09-08-2025
Is Urdu the language of Indian Muslims alone, asks Rakshanda Jalil
Urdu scholar and translator Rakshanda Jalil's new collection Whose Urdu is it Anyway? is linked by one theme: to challenge the notion that Urdu is the language of Muslim writers alone, especially in a pluralist country like India. She brings together 16 stories by non-Muslim writers who wrote in Urdu, most of whom were born in the early years of the 20th century, and achieved varying degrees of fame during their lifetimes. From Krishan Chandar (1914-77), one of the key figures of the Progressive Writers' Association, to the much-loved Gulzar (b. 1934), the volume features a range of styles and sensibilities to illustrate a powerful sentiment: '...as long as Urdu is yoked to religion—Islam—and a certain community–Muslims—it will never be understood in its entirety," Jalil writes in the introduction.
Urdu, along with its spoken variant Hindustani, was ubiquitous in public life once upon a time, especially all over the north of the Vindhyas. In the south, it still survives in the form of Dakhini, but in the last decade, the language is less visible and heard in the public domain. The written form of the language is no longer ubiquitous on signages, cinema titles and names of railway stations. Instead, Urdu has become politicised and framed as a language of appeasement.
Jalil's selection defies the Islamic exclusivity of Urdu. While a substantial body of fiction written in the language deals with Partition and its aftermath, writers like Devendar Issar, in his story Mortuary, and Surendra Prakash in Scarecrow focus on the plight of the poor and downtrodden. Renu Behl's Draupadi Has Woken Up is a sharp indictment of female foeticide in Punjab, while Deepak Budki's The Rape of an Abandoned House is a story of loot (most likely in the aftermath of a communal riot) that is at once original and disturbing.
By bringing attention to famous and less-known writers, Jalil shows that Urdu 'belongs to whoever is willing to embrace it and in their capable hands, willing to be moulded like pliable clay."
Edited excerpts from an interview:
What were some of the surprising or unexpected insights you discovered while researching this book?
That Urdu fiction is a faithful mirror of a writer's times and draws from their milieu and circumstance. And that it steadfastly refuses to follow a formula, hence the output is so far removed from the stereotypical understanding of Urdu writers and by extension Urdu writings.
Tell us about your thoughts behind the selection. Why these authors and stories?
All collections are, by their very nature, selective. I make no claim to be objective nor do I claim to be comprehensive. There are many non-Muslim Urdu writers I have perforce not been able to include. I wish I had the space to include Fikr Taunsvi (whose real name was Ram Lal Bhatia), Kashmiri Lal Zakir, Zafar Payami (Diwan Birender Nath), Shamsher Singh Narula, Prakash Pandit, Balraj Menra, Balwant Singh, and several others. By the same token, I have omitted some of the best-known names of Urdu literature: Premchand, Upendranath Ashk and Ram Lal. None of these omissions are oversights; mindful of the immense variety before me, I have had to exercise editorial discretion and choose stories that pique the interest of modern readers. I wanted to present as comprehensive a range of concerns, topics and voices as possible.
Urdu is often perceived as a florid language due to its usage in poetry. But prose fiction and non-fiction in Urdu seem to have a spare, modernist style. Can you talk about these two faces of the language?
Yes. Urdu poetry and prose are like apples and oranges, though it is also true that Urdu prose can occasionally be very poetic and there is some excellent 'prose poetry" being written by modern poets. But as I have said, much of modern Urdu short fiction draws from its time and circumstance, hence it is spare, spartan, sometimes staccato, given the circumstances. A dialogue between present-day characters cannot be in florid Urdu; that would take away from the realness that the modern Urdu writers are at pains to create. Renu Behl's characters in rural Punjab cannot speak in courtly Lucknowi Urdu; it would be absurd. Similarly, Krishan Chandar's footpath dwellers cannot speak in the same tone and tenor as Kanhailal Kapur's husband and wife—even though both writers are from Bombay.
Were there specific challenges involved in translating the texts?
I didn't want to flatten out the variations I found in the original Urdu into standard 21st-century English. I wanted to retain as much of the cadence of the original stories (as possible). For that I had to remain mindful of the context: Who is speaking? Are they rural or urban characters? Educated or illiterate?
Are there any stylistic or cultural differences in the way in which Muslim and Hindu writers use the language?
Not in the early years, no. I think both were well aware of the cultural contexts of the 'other", which explains why Muslim writers have written with so much authenticity about, say, Navratri celebration or about festivals such as Holi, Diwali, Shivratri, and so on. And it was the same with non-Muslim writers writing about Muslim festivals and religious figures; Premchand's Karbala and Eidgah instantly spring to mind. Among women writers, I can see a difference but to be fair, my sample size is very small: Sarla Devi's language is very different from all the other writers included here and yes it is different from an Ismat Chughtai or a Khadija Mastoor.
I would like to know more about Sarla Devi.
I must confess I had to look very hard to find a non-Muslim woman Urdu writer. Knowing full well that boys in non-Muslim families were taught Urdu and Persian whereas the girls were mostly taught Hindi, I was still hoping to find at least a few names who might have bucked the trend and proved to be in the same league as a Chughtai or a Hajra Masroor or any of the other male writers in this collection; regrettably, it took a great deal of diligent digging to find a lone Sarla Devi. Having found her, I was hard pressed to make a choice from her work spread across two collections of short fiction and numerous stories scattered in the literary magazines of her time, some even edited by her, such as Shahrah, along with Prakash Pandit. She was the sister of Krishan Chandar and Mahendar Nath, and wife of the Hindi writer Rewti Saran.
While the Hindi-Urdu binary is much spoken these days, does Hindustani survive in contemporary literature, if at all?
If a language is defined by vocabulary then yes there is a huge difference between the writers who have been active in the past 50 years than those who were active in the post-Partition years. The writings of Devender Issar, Surendra Prakash, Deepak Budki, Balraj Komal are very close to the spoken language. So the question we need to ask is: Are languages differentiated by script, grammar or vocabulary?
What are the most promising current efforts—institutional or grassroots—to reclaim Urdu as a shared cultural heritage in India today?
The single most promising thing in our times is content-driven programming. When it is intelligently done, it can truly open a window into a shared literary culture and sensibility. You may or may not know the script, you may not have read a lot in translation either but if you are willing to sit and listen to good literature being read or recited and allow yourself to be transported into another world, you can truly soar above the picket fences of language politics devised by petty minds.
