Modernity and Languages in Islam: The Case of Urdu

and the Other Languages of Pakistan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By

 

 

 

 

TARIQ  RAHMAN Ph. D

 

DISTINGUISHED NATIONAL PROFESSOR

QUAID-I-AZAM UNIVERSITY ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN

e.mail=  drt_rahman@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT

Modernity and Languages in Islam: The Case of Urdu and

the Other Languages of Pakistan

 

Urdu, presently the national language of Pakistan and the identity symbol of Indian Muslims, is associated with Islam in South Asia. This association was forged during British colonial rule when modernity first impacted India. The British replaced Persian, the official language of Mughal rule, with Urdu at the lower level and English at the higher one in parts of North India and present-day Pakistan. Urdu was disseminated by networks of education and communication in colonial India. It became the medium of instruction in the Islamic seminaries (madrassas) and the major language of religious writings. It also become part of the Muslim identity and contributed, next only to Islam itself, in mobilizing the Muslim community to demand Pakistan which was carved out of British India in 1947.

In Pakistan Urdu and Islam are the main symbolic components of the Pakistani Muslim identity which resists the expression of the ethnic identities of that country based upon the indigenous languages of the people. This (Pakistani Muslim) identity is supported by right-wing politics and is antagonistic not only to ethnic identification but also to the globalized, liberal, Westernized identity based upon English which is the hallmark of the elite. In India, however, Urdu supports the Muslim minority against right-wing Hindu domination. In short, Urdu plays complex and even contradictory roles in its association with Islam in Pakistan and parts of North India. The association of the other languages of Pakistan, including English, is also touched upon briefly.

Modernity and Languages in Islam; The Case of Urdu and the Other

 Languages of Pakistan

Urdu is the national languages of Pakistan as well as the language of wider communication in that country. It is also associated with the Muslim community in India. Urdu is not considered sacrosanct in itself because it is not Arabic though it is written in the script of Persian (nastaliq) which, in turn, is based on the Arabic one (naskh). It also has a number of words of Arabic origin though, for that matter, it has even more words of Persian and some of Turkish. For all these importations of Muslim lexicons, it is a derivative of Hindvi or Hindvi, the parent of both modern Hindi and Urdu (Rai 1984). The oldest names of Urdu are: ‘ “Hindvi”, “Hindi”, “Dihlavi”, “Gujri”, “Dakani”, and “Rekhtah” ’. In the north, both “Rekhtah” and “Hindi” were popular as names for the same language from sometime before the eighteenth century, and the name ‘Hindi’ was used, in preference to “Rekhtah”, from about the mid-nineteenth century’. Indeed, the name Urdu seems to have been used for the first time, at least in writing, around 1780 (Faruqi 2003: 806). In short, during the period when Urdu became the language of Islam in South Asia, it was called Rekhtah, Hindi and, only sometimes, Urdu. The ordinary, spoken version (bazaar Urdu) was and still is almost identical with popular, spoken Hindi. Thus, in sheer size, the spoken language is a major language of the world (see Annexure 1).

As it is associated with the Muslim identity in both pre-and post-partition India, with Pakistani Nationalism in Pakistan and with Islam in South Asia in general, the key to understanding the relationship between religion, language and modernity is to study the rise of Urdu as the language of Islam in British India and its role in Pakistan. While most of the following article will deal with this theme, attention will also be given to the role of the other languages of Pakistan—Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Siraiki, Balochi, Brahvi etc—as far as the religions identity or needs of the people are concerned (Annexure 2).

As Urdu was not the mother language of the people of the area now called Pakistan, this study of Urdu as the language of South Asian Islam will take us to North India, the home of Urdu, and the British role in India when both modernity and Urdu first became social forces to reckon with in the construction of the contemporary Muslim culture and identity.

Review of Literature

            The paradigmatic work on the language of politics in Islam is Bernard Lewis’s book The Political Language of Islam (1988). Lewis looks at the way words are used to express political ideas, including modern ones such as ‘constitution’ and ‘nation’, in the major languages of the Muslim world—Arabic, Turkish and Persian (the order in which the author writes about these languages). Lewis, however, does not touch upon Urdu except when he defines ‘those who are ruled’ in the context of British rule in India. These, he notes, were called ‘ryot’ by the British in India (Lewis 1988: 61). The other major text about language and Islam, Muzaffar Alam’s book The Languages of Political Islam (2004), studies Persian texts dealing with governance and traces out the relationship between Persian and Mughal power. Islam, of course, shapes the texts as well as the relationship mentioned above, and it is interpreted by the exponents of the Sharia’h and the Sufis. Unlike Lewis, Alam does not study the political terms as used in India except when they occur in relation to something else. More to the point, like Lewis, he too does not study the use of Urdu, or any indigenous language of the Indian Muslims, in any of these contexts.

            The only major works about Urdu as an Islamic language are Abdul Haq’s study of the role of the sufis (Haq 1977) and  A.D. Naseem’s work on the role  of the sufis from the Chisti order of Islamic sufism in the evolution of Urdu (Naseem 1997). Ayub Qadri has written a  similar study of the role of the ulema in the evolution of Urdu prose (Qadri 1988). There are also lists of the translations (Khan 1987) as well as the exegeses of the Qur’an in Urdu (Naqvi 1992). All of these books follow the style of the chronologically arranged dictionary giving biographical entries with samples of verse and prose in the case of writers and details of writings in the case of translations and exegeses.

