India is a great civilisation and home to diverse languages, philosophies, cultures, customs and traditions. It is the country’s syncretic culture that gave birth to Urdu: A mix of Arabic, Persian, Hindi and Sanskrit. A language that is spoken by at least 70 million people in the subcontinent mirrors India’s inclusiveness. No wonder, the RSS wants to promote Urdu in a big way and the Central government too has been generous with funds to promote and conserve the language. Since the 1947 Partition, India has been witness to violent upsurges in the name of religion and language. Linguistic identities have been the driving force for the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, that entailed a major redrawing of the boundaries of Indian states on the basis of commonality of languages. Urdu, however, had a pan-India presence, thus bridging the North-South and East-West divide. Senior RSS leader Indresh Kumar’s assurance at the 6th World Urdu Conference underscores the Sangh’s intention to keep the “mili-juli tehzeeb” alive in the country. It has been widely held that Urdu is dying in India, mainly because traditionally Urdu speaking people, Muslims and Hindus, have stopped speaking it. Moreover, Hindi films, which used to be the purveyor of Hindustani, have changed track to showcase modern aspirations in sync with the Zeitgeist. However, the Narendra Modi government is pulling all the stops to revive the charm of Urdu in popular consciousness. The National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL), an autonomous body, is planning to rope in Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif to speak a few lines in Urdu as part of promotional campaigns. The government had allotted a budget of Rs 332.76 crore between 2104 and 2019 for NCPUL. The revival of Urdu is imperative because of its immense wealth of literature.
