Former VC Ansari says state education policies responsible for the decline of Urdu

Former vice president M. Hamid Ansari lamented on Friday that fewer people speak Urdu in the country despite the fact that the population as a whole is growing and he attributed this to state education policy. Speaking at the launch of two books by former Union minister Ashwani Kumar, “Book of Wisdom” and “Ehsas O Izhar,” he said that some experts have suggested that this might be because state governments have been reluctant to include Urdu in basic and secondary school curricula and hire Urdu teachers. “Urdu speakers are getting harder to find these days. It is supported by census data. This decline raises a problem given the population growth in general. Why is this happening?

Does it suggest a pattern of language abandonment, whether voluntary or otherwise? People who have worked on this subject have come to the conclusion that the answer lies in state government policies and the pattern of school enrolment,” he said.

According to data gathered, according to Ansari, there has been resistance in primary and secondary schools to incorporating Urdu into the curriculum and hiring Urdu instructors. He claimed that while this is most obvious in Delhi and my home state of Uttar Pradesh, it is different in states like Maharashtra, Bihar, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. In a letter to state chief ministers in July 1958, former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, according to Ansari, described the phenomenon as “a pettiness of mind, narrowness in outlook, and an immaturity that characterises a deliberate attempt to push out Urdu which is spoken by a large number of people.” He, however, said, “in this seemingly darkening atmosphere, there is some silver lining also” and referred to movies and Urdu programmes like ‘Rekhta’ which have contributed to the revival of Urdu.

He stated Urdu “does not only confine to the sub-continent and subjective notions about our neighbourhood, but also the world,” noting that it was not just a national but an international language that could not be easily lost. According to Justice T S Thakur, a former Chief Justice of India, Urdu should not be viewed as a language specific to one religion. “Today, it is essential to preach that all paths lead to the same God through the use of “shayari” to bring society together. There is no other way to give back to society than this, “said he.

Among others present at the gathering were noted filmmaker Muzaffar Ali, former chief ministers Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Farooq Abdullah, Union minister Rao Inderjit Singh, Subhas Chandra, Shatrughan Sinha, former Punjab ministers Manpreet Badal and Sukhjinder Randhawa, and Attorney-General R Venkataramani.