            There are some other isolated studies of Islamic writings in other languages of South Asia too (Naeem 1986). These studies provides lists of individual works and help trace out the history of the use of these languages in writings about religion. However, they lack analytical insights about the changes in identity, perceptions about languages or the culture of the Muslims of South Asia as a consequence of the use of these languages.

            This article intends to present such an analysis but, like earlier works, most space will be given to tracing out chronologically how Urdu, and to a lesser extent other languages, came to be associated with Islam in the areas now called Pakistan. Attention will also be given to North India in passing as far as the evolution of Urdu as an Islamic language is concerned.

Arabic as the Language of Islam in India

Arabic was and remains the sacred language of Islam in the whole of the Muslim world. In South Asia, however, it was a liturgical language which had tremendous symbolic value but was not used in the affairs of the state. However, Muslim mystics (sufis) used it in correspondence and formal certificates (Sheerani 1929: 83). It was also part of the curricula of the madrassas which were initially schools of learning rather than merely Islam learning. The books on Arabic grammar (sarf and nahw) and literature were part of the curricula by the time of Ghaisuddin Balban (r. 1266-1287). Some of them were later included in the Dars-i-Nizami, the curriculum devised by Mulla Nizamuddin Sihalvi (d. 1748) in 18th century Lucknow. Though most madrassa graduates merely memorized the Arabic texts as well as their commentaries which were in Arabic and Persian, some did produce written work in Arabic. A brief anthology of this work—the Nuzhat al Khawatir (Hai 1947)—records how the number of these kept decreasing as other languages became dominant even in the realm of Islamic knowledge.

Arabic is still taught in the madrassas (now strictly religious seminaries) of Pakistan through the canonical texts (see list in Rahman 2002: 628-629) as well as modern, accessible ones (Ibid 629-630). The former function as symbols of continuity and help preserve a pre-colonial Muslim identity harking back to the days of Islamic glory. The latter are a concession to modernity; they suggest that the madrassas allow changes provided they do not appear to threaten the Muslim identity they cherish.

Persian as an Islamic language

            Two languages represented change and were accepted as Islamic languages in India precisely because they did not threaten the Muslim identity there. One was Persian and the other Urdu.

            Persian was a part of Muslim, rather than Islamic, identity because the Muslim ruling elite used it in the domains of power. However, Muslim intellectuals consciously called it a language of Islam (Alam 1998: 329). Persian has a huge body of poetry, which is amorous but can be construed as being mystical at an esoteric level, and enjoyed tremendous intellectual prestige in South Asia. It was also the language of the earliest translations of the Qur’an. The Tuzk-e-Jahangiri, Mughal Emperor Jahangir’s                   (r. 1605-207) autobiography mentions his ordering Meer Sayied Muhammad of Gujrat to translate the holy book in ‘simple language (Lughat-i-rikhta) word by word into Persian’ (Jahangir 1617: Vol. 2: 34-35). While some people suggest that ‘lught-i-rikhta’ is the ancestor of Urdu (Sheerani 1931: 44); others believe it was Persian. This translation, if it was ever made, is not available.

            Most people believe that Shah Waliullah (1702- 63) first translated the Qur’an into Persian. However, the present author has seen a translation by Maulana Sultan Muhammad Batuniani (Tunia is a place near Lehri in Balochistan) which is dated 977 A. H (1569-70). However, Shah Waliullah’s influence on Islam in India was tremendous and his works are either in Arabic or Persian (for the titles see Ghazali 2001).

            Other religious books, including the famous books of law Fatawa-i-Alamgiri, were in Persian. The commentaries and marginal notes on Arabic texts in the madrassas were also in Persian. Moreover, it was said to be the formal medium of instruction, the language of legal decisions, court documents and the language of literature during the period of Muslim rule in India. Thus, Persian was very much associated with the Islamic civilization and identity in India which, suggests Arnold Toynbee, fell into ‘Iranic’ rather than the ‘Arabic’ zone of the Muslim world (Toynbee Vol. 1: 32-37).

The Emergence of Urdu as an Islamic Language

            Unlike Arabic, but like Persian, there was nothing intrinsically holy about Persian. It was part of the Islamic culture and Muslim identity in India because it was the language of dominant elite. When these elite lost its political power in the wake of British colonialism, it consolidated its cultural power through the techniques and artifacts of modernity. The most important changes created by modernity were a formal chain of schools, the printing press, an orderly bureaucracy and the concept of the unity of India. The schools in North India used Urdu as a medium of instruction (Rahman 2002: 210-211). The printing press created and disseminated books in Urdu in larger numbers than could have been possible earlier. Indeed, as Francis Robinson points out, ‘the ulema used the new technology of the printing press to compensate for the loss of political power’ (1996: 72). The lower bureaucracy, especially the courts of law and the non-commissioned ranks of the army, used some form of ‘Hindustani’ (or Urdu) in the Persian and the Roman scripts respectively. And the idea of ‘India’ or ‘Hindustan’ was spread out widely by the British sahibs and memsahibs who spoke a few words of ‘Hindustani’ wherever they traveled by rail or otherwise over India as if the language of the sub-continent was somehow Urdu—or, at least, some bazaar variant of it.

