Urdu and Islam main symbols of Pak Muslim identity - I

Urdu, presently the national language of Pakistan and the identity symbol of Indian Muslims, is associated with Islam in South Asia. This association was forged during British colonial rule when modernity first impacted India.
The British replaced Persian, the official language of Mughal rule, with Urdu at the lower level and English at the higher one in parts of north India and present-day Pakistan. Urdu was disseminated by networks of education and communication in colonial India. It became the medium of instruction in the Islamic seminaries (madrassas) and the major language of religious writings. It also become part of the Muslim identity and contributed, next only to Islam itself, in mobilising the Muslim community to demand Pakistan which was carved out of British India in 1947.
In Pakistan Urdu and Islam are the main symbolic components of the Pakistani Muslim identity which resists the expression of the ethnic identities of that country based upon the indigenous languages of the people.
This (Pakistani Muslim) identity is supported by right-wing politics and is antagonistic not only to ethnic identification but also to the globalized, liberal, westernised identity based upon English which is the hallmark of the elite.
In India, however, Urdu supports the Muslim minority against right-wing Hindu domination. In short, Urdu plays complex and even contradictory roles in its association with Islam in Pakistan and parts of North India. The association of the other languages of Pakistan, including English, is also touched upon briefly.
Urdu is the national language of Pakistan as well as the language of wider communication in that country. It is also associated with the Muslim community in India. Urdu is not considered sacrosanct in itself because it is not Arabic though it is written in the script of Persian (nastaliq) which, in turn, is based on the Arabic one (naskh). It also has a number of words of Arabic origin though, for that matter, it has even more words of Persian and some of Turkish.
For all these importations of Muslim lexicons, it is a derivative of Hindvi, the parent of both modern Hindi and Urdu. The oldest names of Urdu are: "Hindvi', 'Hindi', 'Dihlavi', 'Gujri', 'Dakani' and 'Rekhtah".
In the north, both 'Rekhtah' and 'Hindi' were popular as names for the same language from sometime before the eighteenth century, and the name 'Hindi' was used, in preference to 'Rekhtah', from about the mid-nineteenth century'. Indeed, the name Urdu seems to have been used for the first time, at least in writing, around 1780. In short, during the period when Urdu became the language of Islam in South Asia, it was called Rekhtah, Hindi and, only sometimes, Urdu. The ordinary, spoken version (bazaar Urdu) was and still is almost identical with popular, spoken Hindi. Thus, in sheer size, the spoken language is a major language of the world (see Annexure 1).
As it is associated with the Muslim identity in both pre-and post-partition India, with Pakistani nationalism in Pakistan and with Islam in South Asia in general, the key to understanding the relationship between religion, language and modernity is to study the rise of Urdu as the language of Islam in British India and its role in Pakistan.
While most of the following article will deal with this theme, attention will also be given to the role of the other languages of Pakistan - Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi, Siraiki, Balochi, Brahvi etc - as far as the religions identity or needs of the people are concerned (Annexure 2).
As Urdu was not the mother language of the people of the area now called Pakistan, this study of Urdu as the language of South Asian Islam will take us to north India, the home of Urdu, and the British role in India when both modernity and Urdu first became social forces to reckon with in the construction of the contemporary Muslim culture and identity.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE:
The paradigmatic work on the language of politics in Islam is Bernard Lewis's book The Political Language of Islam. Lewis looks at the way words are used to express political ideas, including modern ones such as constitution and nation, in the major languages of the Muslim world - Arabic, Turkish and Persian (the order in which the author writes about these languages). Lewis, however, does not touch upon Urdu except when he defines 'those who are ruled' in the context of British rule in India. These, he notes, were called 'ryot' by the British in India.
