In the defense of Urdu

 

It is generally understood that, in Indian colloquial conversations specifically in north India, until the conversation is understandable it's "Hindi" and the moment the tedious words come in, it is termed as "Urdu".

Above are a few of the lines Javed Akhtar said in the Jash-e-Rekhta 2022's inaugural session, so, I am just writing whatever I understood from his speech on the development of the Urdu Language.

Before dwelling on the evolution of Urdu, we need to understand, what is the language first or how we define a language, does the vocabulary solely constitutes the language? but this argument can be easily refuted by the example of  Hinglish, where the language is Hindi with a hint of English words in between, still, it can be put in the category of Hindi. So, can the script in which the language is written be termed as the sole proprietor of the language? we can easily negate this assumption too, as different languages like Hindi, Italian, and English can be written in the Roman Script, but all of these languages have different sets of rules.

Then the question comes, what constitutes a language, the answer can be found in the rules of Grammar. Grammar is the basic structure of any language. Then it makes the fact more fascinating that only two languages in India have the same grammar, Hindi, and Urdu, maybe that's why these two languages are called sister languages.

Urdu was developed in India taking the grammatical features from Hindi and Persian as the script, as that script was prevalent at that time. In some literature, it is termed Hindavi or Rekhta ( which is roughly translated into the word "mixed language"), as per Javed Akhter, Urdu is none other that the "khadi boli" which was written in the Persian script.

Urdu can be termed as the Indian language, as nowhere else, except India,  Pakistan, and Bangladesh (which were also part of India till 1947) this language is being spoken. Moreover, be it the Hindustani Sangeet or Bhajans of Indian gods, we find the interplay of the Urdu language, not only this, the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb point out to intimate relationship of the two languages.

Another evidence of Urdu being our own language is the current usage of Urdu words, like in Romantic songs or poetry by poets like John Elia, and Rahat Indori, this shows this language along with other languages survived only because they all are the language of the commoners.

Having said that, it doesn't mean the other language, such as  Hindi, Tamil, Kannad, Gujarati, and Marwari, etc are inferior to Urdu, but this means, all the languages can co-exist and can beautify each other by sharing each other's vocabulary, like English with words like Juggernaut, Dacoati; Hindi with words like kunjam kujam of Tamil , googling of english or khubsurat of Urdu can beautify the expression and conveying of emotions and thoughts.