sembler insignifiante face à la crise géopolitique majeure qui secoue la région. N’oublions pas que l’Inde est, depuis son indépendance, le berceau des conflits linguistiques. Plusieurs états ont été créés sur des fondements linguistiques. On y compte  de nombreuses émeutes et des centaines de morts liées aux langues.

La suppression de l’ourdou du paysage linguistique cachemiri peut provoquer un tollé parmi les ourdouphones. Les Cachemiris souffrent déjà de grandes blessures. Est-il vraiment opportun de jeter de l’huile bouillante sur ces plaies à la faveur d’un débat linguistique dont on ne mesure pas suffisamment les risques ?

 

 

 

 

 

Why the Perso-Arabic Script Remains Crucial for Urdu

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Previously published in The Wire on 29 January 2019 https://thewire.in/culture/why-the-perso-arabic-script-remains-crucial-for-urdu 

A script is the shield of any written language. Erasing a script, or migrating from one script to another, is the first step in destroying the essence of a language.

In the era of modern technology – dominated largely by English speakers in social and print media in India – voices are raised to do away with the Perso-Arabic script of Urdu in favour of Latinisation. This demand is not new. The first seeds of discord were sown by the British-Indian linguist, John Gilchrist in his book Oriental Fabulist (1803) when he pleaded for a single Roman script for languages “Hindoostanee, Persian, Arabic, Braj Bhasha and Sanskrit.”

Later, toward the end of the 19th century, another vehement attack was launched by many writers under the garb of nationalism, in favour of Nagari script in preference to the Perso-Arabic script. Post 2000, another wave of attacks was launched by English-centric Indian minds who wanted to share the legacy of John Gilchrist.

Their concern is also to metamorphose the outer crust of the ‘Desi’ language, and Urdu in particular, into the Latin alphabet. As for me, my concern is not ideological but ecological. The idea is to emphasise, valorise and preserve the language’s impact and its relationship with the environment; every script stores valuable information on the speech of past times.

English, as the dominant lingua franca, has inflicted huge losses on many local, ethnic and minority languages around the world. The Latinisation of many languages has already taken place and it is in progress for many more.

Latinisation of the world’s language. Dark green shows where the Latin script is the official or the national language, de jure or de facto, and the lighter green shows where one of the official languages is in Latin script. Credit: Wikimedia Commons contributors

According to UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, around 43% of the estimated 6,000 spoken languages are classified as endangered. If powerful, inner-circle languages such as English, French and Spanish are primarily to blame, ‘script-loss’ or shifting to another script brings in another kind of damage to languages, which not only leaves permanent scars, but also imposes a new identity with the new script. Subsequent to the Spanish conquest of the Mayan civilisation in the 16th century, the old hieroglyphic script succumbed to the advances of the Roman script.

Credit: From The Decipherment of Ancient Maya Writing (Book published in 2001)

One can imagine the enormous cultural loss.

I present here the famous case of the Latinisation of the Turkish language.

Within a series of diverse reforms undertaken to modernise Turkey to the tune of Western civilisation, the military leader, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk imposed the Latin alphabet on the Turkish language in 1928.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introducing the Latin alphabet in Turkey (1928). Credit: Wikipedia

The shifting of script harshly alienated all future generations from their own rich literary and cultural heritage. No translation could bring the same flavour and feeling of the language. Hardly any scholarship was transferred into the new script. As time passed, rich heritage materials in the Ottoman alphabet gathered dust and were forgotten. Today, such is the sordid condition that no average Turk can read materials from the pre-1928 era.

The Perso-Arabic script for Urdu has been in use since as early as the 11th century, when it was claimed that its first author was Muhammad Sadi Suleiman, who penned some texts in Hindavi, although nothing has survived. Later, it encapsulated a hugely rich cultural capital from some of Amir Khusro’s rare 13th century collections in Urdu, formerly Dehlavi, from North India, and flourished in Vali’s era in South India in the 17th century.

The range of literary diversity, richness and evolution of Urdu during these 400 years was steadily maintained in the Perso-Arabic script. Likewise, the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries witnessed Urdu literature at its zenith – with poets like Mir Taqi Mir, Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz Ahmad Faiz. Efforts should be made to preserve its original script.

To say further that Ghalib or Iqbal would have produced the same marvels in their writings with any other script, would be like providing them with another tool, which lacks the specificity of the sounds of the Urdu language – its hybrid, potent and varied tapestry – and lacks the same architecture of writing. Are all these factors conducive to creating exactly the same kind of product? And, as C.M. Naim, an American scholar of Urdu, once asked, “would Hindiwallah include Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz in the Hindi canon if they had changed the script?”