The other major text about language and Islam, Muzaffar Alam's book The Languages of Political Islam, studies Persian texts dealing with governance and traces out the relationship between Persian and Mughal power. Islam, of course, shapes the texts as well as the relationship mentioned above, and it is interpreted by the exponents of the Sharia'h and the sufìs.
Unlike Lewis, Alam does not study the political terms as used in India except when they occur in relation to something else. More to the point, like Lewis, he too does not study the use of Urdu, or any indigenous language of the Indian Muslims, in any of these contexts.
The only major works using modern scholarly methods about Urdu as an Islamic language are those by the French Scholar Marc Gaborieau. Other scholars-Troll; Pearson; and Lelyveld - have scattered, though insightful, references to the subject. The major works in Urdu are Abdul Haq's study of the role of the sufis and A.D. Naseem's work on the role of the sufis from the Chisti order of Islamic sufism in the evolution of Urdu.
Ayub Qadri has written similar study of the role of the ulema in the evolution of Urdu prose. There are also lists of the translations as well as the exegeses of the Qur'an in Urdu. All of these books follow the style of the chronologically arranged dictionary giving biographical entries with samples of verse and prose in the case of writers and details of writings in the case of translations and exegeses.
There are some other isolated studies of Islamic writings in other languages of South Asia too. These studies provides lists of individual works and help trace out the history of the use of these languages in writings about religion. However, they lack analytical insights about the changes in identity, perceptions about languages or the culture of the Muslims of South Asia as a consequence of the use of these languages.
This article intends to present such an analysis but, like earlier works, most space will be given to tracing out chronologically how Urdu, and to a lesser extent other languages, came to be associated with Islam in the areas now called Pakistan. Attention will also be given to North India in passing as far as the evolution of Urdu as an Islamic language is concerned.
ARABIC AS THE LANGUAGE OF ISLAM IN INDIA:
Arabic was and remains the sacred language of Islam in the whole of the Muslim world. In South Asia, however, it was a liturgical language which had tremendous symbolic value but was not used in the affairs of the state. However, Muslim mystics (sufis) used it in correspondence and formal certificates. It was also part of the curricula of the madrassas which were initially schools of learning rather than merely Islam learning.
The books on Arabic grammar (sarf and nahw) and literature were part of the curricula by the time of Ghaisuddin Balban (r. 1266-1287). Some of them were later included in the Dars-i Nizami the curriculum devised by Mulla Nizamuddin Sihalvi (d.1748) in 18th century Lucknow. Though most madrassa graduates merely memorised the Arabic texts as well as their commentaries which were in Arabic and Persian, some did produce written work in Arabic. A brief anthology of this work-the Nuzhat al Khawatir - records how the number of these kept decreasing as other languages became dominant even in the realm of Islamic knowledge.
Arabic is still taught in the madrassas (now strictly religious seminaries) of Pakistan through the canonical texts as well as modern, accessible ones. The former function as symbols of continuity and help preserve a pre-colonial Muslim identity harking back to the days of Islamic glory. The latter are a concession to modernity; they suggest that the madrassas allow changes provided they do not appear to threaten the Muslim identity they cherish.
PERSIAN AS AN ISLAMIC LANGUAGE:
Two languages represented change and were accepted as Islamic languages in India precisely because they did not threaten the Muslim identity there. One was Persian and the other Urdu.
Persian was a part of Muslim, rather than Islamic, identity because the Muslim ruling elite used it in the domains of power. However, Muslim intellectuals consciously called it a language of Islam. Persian has a huge body of poetry, which is amorous but can be construed as being mystical at an esoteric level, and enjoyed tremendous intellectual prestige in South Asia. It was also the language of the earliest translations of the Qur'an.