            The mystics (sufis) had started using the ancestor of Urdu—variously called Hindvi, Hindui or in regional forms Gujrati or Dakkani—in informal conversation and occasional verses. Khwaja Banda Nawaz Gesu Daraz (1312-1421), who was born in Delhi and lived there for 80 years, migrated to Gulbarga when Amir Taimur destroyed Delhi in 1400. Sultan Feroz Shah Bahmini (1397-1421), who himself is said to have composed verse in Urdu (Shareef 2004: 85), was the ruler and he welcomed the saint. Khawja Gesu Daraz gave sermons in Dakkani Urdu since people were less knowledgeable in Persian and Arabic and has left behind both prose and verse in this language (Shareef 2004: 59). Beginning from this early start in the 14th century, there are a number of malfuzat, recording the conversations of sufi saints, containing Hindvi words (examples given in Naseem 1997). This language was not, however, considered appropriate for religious writing so Shah Muran Ji (d. 1496) writes in a didactic poem in Hindvi that this language was like the diamond one discovered in a dung heap. He makes it clear that the poem is intended for those who neither knew Arabic nor Persian. Then, in easy Hindvi verse which contemporary Urdu readers can understand with some effort, the author explains mysticism in questions and answers (Haq 1977: 48-50). Another mystic, Shah Burhanuddin Janum, wrote a Hindvi poem composed in 1582. He too apologizes for writing in Hindvi but argues that one should look at the meaning, the essence, rather than the outward form. (Ibid 62-63).

            The attitudes of these fifteenth and sixteenth century mystics is similar to that of the Mehdavis—pioneers of a new religious sect—who followed the teachings Syed Muhammad Mehdi of Jaunpur (1443-1505) which were considered heretical at that time. In a poem written between 1712-1756 in Hindvi, the Mahdavis say that one should not look down upon Hindi as it is the commonly used language of explanation (in Sheerani 1940; 207). Indeed, even earlier than this period, there were poems in Urdu explaining the rudiments of Islam such as Syed Ashraf Jahangir Samnani’s (d. 1405) ‘risala’ (dissertation) on ethics and mysticism written in 1308 (Naqvi 1992: 23). There is also  Shah Malik’s Shariat Nama (1666-67) in Dekkani verse. These Sharia’h guide books, as they can be called, can be seen in the catalogues of the British Library (Blumhardt 1926; and Quraishi and Sims-Williams 1978).

Religious Writings in Urdu After Shah Waliullah

            Shah Waliullah (1703-1762) is a major figure in the renaissance of Islamic reform and revivalism in India and the pioneer of fundamentalist, puritanical Islamic practice as well. Although be himself wrote in Arabic and Persian, he encouraged his son Shah Abdul Aziz to learn idiomatic Urdu (Rizvi 1982: 77). His other sons, Shah Abdul Qadir (1753-1827) and Shah Rafiuddin (1749-1817) translated the Qur’an into Urdu (Rizvi 1982: 104-105). An earlier venture initiated by J.B.Gilchrist (1759-1841), the pioneer of Urdu studies at Fort William College, was forbidden by the government in 1807 because the ulema had been highly incensed even with Shah Waliullah’s Persian translation to countenance an Urdu one (Siddiqui 1979: 155-157). Hashmi mentions Qazi Mohammad Azam Sanbhli’s translation  in ‘the language born out of the contact of Arabic and Persian’ [by which he means eighteenth century Urdu] in 1719 and that of an unknown translator in 1737. Both are available in manuscript since they were never published (Khan 1987: 12). Exegeses came to be written as early as the end of the sixteenth century and  some of the early ones are anonymous. Gujrat and Deccan fare prominently as centres of Islamic writing in this early period (Naqvi 1992: 23). A notable attempt is that of Murad Ullah Ansari Sanbhli who gives reasons for having written his exegesis Tafsir-e-Muradi (which ended in 1771). Sanbhli argues that, since millions of people spoke Hindi and were keen to learn from his explanations of the holy book, he was requested by many of his companions to write his explanations for them. He therefore undertook the writing of this exegesis (Naqvi 1992: 26). This, however, was the period (middle of the 18th century) when there was a great increase in religious writings in Urdu. While the popular poems such as Nur Namas and Jang Namas continued to be written, serious prose literature—translations of the Qur’an and the Hadith, exegesis, collections of legal judgments (fatawa)—now replaced Persian works in these genres. Such literature is described in some detail by Ayub Qadri (1988), Naqvi (1992) and Khan (1987), but a study with reference to its production and consumption still needs to be done.

     Among the most notable of these works are those by the pioneers of the Jihad movement against the Sikhs and the British. Sayyid Ahmad (1786-1831), who died fighting the Sikhs at Balakot, wrote two pamphlets (risalas) in what he called ‘Hindi’ to guide the ordinary Muslims about saying their prayers and understanding the verses of the Qur’ an. The work on prayers was published in 1866 and was part of this overall effort to reform Islam in India (Qadri 1988: 113-118). Shah Ismail (1779-1831) translated his own pamphlet on the refutation of innovation and heresy into Urdu renaming it Taqwiat ul Iman (1821). This became an important source of inspiration for the whole reform movement and was reprinted several times (Qadri 1988: 124-125). Similarly Maulvi Syed Abdullah translated Shah Rafiuddin’s Persian pamphlet Qiamat Nama into Urdu calling it Dab ul Akhirat (1863) (Qadri 1988: 199). In short, Urdu, generally called Hindi in those days, played an important role in the reformist movement associated with Shah Waliullah and his family and disciples.

The Role of the Sub-Sects in the Spread of Urdu

            While the major sects of Islam remained the Shia and the Sunni (for the origin of Shia Islam see Jafri 1979), with the latter in overwhelming majority in India, the sub-sects of the Sunnis (also called maslak) which emerged during the British period were the Ahl-i-Hadith, the Deobandi and the Barelvis. These sub-sects formed madrassas of their own, published pamphlets (risalas) and indulged in oral debates where the major medium of communication was Urdu. Thus their role in the dissemination of Urdu needs to be given attention.

