BackWhat are the Urdu papers saying?
Those who rant against Muslims and 'radical Islam', would do well to know what it is that Muslims are actually reading and discussing. But where is the fun in that?
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It may surprise the reader, but among the upper classes in Gujarat, Urdu is seen as high culture and something to be aspired to. Not the actual reading of it, of course (that would be too much), but a few lines thrown in here and there are good form. Much rehearsed couplets are deployed at the beginning and end of speeches, for instance. There is of course the problem with the pronunciation, and it is the rare Gujarati who can present the qaaf and khay as they should be, but the ambition is there.
While news of Pakistani singers being rejected by Mumbai is now common, why does one not hear of this happening in Gujarat? Surely, being so passionately attached to Hindutva, they should be offering leadership here as well.
But the fact is that ghazal singers have been coming there since the form was invented (I mean the singing of it in light classical style, not the ghazal itself) about five decades ago. Mehdi Hassan was a very regular visitor to Surat, and I suppose to the other cities also, from at least the early 1970s that I can remember. He was a valuable addition to a party, even those thrown by the most loaded of Gujaratis, the Palanpuri Jains who deal in diamonds. These were unusual gatherings, a couple of dozen people being entertained by a singer flown from overseas, where there was plenty of shabab (beauty) and sharab (alcohol) but the kebab was vegetarian.
I was on a flight once from Ahmedabad to Mumbai, assigned a seat next to Ghulam Ali. I cannot remember anyone being mobbed and harassed for autographs, this being before the awful selfie era, on a plane as he was; and I have sat next to Kareena Kapoor when she was in her prime (she is definitely not size zero). Even the air hostess would not leave him alone for a moment, and he was surprisingly good-natured about it.
I was, of course, irritated mostly because I did not have him to myself. At a moment when I did, I told him about my friendship with one of his fellow Lahoris, a singer called Javed Bashir, and he was delighted (“Apna hi bachcha hai!") because he had apparently taught him; something I did not know.
Urdu is seen as fancy, but stripped of its script, it holds few mysteries. Yes, it may have a word here and there which is vaguely familiar but not understood (for instance, something like mustaqbil, which means future), but since the grammar is essentially Hindi’s, it is on the whole easy to grasp.
When I first went to Pakistan, I was asked: “Aap ne itni Urdu kahan se sikhi?" (“Where did you learn so much Urdu?") To which my reply was, “Cinema se. Bohat dafa Sholay dekh kar." (“From the movies. By watching Sholay many times.")
This was not being clever, it was the truth. I had no knowledge of the thing then except for two or so years of Hindi in school, taught by a Gujarati who herself knew no Hindi. Most of it had come from watching Manmohan Desai’s movies.
I was attracted to the idea of reading it in the mid-1990s, when a fellow reporter, Dilip Raote, announced he had become familiar with the script and could make out the headlines of Urdu newspapers. This intrigued me. What sort of stories did the papers have, I asked him, quite stupidly. The same as any other, he said: water shortage, cinema show timings, rising prices and so on.
I have already bored readers before with the details of how I learnt it, but I am here to report events of the last few days, which are concerned peripherally with what we are discussing.
I was in the lounge at Delhi’s airport on 3 December when I picked up what in the media we condescendingly call regional papers. Two were Urdu papers, Inquilab, published from Mumbai and edited by my good friend Shahid Latif, and Roznama Sahara. One was in Hindi, Dainik Jagran.
The Urdu papers, as Raote had told me, were reporting the same things as everyone else (“Chennai main paani sar se ooncha") so I did not waste my time on the news pages. I went instead to the columns (where much wisdom may be found, isn’t it?). In this instance, I was not disappointed. There was a terrific piece by Tariq Anwar, the Congress politician who joined Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party.
He was writing of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Rajnath Singh’s swipe at actor Aamir Khan, that “Ambedkar did not leave India". True, said Anwar, Ambedkar left Hinduism instead.
I wish I had thought of the line and I wonder if this was remarked upon in any English paper. Likely not. The Prime Minister has been educating us on Ambedkar, and I would like to know what he thinks of two Ambedkar texts: Riddles In Hinduism and Annihilation Of Caste.
Roznama Sahara’s editorial stressed moderation in religion (“Maslak Ki Aag—Kya Hogi Manzil?"—“Sectarian fires—where will they lead us?"). It began, “Aaj mulk mein aise logon ki kami nahin hai jin ka kaam sirf doosron ko kafir kehna aur banana hai…" (“There’s no shortage of people in our country whose only work is to declare others infidels.")
Those in our media, and we happily have many, who rant against Muslims and “radical Islam", would do well to know what it is that Muslims are actually reading and discussing. But where is the fun in that? Much better to let rip at the apocalypse that awaits us unless Muslims don’t change their ways. I was delighted to see that the editorial opened with the word Mukarmi! (Gentlemen!). Yes, it is sexist and should have been something like khawateen o hazraat, but even so.
Lastly, to bring this rather pointless piece to a close, I must complain about Dainik Jagran’s language. First, their columnists use too much English (“agenda", etc). Secondly, the words in Hindustani using Perso-Arabic sounds do not have a dot, as Gulzar has recommended we do, to make the pronunciation clear. Guzarti, for instance, was rendered as Gujarti. We may not able to read it, but speaking it correctly is something we must aspire to.
Jagran has other problems as well.
A few months ago, I alerted journalist Swapan Dasgupta that Dainik Jagran was carrying his column under the byline Swapnadas Gupta, and that he should tell them the difference between Gupta and Dasgupta. “That," he replied, “would involve undertaking a cultural revolution!"
Aakar Patel is executive director of Amnesty International India. The views expressed here are personal. He tweets at @aakar_amnesty.
Read Aakar’s previous Lounge columns here.
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