A few days back the well known poet, columnist, and ex-senator Jamal Uddin Aali gave us the news that an Urdu University has been established in the country. In personal conversation he told me that he had dreamt about it a long time back and it was now that the Urdu Science College and Urdu Arts College, both in Karachi, had been upgraded to a university. The dream, of course, is very old. He traced out its history to Maulvi Abdul Haq (Baba-e-Urdu) and also to Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. That, of course, is true---it certainly is an old dream.
What is even more significant is that it is an
anti-colonial dream; it is an ego-sustaining dream; it is an identity-creating
dream; it is a psychologically healing dream. Think of a time when the British
armies had defeated the rulers of South Asia. A Mughal emperor still sat on the
throne in the Red fort but he did not rule beyond the Fort itself. Even the
Marhattas no longer galloped about collecting taxes. Calcutta, not Delhi, was the
centre of power and, since 1858, the language of the universities and colleges
was English. In England the Social Darwinists declared proudly that Europe had
evolved to a higher level of civilization than Asia and Africa. Macaulay’s
words that English, and only English, was fit for higher education and oriental
knowledge was useless reverberated across enslaved India. It was in these days
of despair and psychological onslaught that Sir Syed, who had founded the
British Indian Association in 1866, wrote to the Secretary of State:
We very humbly but earnestly solicit
the government of India to establish a system of public education of the
highest class, in which arts, sciences, and other branches of literature may be
taught through the instrumentality of the vernacular.
In those days the Thomson Civil Engineering College at
Roorke and the vernacular department of the Medical College at Agra did teach
professional scientific disciplines in Urdu. However, none had the prestige
which the word ‘university’ had in British eyes---even if it was in India.
Moreover, the Hindus were already asking for a Hindi University. Above all,
some British officers felt that the country would ‘fall prey to the rapacity of
a second Mahmud of Ghazni’ if English was removed. In their eyes English was
associated with British values while Urdu, and even more so Persian, were
symbols of Muslim identity. Some felt it would be difficult to translate the
texts and quality instruction would be missing. For all these reasons E.C
Bayley, Secretary to the Government of India, wrote to the BIA on 05 September
1867 that university education ‘can probably be carried on by natives of India
only through the medium of the English language’. So, this first attempt at
creating an Urdu university met with failure.
The second attempt was made by Anjuman-e-Punjab, created
by G.W. Leitner (the Orientalist, educationist and Principal of Government
College, Lahore) in 1865. In 1868 the Punjab Government requested the
Government of India to allow them to establish an Oriental University. The
medium of instruction and examination was supposed to be Urdu. This was
refused. However, a university college was permitted and this began functioning
in 1869. In this College, while vernacular learning was taught, all the other
subjects were taught on the model of the Calcutta University. By this time Sir
Syed had come to the view that competence in English was necessary to procure
the best jobs in British India. As such, if Muslims got educated in Urdu they
would not be able to compete with Hindus for jobs. Thus, Sir Syed opposed the
Oriental faculty saying that it was ‘to keep us in a state of slavery’.
Sir Syed was not wrong. It was, indeed, pragmatic to
learn the language used in the domains of power i.e. the government itself; the
judiciary; the bureaucracy; the military; higher education; higher commerce;
elitist media and so on. It was empowering for the Muslims to learn English
under these circumstances rather than Urdu. Thus, in order to gain power, Sir
Syed’s Aligarh became an English-medium university. All other universities in
British India too were English-medium institutions. The dream of the Urdu
University slumbered on. True, Urdu would keep the Muslims in the ghetto but
how can one stop dreaming? After all it was so psychologically mortifying; so
demeaning; so hurting; so humiliating to have no words of ones own for discourses
of a high order. Learning itself meant English learning---the Orient was dumb!
But such are the realities of power and power was with the British conquerors.
The dream was revived during the Khilafat days of the
nineteen twenties. Thus was the Jamia Millia Islamia established in Delhi in
1925. Among the eminent Muslims who founded it were Hakim Ajmal Khan and Dr.
Zakir Hussain. The Jamia taught some subjects in Urdu all right but for others
it used English. The dream of the Urdu University had, however, come true in
princely India---in the realm of Mir Osman Ali Khan (1886-1967), the Nizam of
Hyderabad. This was created in 1917 by Sir Akbar Hyderi, the Prime Minister of
Hyderabad. The University was seen by British officers as part of the Nizam’s
effort ‘to enforce a Muslim culture throughout the state and so to strengthen
the Muslim hold on Hyderabad in the event of federation or independence for
India in any other form’. The Muslims saw it as a symbol of their identity.
They felt that the creation of such a university demonstrated that they could
manage their own affairs in the world of higher learning. It was
psychologically gratifying to feel that one did not have to fall back on
English alone to create and disseminate modern knowledge. The university
created many Urdu terms for purely modern ideas (40, 724 new terms upto 1937)
and created learned books from other languages into Urdu. It modernized Urdu
and thus made it possible to use it in the domains of modern life as Japanese
and Korean are used.
Nowadays, because of the recommendation of the Gujral
committee in 1975, an Urdu University on the lines of Osmania was established
in Hyderabad. I was told by Khalique Anjum, an eminent scholar-administrator of
Urdu in India, in private conversation in February 1998 in New Delhi that it
was in its infancy. Personally I felt that it could not succeed as long as the
graduates were not given jobs. And that will not happen as long as the working
language of the state and private enterprises is not Urdu. This is exactly what
I feel about the newly established Urdu University in Pakistan. It will succeed
only when the language of the domains of power in both the public and private
sectors changes from English to Urdu. Such a change, if it occurs, should not
harm the interests of the other languages of Pakistan because Pakistan is a
federation and it will remain strong only as long as the federating units have
a stake in its unity. And this stake will be created, among other things, by
respecting all languages and giving them their due. Thus, it is only by the
consensus of all the ethnic language groups that Urdu can function as a
link-language and in this position it can be used in the domains of power. Once
that happens the Urdu University will prosper.
As it is, even if its graduates remain under-privileged
in their quest for jobs, the Urdu University will function three purposes.
First, it will allow those students to achieve academic success who understand
academic concepts but do not do well in examinations because they do not know
English. Second, it will create a fairly large body of young people competent
in Urdu who will create a pressure group which will make the state displace
English for Urdu and other Pakistani languages in the domains of power. And,
lastly, it will make people feel that Urdu---and by extension all our
languages---are fit to be used for the highest intellectual activities. This is
a psychological boost worth administering to ourselves in the wake of
globalization which threatens all our Asian languages and cultures. These are
no minor benefits and one can only wish the Urdu University all success in its
career.