The Ah-i-Hadith

            The Ahl-i-Hadith, in common with many 18th century Muslim thinkers inspired by Shah Waliullah, wanted to reform Indian Islam. This was their response to the political weakness of the Muslims in India. The Ahl-i-Hadith, moreover, were also inspired by Abdul Wahab (1703-1792) of Saudi Arabia who was completely antagonistic to the veneration of the tombs of saints and sufism as it flourished in his day. The Ahl-i-Hadith or Wahabis as they were called in India, wrote learned treatises in Persian but they also understood the value of spreading their message in Urdu and other languages, especially Bengali, to the laity. Wilayat Ali (b. 1790), one of their leaders in Patna, taught the rudiments of the faith in simple Urdu. He got the translation of the Qur’an by Shah Abdul Qadir as well as some writings of Shah Ismail in Urdu printed locally and ‘distributed among the numbers of the gatherings, which included some women also’ (Ahmad 1966: 84). Another Ahl-i-Hadith thinker, Haji Badruddin, wrote his fatwa in Bengali verse which, of course, must have appealed to ordinary people (Ahmad 1966: 237).

As the Wahabis fought the British as well as the Sikhs in the NWFP, they emphasized jihad. Some of their tracts, such as the Risala Jihadiya and Hariqial Ihrar (1866-67), praised the concept of the ‘just war’. Both these works, as well as other tracts, were in Urdu and were, therefore, easily accessible to the public. The British were well aware of the ‘Rebel camp on the Punjab Frontier’ as W. W. Hunter calls it. It was established in 1831 and finally defeated in 1868 (Hunter 1871: 3). The main leader of the fighters, Sayyid Ahmad, preached between 1820-22 and Hunter reports that a number of Urdu poems foretelling the downfall of the British were in circulation (Hunter 1871: 53-54). The itinerant Wahabi preacher whom Hunter describes must also have preached in the same language. The Ahl-i-Hadith created prose literature in Urdu which has been described as follows:

Addressed mainly to the common people the manner of presentation is geared to their mental level. The narrative is simple and conversational. It is in sharp contrast to the ornamental rhymed prose then generally in use. Arguments are backed with quotations from the Qur’an and Hadith, translated in Urdu. Didactic stories and similes are used to illustrate the points (Ahmad 1966: 282).

 

            Thus, at least by 1820, as the Awadh Akhbar of 15 January 1870 noted, ‘religious works of fifty years are now all being compiled in Urdu’. Thus, when Persian was replaced by English at the upper level and the vernaculars at the lower ones in 1837, there already existed much Islamic literature in Urdu—enough to make it the major language of Islam in India.

The Deobandis

            The famous madrassa established at Deoband in 1867 which pioneered this movement was the brainchild of Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi (1833-1877) and Maulana Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (1829-1905). The Darul Uloom, as it was called, used Urdu as a medium of instruction. Thus, as Barbara Metcalf has pointed out, it ‘was instrumental in establishing Urdu as a language of communication among the Muslims of India’ (Metcalf 1982: 102-103).

            Indeed, so successful was Urdu as the language of Indian Islam that, according to one scholar, the Bohras of Western India shifted from Gujarati to Urdu in this period, for example, and some Tamil Muslims made the same transition shortly after’ (Mines 1973). However, though this shift was in some domains only because, as the present researcher found out, the Bohras do use Gujrati (Rahman 2002: 447) and the Tamil Muslims use Arwi, which is Tamil in the Arabic script and with some Arabic words (Alim 1993: 125), as languages of identity even now.

            The Deobandi interpretation of Islam, which is strict and puritanical, goes against the saint-ridden, folk Islam of ordinary Indian Muslims. However, it spread widely as the graduates of Deoband occupied mosques and the Bahishti Zewar of Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi (d. 1943), a detailed and comprehensive Sharia’h guidebook primarily meant for women, become a household name in North India and the areas now in Pakistan.

            In Pakistan the Deobandi madrassas have increased from 1779 in 1988 to nearly 7000 in 2002. They are also the ones associated with militant and extremist Islam since the Taliban, who imposed a very stringent version of the Sharia’h on Afghanistan (Rashid 2000), were students of these madrassas. They are concentrated in the NWFP and Baluchistan which are also associated with Islamic radicalism. The language of the Deobandis, even in the NWFP where the mother tongue of most students is Pashto, remains Urdu. Thus Urdu remains the main carrier of the Deobandi ideology in South Asia.

The Barelvis

            The Barelvis—or Ahl-i-Sunnat as they call themselves—centered on the work of Ahmed Raza Khan (1856-1921). Ahmed Raza, belonging to an ashraf family of Pathan origin from Bareilly, belonged to the Urdu culture of U. P. He founded a madrassa called Manzar al-Islam. By this time Urdu was the established language of Islam in India and, therefore, the Barelvis used it in their sermons, popular poetry and the theological debates with their rivals the Deobandis and the Ahl-i-Hadith. They also had two major presses in Barcilly, the Hasani Press and the Matba’ Ahl-i-Sunnat wal Jama’at. They published almost all the fatawa of Ahmed Raza Khan (Sanyal 1996: 83). Ahmad Raza’s own poems are in the lofty tradition of Urdu poetry of his times (see example in Sanyal 146-148). The main text of the Barelvi maslak is devotion to the Prophet of Islam and many of the verses are about this subject (ibid, 155-158). Besides, there is a large number of Nur Namas, and not only in Urdu but in all major languages of South Asian Muslims, on this theme. Barelvi Islam, affirming the intercession of saints, is the folk Islam of South Asia and fulfills the spiritual needs of the people. Its tenets and interpretation of Islamic law spread widely by an Urdu work, Amjad ‘Ali Azami’s Bahar-e-Shariat, which is the equivalent of the Deobandi work Bahishti Zewar.

