A week ahead of Eid, Delhiās Urdu Bazaar at night wears a look of hurried gaiety. Once a bastion of Urdu literature and books, the Mughal-era book market now houses just a smattering of Urdu book stores, strugglĀing for visibility amid flourishing stalls selling kababs, ittar, embroidered kalimas and cigĀarettes.
A Dying Declaration: Urdu Is Dying A Slow, Painful Death
Caught between twin pincers of the market and a communalised polity,š¦ Urdu is in death throes
Howeš°ver, Mohammad Naeem, 57, has no time for any of these as he hurries by. It is nearly 10 pm and he is late to open his library. Hazrat Shah Waliullah Public Library, tucked inside the cobĀbled streets of Delhiās walled city, is unlike any other library. It opeĀĀns between 10pm to 12 am every night and holds over 25,000 books in five languages, a majority of them in Urdu. Some of the manuscripts are hundreds of yeš°ars old, and have travelled far before landing up in this unique collection. āWeāre keeping Urdu education alive in Old Delhi,ā says Naeem.
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For the past 30 years, Naeem and his frieĀndsĀāĀa group of dedicated Urdu lovers and educationists in the walled cityāhave been running the Delhi Youth Welfare Association to uplift local youth and promote Urdu education. āNot just Urdu studies, weš¦ help students study in all languages. Language should never be an obstacle for education,ā he says. However, in Delhi, the study of Urdu is in a steady decline due to the woeful neglect of Urdu-medium schools.
PerĀcĀhed atop the 17th century FatĀeĀhĀpuri Masjid, the school has been the alma mater of thousands of Muslim youth from Old Delhi, since its 1929 inception.
āš²These days, both children and parents prefer English education,ā says Ehetram Uddin, physics teacher and head of the Urdu-medium FatĀeĀhĀpuri Muslim Senior Secondary School. PerĀcĀhed on toāp of the 17th-century Fatehpuri Masjid in Old Delhi, the aided school has been the alma mater of thousands of Muslim youth from the area since its inception in 1929.
Unlike madrasas that teach religious studies, Urdu-medĀium schools are regular schools where all subjects (except other languages) are supposed to be taught in Urdu. However, many of these Urdu-medium schools today only teach Urdu as a subject. Maths, science and arts are usually taught in English or Hindi. There are about 20-22 Urdu-medium schĀools under the Delhi education departmĀent, and the numbers are dropping. In Delhi as in other states, Urdu-medium schā±ools are being merged with schools that teach in other languages, due to an apparent lack of students.
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In the past few years, there has been a declining trend in students coming to Urdu-medium schools, Ehāetram tells Outlook. Most of the students who come to aided schĀools like Fatehpuri, belong to underprivileĀged families. Theź¦æ Covid-19 lockdown and subĀsequent economic distress sent many of Ehetramās young students into manual labour jobs. Of the ones that remained, many want to switch to English. āWe had to introduce an EngĀlish-medium section some years back to retĀain our students,ā he admits.
One of the primary reasons for the decreasing interest in studying in Urdu is the lack of qualifĀiĀed Urdu teachers. Staff at several government-Ārun Urdu schools in Old Delhi allege that Hindi teachers are recruited to Urdu schools, and many of them end up teaching subjects in HinĀdi. Up until 1995, there was a criterāion for teaĀcĀhers in Urdu-medium schools to have studied Urdu till Class XII. That was the year when the last batch of permanent Trained Graduate TeaĀchers (TGTs) and Post Graduate Teachers (PGTs) were recruited in Urdu schools.
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While there were some approvals in primary teacher recruitments, the majority of them teach in Hindi and English. In several government schĀoĀols that Outlook visited, guest teachers, as well as principals, did not sšpeak or teach in Urdu.
In Sšarovdaya Kanya Vidyalaya 2, one of the Urdu-Āmedium girlās schools in Old Delhi, Urdu is taught only as a subject, with Social Studies (SST) the only other subject that is taught in Urdu. The rest of the subjects are taught in HinĀdi and English. Principal Poonam Meena from Rajasthan, who took charge of the school during the pandemic, is herself not a native Urdu speaker. She recalls that her first recruitment as a teacher was in an Urdu-medium school. āI leaĀrnt Urdu on the job and I understand the importance of a qualified teaĀcĀher for Urdu. IndĀia is a divĀerse country with many languaĀges, and all languĀaĀges should be promoted,ā she says.
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The current BJP government at the Centre has pushed a three-language policy under the new National Education Policy (NEP), which aims to promote āmodern Indian langĀuagesā like Urdu as a third langĀuage, along with English and Hindi. But who decides the thiĀrd language? Delhi government schools offer Punjabi, Sanskrit and Urdu as third language opš tiĀons. But Sanskrit remaĀins the most offered third language in priĀvĀate schĀoĀols, despite the demand for Urdu and PunjĀabi in government schools, wherever they are offered. Even among government schoĀols, the number of Urdu langĀuage schools is low and concentrated in MusĀlim-majority areas. Most of š§øthem are inadequately staffed.