The Tuzk-e-Jahangiri, Mughal Emperor Jahangir's (r.1605-207) autobiography mentions his ordering Meer Sayied Muhammad of Gujrat to translate the holy book in 'simple language Lughat-i-rikhta) word by word into Persian'. While some people suggest that 'lught-i-rikhta' is the ancestor of Urdu; others believe it was Persian. This translation, if it was ever made, is not available.
Most people believe that Shah Waliullah (1702-63) first translated the Qur'an into Persian. However, the present author has seen a translation by Maulana Sultan Muhammad Batuniani (Tunia is a place near Lehri in Balochistan) which is dated 977 A.H (1569-70). However, Shah Waliullah's influence on Islam in India was tremendous and his works are either in Arabic or Persian.
Other religious books, including the famous books of law Fatawa-i-Alamgiri, were in Persian. The commentaries and marginal notes on Arabic texts in the madrassas were also in Persian. Moreover, it was said to be the formal medium of instruction, the language of legal decisions, court documents and the language of literature during the period of Muslim rule in India. Thus, Persian was very much associated with the Islamic civilisation and identity in India which, suggests Arnold Toynbee, fell into 'Iranic' rather than the 'Arabic' zone of the Muslim world.
THE EMERGENCE OF URDU AS AN ISLAMIC LANGUAGE:
Unlike Arabic, but like Persian, there was nothing intrinsically holy about Persian. It was part of the Islamic culture and Muslim identity in India because it was the language of dominant elite. When these elite lost its political power in the wake of British colonialism, it consolidated its cultural power through the techniques and artifacts of modernity.
The most important changes created by modernity were a formal chain of schools, the printing press, an orderly bureaucracy and the concept of the unity of India. The schools in North India used Urdu as a medium of instruction. The printing press created and disseminated books in Urdu in larger numbers than could have been possible earlier. Indeed, as Francis Robinson points out, 'the ulema used the new technology of the printing press to compensate for the loss of political power'.
The lower bureaucracy, especially the courts of law and the non-commissioned ranks of the army, used some form of 'Hindustani' (or Urdu) in the Persian and the Roman scripts respectively. And the idea of 'India' or 'Hindustan' was spread out widely by the British sahibs and memsahibs who spoke a few words of 'Hindustani' wherever they travelled by rail or otherwise over India as if the language of the subcontinent was somehow Urdu - or, at least, some bazaar variant of it.
The mystics (sifis) had started using the ancestor of Urdu - variously called Hindvi, Hindui or in regional forms Gujrati or Dakkani - in informal conversation and occasional verses. Khwaja Banda Nawaz Gesu Daraz (1312-1421), who was born in Delhi and lived there for 80 years, migrated to Gulbarga when Amir Taimur destroyed Delhi in 1400. Sultan Feroz Shah Bahmini (1397-1421), who himself is said to have composed verse in Urdu, was the ruler and he welcomed the saint. Khawja Gesu Daraz gave sermons in Dakkani Urdu since people were less knowledgeable in Persian and Arabic and has left behind both prose and verse in this language.
Beginning from this early start in the 14th century, there are a number of malfuzat, recording the conversations of sufi saints, containing Hindvi words. This language was not, however, considered appropriate for religious writing so Shah Muran Ji (d.1496) writes in a didactic poem in Hindvi that this language was like the diamond one discovered in a dung heap. He makes it clear that the poem is intended for those who neither knew Arabic nor Persian.
Then, in easy Hindvi verse which contemporary Urdu readers can understand with some effort, the author explains mysticism in questions and answers. Another mystic, Shah Burhanuddin Janum, wrote a Hindvi poem composed in 1582. He too apologises for writing in Hindvi but argues that one should look at the meaning, the essence, rather than the outward form.
The attitudes of these fifteenth and sixteenth century mystics is similar to that of the Mehdavis - pioneers of a new religious sect - who followed the teachings Syed Muhammad Mehdi of Jaunpur (1443-1505) which were considered heretical at that time. In a poem written between 1712-1756 in Hindvi, the Mehdavis say that one should not look down upon Hindi as it is the commonly used language of explanation.
Indeed, even earlier than this period, there were poems in Urdu explaining the rudiments of Islam such as Syed Ashraf Jahangir Samnani's (d. 1405) 'risala' (dissertation) on ethics and mysticism written in 1308. There is also Shah Malik's Shariat Nama (1666-67) in Dekkani verse. These Sharia'h guide books, as they can be called, can be seen in the catalogues of the British Library.