Other Schools of Islamic Thought

            In Lucknow the Farangi Mahalli family of religious scholars had been teaching Islamic studies since the 18th century. Mulla Nizamaddin, the inventor of the curriculum called the Dars-i-Nizami, was a speaker of Urdu (Robinson 2002: 46-52). In 1905 Maulana Abdul Bari created the Madrassa-i Aliya Nizamiyya which continued its work till the 1960s (Robinson 2002: 71). Urdu was taught separately in this ‘Cambridge of India’ to those who did not undertake the study of the full Dars-i-Nizmi (Ibid 126). The Farangi Mahalli family of alims had ‘produced some of the earliest Urdu newspapers which still exist, Tilism-i-Lakhnow , which appeared in the year before the Mutiny uprising, and Karnama, which appeared in the three decades after it ‘(Ibid 133).

            So common was the use of Urdu as a religious language that sects considered heretical—such as the Ahmedis (or Quaidianis)—also used it for writing and missionary work. Although Mirza Ghulam Ahmed (c. 1830s-1908) wrote in Arabic and Persian for authencity, he also wrote extensively in Urdu to disseminate his message among the masses (Friedman 1989: 135). His spiritual successors also continued to write in Urdu.

Another sect, considered heretical by mainstream ulema, The Ahl-i-Quran, argued that the hadith is not reliable and, therefore, guidance can only be obtained from the Qur’an, Ghulam Ahmed Parvez, the most well known proponent of the sect in the twentieth century, wrote extensively in Urdu. He even argued that prayers can be said in Urdu instead of Arabic (Mustafa 1990: 241). This idea occurred off and on to many dissident thinkers, whether from heterodox sects or otherwise, and Mohammad Masud (1916-1985), a government officer famous for his individualistic, even eccentric, views upon many issues, argued that prayers should be said in a language one understands—hence in Urdu and, later in his life, Punjabi (Malik and Salim, 2004: 18-19).1

Urdu is also the language of Islamic revivalism. Sayyid Abu’l A‘la Mawdudi, (1903-1979), the pioneer of revivalist Islam through the efforts of his Jama‘at-i Islami, wrote his entire work in idiomatic and accessible Urdu. He was himself from Delhi and spoke idiomatic Urdu at home (Nasr 1994: 3). He is also pioneer in using easily comprehensibe Urdu rather than the Arabic-laden jargon of maulvis which was used by writers on religious subjects earlier. He is also an Urdu journalist of note whose journal Tarjumanu’l-Qur’an appealed to the middle class of the urban areas of North India and Pakistan. Mawdudi’s books were read by middle class, professionals in Pakistan who have a tremendous influence in the Jama‘at. These people supported Urdu in Pakistan against all other languages.

All the debates of the Pakistani and the Indian ulema in the last century and at present are in Urdu. Their writings, refuting each other’s beliefs, are in the same language. For instance, the criticism of Mawdudi and its reply is in Urdu (Yusuf 1968); the status of all religious arguments is in the same language (Ludhianwi 1995) and so are all the writings of the ulema whether against Western philosophies (Usmani 1997) or other matters.

Urdu in the Elegies

            The elegies (marsiyas) about the martyrdom of Imam Hussain in the Battle of Karbala (680C.E), became an important part of the culture of both the Shia Kingdoms of the Deccan and the Kingdom of Oudh Indeed, they were an important part of the poetic sensibilities of even Sunni Muslims all over north India and present-day Pakistan. Such elegies were written in Urdu by poets, such as Hashmi Baijapuri (1656-1672) Mulla Vajhi etc, in the Deccan (Shareef 2004: 767); Siddiqui 1967: 716-717). Later, in Lucknow Mir Anees (d. 1874) and Mirza Dabeer (1875) became famous marsiya poets whose Urdu verses were part of the mourning for the martyrs of Karbala in Muharram (Siddiqui 1967: 721-792).

    In short, Urdu became the language of Islam in South Asia because of the highest number of translations and exegeses of the Qur’an available  in it (Khan 1987: 18; Naqvi 1992); being associated with teaching in the madrassas; elegies commemorating the martyrdom of Hussain which is central to the Shia faith and the writings of revivalists and Islamic pressure groups in Pakistan and India. Let us now come to the implications of these facts for Pakistan.

