Urdu And The City

My favourite bookshop in Urdu Bazaar is Maktaba Jamia, a branch of Jamia Millia University’s book depot. This unassuming shop is devoted entirely to Urdu literature, and nowhere in Delhi are books cheaper and therefore so accessible. Since 1922, Maktaba Jamia has produced only low-cost, standard literary texts.

The shop also stocks some Urdu literature in Hindi script, the latest books from other Urdu publishers, and a variety of Urdu primers for those who understand the spoken language but have yet to learn the Persian script. And it has booklets in simple Urdu, like the one on poet Ali Sardar Jafri, which make excellent reading material for new Urdu literates.
While I sat browsing through the riches on the shelves, a number of people came asking for religious books and were directed up the road. The next bookshop may deal exclusively in Islamic texts, but the nearby Kutub Khana Anjuman-e-Taraqqi-e-Urdu offers the best of both worlds—literature and religious works. Taking care of the shop is Nizamuddin, son of the man who founded it in 1939. Nizamuddin believes interest in Urdu literature is growing fast.

When I asked him to name the bestsellers, he said with a smile, "People here aremurda-parast. They worship the dead. So since they died, anything by Qurut-ul-ain Haider or Kamleshwar is selling like hot cakes."

"And poetry?" I asked.

Before you could say the great poet’s name, "Asadullah Khan Ghalib," he piled before me a mountain of the newest poetry books. Many were ghazal selections in inexpensive paperbacks containing classic verses and those by the latest stars of modern mushairas. My late ustaad, Ghulam Ahmad Ilmi Sahib— who taught Persian and Arabic for 40 years at the nearby Fatehpuri Masjid School—felt standards at literary functions had fallen so low he would never attend them. But the pile of books in front of me showed that a younger generation didn’t share that opinion.

"Munavvar Rana is everyone’s favourite at mushairas lately," Nizamuddin added. "And of course, the big names sell well. Javed Akhtar is there, and this is the latest book from NidaFazli."

He handed me the book, and I flicked through its pages. My eye caught a line suggesting that poetry had flowed easily before modern life turned crossroads into major intersections and filled everywhere with concrete.

Also Hindustani

Its poetic power then made it a vehicle for revolution and freedom from the colonial power. But politics is a double-edged sword. Urdu’sidentification with Muslims and Pakistan dealt such a blow that its existence is sometimes denied today, even in the old city, and Urdu-speaking Hindus call their mother tongue ‘Hindi.’ There is, of course, a close connection between Hindi andsimple Urdu, which used to be called ‘Hindustani.’

Anees Azmi—a leading Urdu playwright of Delhi, whose 36 children’s plays are regularly produced in theatre workshops in the capital— believes Urdu is still widely spoken in the old city. But in his estimate, well under half of those who speak the language can read the script.

Azmi’s expressive readings of the 19th century poet Ghalib’s letters, in a clear and musicalUrdu, draw audiences and prove to many would-be Urdu fans that even classical Urdu need not be over their heads. But it has to be said—many people in Delhi fear Urdu’s high-flown vocabulary and take for granted they will not understand it. For this reason, Azmi called the language Hindustani,not Urdu, when he co-coordinated a major Urdu production on Bhagat Singh.

For this same reason, Mahmoud Farooqui’s dastan-goi performances are often advertised as being in Hindustani. Farooqui is recreating the lost art of Urdu storytelling. Many forms of storytelling exist in India, such as in Marathi, but dastans—tales within tales of love, magic, and adventure—exist only in written form. Having collaborated with the country’s foremost authority ondastans, Farooqui has brought at least one kind of dastan-goi back from the dead.

And audiences prove there is scope for much more Urdu theatre in Delhi. Recently, there wasn’t room for a sesame seed in the packed India International Centre auditorium when Jamia Millia staged a re-creation of the last great mushaira held at the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar in the Red Fort. A market likewise exists for one-man Urdu plays about characters from modern history as Syed Alam, another modern Urdu playright of Delhi, has shown with his productions on Maulana Azad and K.L. Saigal.


Newsprint Despair

Mohan Chiraghi, editor of Qaumi Avaaz, ensures that his reporters are even-handed, not just presenting a Congress point of view, and in the 1980s, he set a trend by starting an editorial page on the lines of the English language press. Chiraghi doesn’t deny that his paper has seen better days, but he believes it could be revitalized if the management wanted.

A Kashmiri pandit who grew up in the composite culture of Kashmir before the pandits left, Chiraghi is depressed about Urdu journalism because he feels that Urdu papers have succumbed to "vote bank politics," catering to narrow Muslim issues and, on occasion, playing a reactionary role. Neither does the Urdu press pay well. He finds many good Urdu journalists migrating to Hindi journalism, especially television channels, where the pay is better. Why? Urdu papers just don’t attract advertisements.

"Even if only Muslims read them, don’t Muslims buy televisions or washing machines?" Chiraghi asks in exasperation, before saying, "In the end, a language can only really do well if it is connected to employment."


Urdu on the Upswing

Some premier schools are offering Urdu as a subject, though not very seriously. But determined people can find places in the city to learn. The Urdu Academy, housed in a fire-blackened bungalow opposite the Kashmiri Gate Metro station, runs basic courses in ten centers, while Delhi University holds some day classes. Jamia Millia’s department of Distance Learning even has a correspondence course.

Ghalib Academy also hosts several literary events a year. I attended one on the short story, where authors read out works that focused on contemporary issues including communal tension, dowry, and globalisation. Perhaps the evening’s most passionate speech came from Dr Ali Javed, who heads the government’s Urdu Promotion Council. He said there was a conspiracy to label Urdu as a language of the madrassa and the Muslim. He viewed Urdu as the symbol of Indian culture—the syncretic culture that India, alone of all countries of the world, possessed. Urdu was, he argued, part of a heritage that stands against oppression by religion or any section of society. He called on every wise, thinking person to cherish it.

I was reminded of something Anees Azmi had told me. "Many real Urdu wallahs," he said, "love the good things of life, like food, and don’t come to my performances. I find the Hindi wallahs are the ones really taking up Urdu." This is in a way a sign of hope.

Linguistic Power