According to a 2018 report compiled by the Delhi Minority Commission, Urdu was taught as a subject in 284 out of 1,100 government schools in the capital. The report found that out of the total 1,028 sanctioned TGT posts for Urdu language teachers, 883 were lying vacant. In 2021, the Arvind Kejriwal government annoĀunced the recruitment of 900 Urdu teachers in TGT posts. At the time,š° AAP supporters hš±ailed it as the first time in 40 years that recruitments for Urdu teachers were taking place.
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Ghayoor Ahmad, vice principal and head of Sarvoday Bal Vidyalaya 1, an Urdu-medium boys school near Gate No. 1, Jama Masjid, clarifies that the move did not benefit Urdu-medium schools as the posts were not for teachers in Urdu-medium schools, but just for Urdu-lanĀgĀuĀage instructors. Once recruited, these teachers may not necessarily get placed in Urdu-medium schools, but in other goveš¬rnmenšt schools that offer Urdu as a subject.
Schools like SBV 1 cater to about 1,000 studeĀnts each on average, mostly from local Muslim families.ź¦° They offer students the option to receĀive their education in Hindi, or choose bilingual instruction. Ahmad says the number of students in the school has increased. Unlike aided institutions, government-run Urdu schĀools in the area hāave better infrastructure and more staff. āThe aim is to change the image of dilapidated Urdu-medium schools as places where only Muslim childĀren can study into model schools under the Delhi government,ā Ahmad says.
But for aided schools like the 103-year-old FateĀhĀpuri Muslim School, 95 per cent of whose funds come from the goverĀnment (ź¦five per cą·“ent is managed by the schoolās managing committee), the lack of teachers is a matter of concern. School administrations blame the ādepartmental hostilityā for slow recruitments.
āWhen teachers retire, we ask the department to open vacancies. In time they do, but they ask us to promote our TGT teachers to PšGT first.š¤” If these teachers donāt get clearance, the vacancĀies remain unfilled and pass on to the next cycle,ā says Khalil Ahmed, the schoolās manager. As of now, there are nine permanĀent teachers teaching 422 students. āWe need at least 20,ā Khalil adds.
Tabassum fears if her son shifts to an English-Āmedium school, all the literary traditions, greĀat poetry of protest and grandeur of Mughal history that forms the backbone of Old Delhi, might be lost to him.
Despite the push for primary education in mother tongues under the NEP, studź¦ents studying in Urdu face challź§enges in competing with English-educated students, and many choose to opt for English in basic or higher education. Data from the National Testing Agency shows that nearly 79 per cent of total NEET 2020 aspiĀrants chose to write the examination in English. Just 0.12 per cent students opt for Urdu.
According to the 75th NSS rź¦«ound of the 2017-18 Household Survey on Education, a majority of Muslim households (53.8 per cent) sent their children to English-speaking schools. About 20.8 per cent families chose Hindi schools, while only 12.2 per cent families opted for Urdu-meš»dĀium schools.
When asked what the biggest threat to Urdu wasāEnglish or Hindiāactivists and educationists agreed it was neither. āThe biggest threat to any language is its communalisation,ā says city-based filmmaker and history buff SohĀail Hashmi. āMahatma Gandhi wanted HindusĀtani [from which both Hindi and Urdu oriĀgiĀnate] to be the official language of India. The proĀĀblem began when politicians started to claĀim Hindi is the lļ·ŗanguage of Hindus, and Urdu of Muslims. This was the start of Urduās othering as something foreign and un-Indian,ā Hashmi says.
At a time when communal politics have taken centre stage, communalisation of language and its subsequent neglect mašy leave a large number of marginalised MusĀlim students with no access to private education or other languages further in the lurch, Hashmi adds.
āUrdu was born in India. It is as much an Indian language as Hindi. Many of Hindiās greatest poets have written in Urdu,ā says Khail, who is also a patron at the nightly Old Delhi library. The communalisation and erasure of Urdu as a language adds to the othering of minĀority communities both in society and in their own minds. āIf youth from Urdu-speaking households donāt learn to read in Urdu, what will they learn of the literature, heritage, art andź¦ culture of their own community? They will be lost in the world with no connection to their roots,ā he rues.
Tabassum, 32, is a single mother whose child,Ā Syed, is a student at one of the government-run Urdu schools of the walled city. Having learnt Urdu from her father, who was a teacher, she wants her son to get at least his basic education in Urdu. āBut he wantą¹s to study in the English medium. He says he will not get a job if he studies in Urdu or Hindi,ā Tabassum says. She ź¦canāt affĀord to send her son to a private, English-medĀium school. She tries to get him to read the works of Iqbal and Faiz in Urdu. But he shows littleĀ interest.
Last week, CBSE decided to drop the poems of Faiz Ahmad Faizāamong other topics like demĀocracy, diversity and Mughal courtsāfrom the school syllabus. Tabassum fears that if her son shifts to an English-medium school, all the greĀat poetry of protest, Urdu literary traditions and the grandeur of Mughal history that forms the cultural backbone of Old Delhiāher homeāmight be lost to him forever. āI hope he studies it now, while he still can. Who knows, they migĀht drop the language itself from the countryās syllabus one dašy.ā
(This appeared in the print edition as "A Dying Declaration&šquot;)
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