Urdu, Muslim Identity, and Pakistan

Islam and language both contributed to the creation of Pakistan, a state for the Muslims of British India, in 1947. Islam was the principal identity symbol of the Indian Muslims who got mobilized to give a united opposition to the Hindu majority to obtain maximum political and economic advantages (Jalal 1985) and then, under the leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), partitioned India to create Pakistan and Bharat (India). Urdu, which had become a symbol of Muslim identity during the 19th century, was the subsidiary symbol of the Indian Muslim identity (King 1994) which helped establish the new state. In short, South Asia is witness to the adoption of a local language, Urdu, as the language of Islam—both the identity symbol of the Muslim community and the medium of instruction, preaching publication of Islamic material—rather than Arabic. This would not have occurred without the British intervention which brought modernity in South Asia. Indeed, the idea that numbers are politically significant—for quotas in jobs, admissions in educational institutions, government patronage—was created by the British who introduced modern concepts like representation of the people, equality before a secular legal system and the creation of an ubiquitous public service all over India. When the Indians experienced the census, they found that the category ‘Mahomedan’ (Muslim) could be disempowered or empowered, impoverished or enriched, deprived or benefited depending on a number of factors out of which the only ones they understood were numbers and loyalty to the rulers. This game of numbers created the perception of a monolithic Muslim community—suppressing sectarian (Shia, Sunni, Aga Khani, Bohre etc); class (ashraf = gentlemen versus ajlaf = commoners) and linguistic or ethnic divisions—which was held together by Islam and Urdu. The mirror image of this was the constructions of the Hindu ‘Other’ hold together by Hindutva and Hindi (Dalmia 1997). Besides investing political and economic significance in the categories of ‘Muslim’ and ‘Hindu’, modernity also made it possible to disseminate language much more widely than ever before. The printing press, the schooling system, the textbooks, the political speech and pamphlet and later the radio all spread out standardized versions of languages—mostly Hindi and Urdu in North India and the areas now comprising Pakistan—which created communities (Muslims and Hindus) much as literacy created nationalistic identities in modern Europe in a process described by Benedict Anderson (1983).

Almost a century—from the middle of the nineteenth century till the creation of Pakistan—of the Hindi-Urdu controversy (King 1994), makes us realize how potent the symbolic value of language was in the creation of the politicized modern Muslim and Hindu identities. But these constructions came at the cost of suppressing aspects of the communal self which manifested themselves later as we shall touch upon in passing.

The Politics of Urdu and Islam in Pakistan and North India

Both Urdu and Islam came to play different, and even opposing, roles in the power dynamics of post-partition Muslim communities in Pakistan and North India. In Pakistan the ruling elite, which was mostly Punjabi-speaking, continued to consolidate its dominance over the different ethnicities comprising Pakistan in the name of Islam and Urdu. The Bengalis, who were a majority in the new state, reacted to this dominance by mobilizing the symbol of language to give a united front to the West Pakistanis. This movement, the Bengali language movement, culminated in the deaths of protesting students on 21 February 1952 and laid the foundation for separatist nationalism (Umar 2004: 190-229). At last, after a bloody civil war in 1971, the state of Bangladesh was created. In West Pakistan, the Sindhis, Buloch, Pashtuns and Siraikis have all used their respective languages as ethnic identity symbols to procure power and a more equitable distribution of power and resources in the state (Rahman 1996). Thus, in Pakistan Urdu came to be associated with the ruling elite as far as its domination over the weaker ethnic groups was concerned. The strongest religious influence on the educated, urban lower- middle and middle classes is that of the Jama‘at-i Islami which was a strong supporter of Urdu. According to Seyyed Vali Nasr:              

The party [Jama‘at]… much like the Muslim league had viewed Urdu as the linchpin of the two-nation theory and a cornerstone of Pakistani nationalism. Allegiance to Urdu was therefore an article of faith in the Jama‘at. The rural and urban poor are as deeply rooted in vernaculars such as Baluchi, Pakistan, Punjabi, Siraiki, and Sindhi. Outside of the Muhajir communities of Sind, Urdu is not used below the lower-middle class (Nasr 1994: 85).

 

Because of the religious right’s support of Urdu, both the ethno-nationalists, using the identity symbols of the indigenous languages of the people as well as the Westernized elite using English oppose Urdu. The latter feel that this language would empower the religious lobby which, in their view, would suppress women and probably inhibit creativity, arts and research. Hence Khalid Ahmed, a well Known liberal intellectual from Lahore, argues that Urdu is intrinsically not a progressive language while English is (Ahmed 1998).

While in Pakistan Urdu is pro-establishment and right wing, in India it is anti-establishment and stands for the autonomy, identity and rights of the Muslim community. Though spoken only in parts of North India, and that too in the urban areas, it is a symbol of the Muslim identity. Because the Hindus are in a huge majority the Muslims feel that the fight to preserve Urdu is part of keeping India a pluralistic democracy.

The Political Uses of Language Planning of Urdu in Pakistan

            Since the state used Urdu as a symbol of Islamic identity, its language planning activities revolved around it. One instance of legitimizing West Pakistani domination of East Pakistan was the Islamization of Bengali. The central government established adult education centers East to teach Bengali through the Arabic Script’ (PO 4 Oct 1950). The Language Committee set up in 1950 recommended non-Sanskritized Bengali and the teaching of Urdu (LAD-B 31 Oct 1951: 25).

            Another area in which the Islamic identity was associated with Urdu and its script was in neologism—the coining of new terms to express modern concepts in the languages of Pakistan. Here, to begin with, Urdu itself was purged of Persian and Hindi elements (Allah Hafiz replaced Khuda Hafiz during Zia ul Haq’s Islamization [1977-1988] because Khuda is the Persian word for God whereas Islamic purism required the Arabic equivalent. The Urdu script was considered the desiderated script for languages without an old established script such as Punjabi, Siraiki, Balochi, Brahvi and, of course, the unwritten languages of the country. In Balochistan, the convention on the Balochi script held in September 1972, become a battle ground between the left-leaning ethno-nationalists and the right-leaning Pakistani nationalists. The former rejected the Urdu script even preferring the Roman one to it while the latter insisted upon it (Rahman 1996: 166).