Pakistani scholar Tariq Rahman, mentions in his book From Hindi to Urdu: A social and political history, that Urdu borrows an enormous body of Persian vocabulary and also draws from the Arabic language. Some of the Urdu letters represent sounds specific to each language. None of the Indo-Aryan languages currently possess such unique hybridity, which may be jeopardised by the loss of its script.

Each script has its own specific character. Premchand produces two different versions of The Chess Players in two different scripts. Shatranj ki baazi was written in Urdu with the Perso-Arabic script and Shatranj ke khiladi in Hindi with Nagari script.

 

Credit: Shahzaman Haque. Texts downloaded from Columbia.edu (index_dualscripts)

Frances W. Pritchett argued that both versions – Urdu with highly purified Persian loanwords and Hindi with Sanskrit cognates – had different leanings, catering to different audiences. It was only when written in Urdu that the characters of the story became real, whereas, in Devanagari Hindi, a sense of distance prevailed. Pritchett also notes that two sentences of the Urdu version are left out in the Hindi version. Although, both Hindi and Urdu are variants of Khari Boli, the script choice indexed different sets of identity. What would have been the outcome of the story if it had been attempted in the Roman alphabet?

The arguments based on pragmatics and the functionality of Latinisation of languages in terms of script are based on economic and ideological stances. One tends to ignore the hidden scientific representations and meanings in many of the ancient scripts, in which today’s researchers are still taking keen interest. To cite one example, the Khuda Baksh library in Patna has a collection of over 9,000 texts in Urdu, including rare manuscripts and old Urdu periodicals.

Richard Salomon’s chapter in the book The Disappearance of Writing Systems: perspectives on literacy and communication (2008) showed that script loss is mainly due to two factors: civilisation loss or decline, or change in dynasty.

Let us not enforce “civilisation loss” on Urdu and, as for dynasties, they have changed multiple times in India, but Urdu has succeeded in carving out its own niche in this powerful hybrid society. To protect and value our democracy, it is equally important to value and preserve the scripts, as they are a part of our ecological system.

 

8 advantages of learning Urdu

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8 advantages of learning Urdu

 

Shahzaman HAQUE

 

It is sometimes a hard decision to decide which new foreign language to learn. Why not choose Urdu? For business, pleasure or just to know new perspectives from different corners of our world, learn Urdu. Here are 9 advantages of learning Urdu :

1. With this classical language, which began developing around the 12th century, you can plunge into a rich literature from the 14th century onwards.

2. Urdu developed under the influences of many other languages and imported heavily loanwords from Arabic, Hindi, Persian, Punjabi, Turkish and Sanskrit. Learning it will give you some sort of exposure to these languages. Many basic phrases of Urdu and Hindi are similar. Around 40% of words in Urdu are imported from Persian and Arabic. 43 words borrowed from Sanskrit are used in the current Urdu. There are more than 106 Urdu words in Nepali language.

3. Urdu is written in the Perso-Arabic script. If you can read and write Urdu, you will automatically learn to read and write six other languages — Arabic, Baluchi, Kashmiri, Pashto, Persian and Punjabi — and you may also understand many words from them too.

4. Urdu is among the 20th most spoken languages in the world with around 160 million speakers in over 26 countries — Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Botswana, Canada, Fiji, Finland, Germany, Guyana, India, Malawi, Mauritius, Nepal, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, The Netherland, U.A.E., U.K., USA and Zambia. You have access to around 4000 journals, 70 radio stations and 74 TV channels in this language.

5. Urdu is the most underrated vehicular language of the Indian sub-continent. For more than 45% Punjabi speakers in Pakistan, Urdu is the only vehicular language for people from different linguistic and ethnic background. Urdu is widely used as the registered official language of the complainant in the police station of the North India.

6. It will help to make you more polite and courteous than you are already. Urdu is considered as one of the most polite languages of the world. When children are scolded in Urdu, one may hear the sheer melody of the language. Urdu will make you adopt a ‘zen attitude’ and you will benefit hugely from that in social-relationship building.

7. When you learn Urdu, you will be able to understand dialogues and songs in the films produced by the Bollywood film industry. Most of the lyrics are sung in Urdu.

8. Learning Urdu may boost your career if you want to work in or with the lands of Northern India, Pakistan, Great Britain, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and many other places. A knowledge of this language will indeed help you to find jobs and to expand your social network.