RELIGIOUS WRITINGS IN URDU AFTER SHAH WALIULLAH:
Shah Waliullah (1703-1762) is a major figure in the renaissance of Islamic reform and revivalism in India and the pioneer of fundamentalist, puritanical Islamic practice as well. Although be himself wrote in Arabic and Persian, he encouraged his son Shah Abdul Aziz to learn idiomatic Urdu. His other sons, Shah Abdul Qadir (1753-1827) and Shah Rafiuddin (1749-1817) translated the Qur'an into Urdu.
An earlier venture initiated by J.B. Gilchrist (1759-1841), the pioneer of Urdu studies at Fort William College, was forbidden by the government in 1807 because the ulema had been highly incensed even with Shah Waliullah's Persian translation to countenance an Urdu one. Hashmi mentions Qazi Mohammad Azam Sanbhli's translation in 'the language born out of the contact of Arabic and Persian' [by which he means eighteenth century Urdu] in 1719 and that of an unknown translator in 1737. Both are available in manuscript since they were never published.
Exegeses came to be written as early as the end of the sixteenth century and some of the early ones are anonymous. Gujrat and Deccan fare prominently as centres of Islamic writing in this early period. A notable attempt is that of Murad Ullah Ansari Sanbhli who gives reasons for having written his exegesis Tafsir-e-Muradi (which ended in 1771).
Sanbhli argues that, since millions of people spoke Hindi and were keen to learn from his explanations of the holy book, he was requested by many of his companions to write his explanations for them. He therefore undertook the writing of this exegesis. This, however, was the period (middle of the 18th century) when there was a great increase in religious writings in Urdu. While the popular poems such as Nur Namas and Jang Namas continued to be written, serious prose literature - translations of the Qur'an and the Hadith, exegesis, collections of legal judgements (fatawa) - now started supplementing Persian works in these genres. Such literature is described in some detail by Gaborieau, Ayub Qadri, Naqvi and Khan, but a study with reference to its production and consumption still needs to be done.
Among the most notable of these works are those by the pioneers of the Jihad movement against the Sikhs and the British. Sayyid Ahmad (1786-1831), who died fighting the Sikhs at Balakot, wrote two pamphlets (risalas) in what he called 'Hindi' to guide the ordinary Muslims about saying their prayers and understanding the verses of the Qur'an.
The work on prayers was published in 1866 and was part of this overall effort to reform Islam in India. Shah Ismail (1779-1831) translated his own pamphlet on the refutation of innovation and heresy into Urdu renaming it Taqwiat ul Iman (1821). This became an important source of inspiration for the whole reform movement and was reprinted several times. Similarly Maulvi Syed Abdullah translated Shah Rafiuddin's Persian pamphlet Qiamat Nama into Urdu calling it Dab ul Akhirat (1863). In short, Urdu, generally called Hindi in those days, played an important role in the reformist movement associated with Shah Waliullah and his family and disciples.-Courtesy: Pakistan Perspectives
ANNEXURE-1
SPEAKERS OF CONVERSATIONAL URDU/HINDI:

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         Mother Tongue Speakers      Second Language Speakers

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Hindi               366,000,000                   487,000,000

Urdu                 60,290,000                   104,000,000

                    426,290,000                   591,000,000

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GRAND TOTAL: Mother tongue + second language speakers of Urdu-Hindi = 1,017,290,000.
SOURCE: Grimes 2000: see under 'Pakistan' and 'India' entries.
ANNEXURE-2
PAKISTANI LANGUAGES:

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Language        Percentage of Speakers      Number of Speakers

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Punjabi                          44.15              66,225,000

Pashto                           15.42              23,130,000

Sindhi                           14.10              21,150,000

Siraiki                          10.53              15,795,000

Urdu                              7.57              11,355,000

Balochi                           3.57               5,355,000

Others                            4.66               6,990,000

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