            This horizontal (ethnic) conflict is not the only one in which Urdu plays a political role. It is also part of the vertical (socio-economic class) conflict in the country. In this role it favours the mostly Urdu-educated lower middle class against the English-educated upper-middle and upper classes (the middle class falls unevenly in both divides). While the elites of wealth and power can buy English schooling, the masses are educated either in Urdu (in interior Sind also in Sindhi) or not at all. While English-medium schooling tends to disseminate liberal views making students more tolerant of religious minorities and sensitive towards women’s rights, it also alienates students from their culture and makes them look down upon their compatriots who are not as Westernized as themselves (Rahman 2004: 71 and 161-176). In short, Urdu and Islam are used to subordinate the ethnic elites in favour of the Punjabi elite but, ironically enough, both are in fact subordinated to the interests of the Westernized, English-using, urban elite.

            The political uses of Urdu as a part of the Islamic and Pakistani nationalist identity are, therefore, complex and contradictory.

Political Vocabulary in Urdu

            Although this is not the place to undertake a study of the political vocabulary of Urdu a la Bernard Lewis (1988), it is possible to point out the religious and political implications of some of this vocabulary. This vocabulary borrows extensively, self-consciously, from Arabic and Persian rather than the indigenous tradition. Thus words like ‘chunao’ (election), ‘raj’ (rule), common between Urdu and Hindi, are studiously avoided and their Perso-Arabic equivalents ‘intikhabat’ and ‘hukoomat’ are used. Sometimes there is no term corresponding to the one used in English. A notorious case in point is ‘secular’ for which the one in use in Urdu is ‘la-din’ (without religion).

            In this context Bernard Lewis tells us that such a term did not exist in Arabic or Turkish either. In Turkish, as in Urdu, the nedogism used was ladini. This term, coined by Zia Gokalp (1875/76-1924), was often taken to mean “irreligious” or even “antireligious”, and these interpretations further increased the hostility with which the notion was received’ (Lewis 1988: 117). This is exactly what has happened where Urdu is used for the same purpose. Modern Turkey does, however, have the word Layik, ‘a loanword from the French’ (ibid, 117). Arabic has a more satisfactory term, first used by Christian Arabs, alamiani from alam (= the world). Urdu could use the word duniyavi from duniya (the world) with the same meaning. It would be far less biased than the term la-din which, in effect, implies that those who support secular democracy are apostates.

The Indigenous Languages of Pakistan and Islam

Although Urdu emerged as the major language of Islam in most of South Asia, the indigenous languages of Muslims—Bengali, Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi, Brahvi etc—of these areas were also used for religious purposes. Thus, in the case of Urdu, there are Sharia’h guidebooks in all these languages.

While most of these books were not part of the formal curricula in the madrassas, some were taught at one time or the other. For instance Richard Burton, the famous explorer and Orientalist, mentions the names of Sindhi books which were taught in the schools before the British conquest (Burton 1851 in Baloch 1971: 48-48). Similarly the Baran Anwa, a rhymed Sharia’h guidebook in Punjabi, is mentioned in the great epic work Heer Ranjha. The names of such books in Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi and Brahvi are given in detail in my book Language, Ideology and Power (Rahman 2002: 630-632) and need not be repeated here.

The point which needs to be made here is that a large number of these works were written during the 18th century when Muslim political power was weakening and the ulema feel that a Muslim identity based upon an internalization of the rules of the Sharia’h was desiderated. Such a reaction is clearly in evidence in Balochistan where the ulema took fright when the Christian missionaries translated the bible in Balochi and Brahvi between 1905 to 1907. One of them, Maulvi Mohammad Fazil (1823-96) from the village of Darkhan near Dhadar, created a movement for writing religious books in the local languages. This movement, known as the Darkhani school, got a number of Sharia’h guidebooks printed which are available in private collections in Balochistan (for brief descriptions see Rahman 2002: 431-434).

As the Baloch ulema also felt threatened by the Zikris, a sect which believed that obligatory prayers had been abolished, they counteracted this idea by emphasizing upon prayers (Baloch 1996).

In short, threat produced the urge to promote Islamic orthodoxy through the peoples indigenous languages which were not otherwise considered worthy of formal transmission of religious knowledge. But even when there was no threat, there were products belonging to themes from folk Islam—the veneration of the prophet, members of his family (ahl-i-bait), saints and the martyrs of Islam. Thus Nur Namas, which were rhymed stories about the creation of the radiance which is the essence of the Prophet (in Barelvi thought) and is eternal, were common in all languages. Similarly, Jang Namas and Karbala Namas recounting the battle of Karbala (October 680) in which Imam Hussain, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, fought Yazid ibn Muawiyah (r. 680-683),            are also found in all these languages. All these stories in verse are sung by people who have memorized them. Thus they are also known to completely illiterate people, especially women, who used to listen to them in their homes. These practices used to be common in the villages of Pakistan but the spread of the radio and the T. V have weakened their hold upon the people. Even now, however, some forms of rhymed verse in the in other tongues are sung on occasions such as the Maulud (the birthday of the Prophet) or the Muharram (the month of Karbala according to the lunar calendar). Moreover, despite the fact that, except for Sindhi, the indigenous languages of the people are neither used as media of instruction nor as compulsory languages in schools, small tracts (chapbooks) in these languages are still printed and sold. This means that the availability of religious literature in the mother tongue serves a persistent need which the availability of much richer religious literature in Urdu cannot fulfill.

