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Calling all Indians
On Independence Day, when we stand together to count as one, it is important not to ignore the Indianness of Urdu. The language, often at the receiving end of divisive politics, has contributed more to nation building than it is given credit for. Be it literature or cinema, including recent films like Fanaa or earlier classics like Mughal-e-Azam and Pakeezah, Urdu has made the common Indian familiar with words which fit in well with the concept of a Hindustani language. Urdu is a living and evergreen symbol of composite culture - a happy union between Persian and Arabic on the one hand and Sanskrit on the other.
In everyday use
In the stock of Urdu vocabulary while most of the nouns are Persio-Arabic, all verbs are of Sanskrit origin. Words like aana (to come), jana (to go), chalna (to walk), bolna (to speak), maarna (to kill or beat), marna (to die), khana (to eat), pina (to drink), karna (to do), uthna (to rise), likhna (to write), parhna (to read), dena (to give), lena (to take) are of purely Indian origin. All prepositions such as se (from), tak (to), per (at), on (upon) and men (in, into) and most adverbs of time, place and manner such as idhar (hither), kidhar (whither), yahaan (here), wahaan (there), ab (now), kab (when), kahaan (where), kaise (how), aisa (thus) are fully adopted in Urdu. Words of non-Indian origin like jungle (forest), maal (wealth), maidan (field or ground), makan (house), kaghaz (paper), pull (bridge), sal (year), tamasha (fun), station, ticket, engine, bus, car, school, college, university, sarkar (government), shikar (game or hunt), are such that one would find difficult to avoid.
It has been computed that out of total 55960 words in the Urdu dictionary only 13625, i.e., less than 25 per cent are of Persio-Arabic origin and not less than 21600 are purely of Sanskrit origin, and the remaining belong to other sources. Far from being a language imposed from above, Urdu is the genuine spirit of unity and goodwill that imbued both Hindus and Muslims to forget their respective languages and to merge them into a new language Indian in origin.
A galaxy of non-Muslim poets and prose writers have enriched it and made eminent contribution to it. Among them are Ratannath Sarshar, Daya Shankar Naseem, Durga Sahai Surur, Jwala Prasad Barq, etc.
Yes, even as we sing the National Anthem and the National Song, we must not forget the language that has made a sizeable contribution to nation building.
M. HASHIM KIDWAI
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