English and Islam

            English is associated with Westernization and liberal values in Pakistan (Mansoor 1993: 143 and 189) while Urdu is the language of Islam. However it is English which is fast becoming the language of what Olivier Roy calls ‘globalized Islam) (Roy 2004). It is the language of Muslim websites some of which are neofundamentalist and militant. Thus a virtual ummah exists on the internet where the anger about Palestine, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq and other Muslim grievances is expressed in the idiom of Islam which all Muslims with knowledge of English can understand. This role of English is explained by Roy as follows:

            But this use of English (to translate Islamic books in it) also favours English-speaking preachers, these living in the West or in countries where English is an official language (such as Pakistan and South Africa). Transmitters are often people with a minimum of experience----the aged Wahabi Sheikhs based in Saudi Arabia rely on their English-speaking disciples to be translated but also to be informed (Roy 2004: 169).

 

            Thus, most Islamic Centres operate in English in the United States. Even the maulvis imported from Pakistan are under pressure to learn English because the U. S has a large middle class, professional community of Muslims who operate in English anyway. In the United Kingdom, where the Muslim community is predominantly of Pakistani rural origin, Urdu was the preferred language with the older generation. The traditional maulvis from Pakistan fought to preserve Urdu too. However, the younger generation, including the neofundamentalists, are in favour of using English for religious purposes (Roy 2004: 263). In any case the younger generation of Pakistani (and north Indian) Muslims growing up in English-speaking countries, do not relate to the culture which uses Urdu. Nor, for them, has Urdu any special religious significance. Thus, they are trying to make English the language of the international Islamic identity.

            Paralleling this development, there is a ‘recent configuration between the global demand for English and a new brand of Christian Evangelical activity that now confronts the world’ (Pennycook and Makoni 2005: 141). In fact, since English reaches out to more people than any other single language, all ideological preachers, use it as a tool to spread their world view. This makes English the most powerful carrier of competing world views ever seen on the globe. This is a sobering thought for those who are apprehensive of intellectual invasion and conquest to the exclusion of diversity.

Conclusion

            Except for Arabic, there is no special language of Islam. However, a language used by a community of Muslims can become the language of Islam and the Muslim identity in a specific time period and region. With the advent of modernity, Urdu, a language of north Indian origin, became such a language with political, social, educational, economic and cultural consequences. It became part of (ashraf) Muslim identity replacing Persian which occupied that position earlier. It became a symbol of the Muslim political identity next only to Islam itself during the struggle for the creation of Pakistan out of British India. Then, in Pakistan, it became a part of the Pakistani (as apposed to the ethno-nationalist) and Muslim (as opposed to secular and Westernized) identity. In these roles it opposed the aspirations of the language-based ethnic elites at the horizontal (regional) and that of the lower middle classes for power at the vertical (socio-economic class) levels. It also became of a language of education, again divided along ideological and class lines: Urdu-medium schools and colleges being mostly for the lower middle and middle classes and catering to right wing political and cultural views while English caters mostly for the upper-middle and upper classes and liberal political and cultural views. In journalism too Urdu is associated with the right; the indigenous languages with ethnic nationalism and English with liberalism. Thus, in Pakistan, Islam is associated with Urdu in complex ways which express how identity is constructed with reference to new realities created by modernity. The Indian Muslim community also perceived Urdu as part of their collective identity. This makes it an anti-hegemonic, liberal force acting on behalf of pluralism and liberal democracy in India while in Pakistan it is mostly seen as a symbol of the domination of the centre over the provinces; the hegemony of the Punjabis over other ethnic groups of the country and, generally, with right-wing, religious orientation. The association of Islam with language, then, is a complex, multi-dimensional and even contradictory phenomenon in Pakistan and North India.

 

 

Notes

1.         Imam Abu Hanifa (699-767C.E), founder of the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence, is reported to have said that languages other than Arabic, such as Persian, could be used for prayers. The Hidaya which records this opinion also adds that the Imam eventually agreed with the other scholars of law and that the overwhelming consensus now is that prayers may only be said in Arabic (Ali c. 12C: 349).

2.         The lower middle classes do, however, enter the officer corps of the military and the civil bureaucracy and gain much state power and money through state patronage (such as urban land which officers buy cheap and sell at exorbitant prices). However, this class mostly supports English and the established order of society since they want their children to benefit from both. They do retain the values and ideas, such as a religious orientation towards life, because of which the functionaries of the state at middle levels have much sympathy for the right-wing Islamic lobby, including militant Islam, in Pakistan and abroad.

Annexure-1

 

SPEAKERS OF CONVERSATIONAL URDU/HINDI

 

 

Mother Tongue Speakers

Second Language Speakers

Hindi

366,000,000

487,000,000

Urdu

60,290,000

104,000,000

Total

426,290,000

591,000,000

Grand Total:     Mother tongue + second language speakers of Urdu-Hindi = 1,017,290,000.

Source:             Grimes 2000: see under ‘Pakistan’ and ‘India’ entries.

 

 

Annexure-2

 

PAKISTANI LANGUAGES

 

Language

Percentage of Speakers

Number of Speakers

Punjabi

44.15

66,225,000

Pashto

15.42

23,130,000

Sindhi

14.10

21,150,000

Siraiki

10.53

15,795,000

Urdu

7.57

11,355,000

Balochi

3.57

5,355,000

Others

4.66

6,990,000

Source: Census 2001: Table 2.7. The population is assumed to be 150 million in 2003 as it was 132, 352,000 in 1998 and the growth rate is 2.69 per cent.

 

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