From Asian Age...
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Urdu or déjà vu?
- By Balbir K. Punj
The news that Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM) at IIT-Kharagpur has expanded its infrastructure and is increasing its studentâs intake from 90 to 120 in 2005 and 150 thereafter (Vinod Gupta School to expand capacity, Business Standard, November 27) and that itâs offering a tailor-made dual degree programme combining engineering and management (IIT plans to roll out two-in-one courses, The Telegraph, November 27) bear a curious contrast with the passage of a Bill by the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly on November 30 for the establishment of the Maulana Mohammed Ali Jauhar University (MMAJU) for Urdu, Persian and Arabic at Rampur.
VGSOM was founded by a US-resident IIT-Kharagpur alumnus, Vinod Gupta, at his alma mater with an initial donation of $2 million to which he has added $8 million more in the last one decade. Hailing from a small village (also called Rampur) near Saharanpur, this IIT-Kharagpur graduate reached the United States in 1967. He currently heads his database company based in Omaha (Nebraska), InfoUSA, that employs 2,000 people and earns a revenue of $300 million per year. He is one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party fund and is a close friend of former US President Bill Clinton. In spite of being one of the richest Indians in the US, he has not forgotten his village where he has established the Ram Rati Gupta Womenâs Polytechnic, in memory of his mother. On April 8, 2001, Bill Clinton during his second visit to India, inaugurated the Hillary Rodham Clinton Centre for Multimedia technology in the polytechnic (Clinton revisited the institute during his third visit in November, 2003).
Rampur, the village off Saharanpur, and Rampur, the town near Moradabad (a distance of around 100 kilometres) despite being homonymous, are not the same places, geographically or temperamentally. Despite being in the same state, they reflect, thanks to the "secularists," two different states of mind. One is a village polytechnic established with private funds to make girls self-reliant in the 21st century, another is a "hallowed" university to be built with "secular" patronage to take the Muslim mind from the 18th century to backwards.
But in an age where even engineers and commercial pilots are finding it difficult to get employment (the engineer parents of Indiaâs child genius Shubham Prakhar from Muzaffarpur, Bihar are unemployed) can Mulayam Singh Yadav ameliorate the situation of Muslims with a university exclusively devoted to Urdu, Arabic and Persian? Remember, learning English is an anathema to him. He publicly criticised governor T.V. Rajeshwar who in his Independence Day speech had exhorted students to learn English for its practical utility.
For Mulayam Singh Yadav, MMAJU is not really an educational project, it is a political project aimed at cultivating the Muslim vote bank. The Congress and the BJP both staged a walkout in protest when the Bill was being passed. But while the BJP was against the project, the Congress was merely against the appointment of urban minister Azam Khan as its pro-chancellor for life. Essentially, there is no difference between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party on this issue. The dispute is only over which "secularist" will control the levers of this proposed academy.
I am not speaking about the literary merits or religio-cultural sanctity of these languages, but about their viability in the 21st century. Muammar El Gaddafi is free to think that "they speak Arabic in Paradise." But why a university devoted exclusively to these languages, when they are already offered by many other universities in UP in particular and India in general? Think of the subsidy â enormous salary for faculty members, a colossal waste of paper and stationery, churning out hundreds of graduates, post-graduates, research scholars who are not only unemployed but also unemployable except in mosques, which must also proliferate to keep abreast of "qualified" graduates.
I am against this Urdu university because I feel it is an instrument to cocoon the Muslim mind further. Discontent amongst Muslims is only going to increase by this act of electoral appeasement. Certainly no product of this university can expect to find an employment in any industrial or commercial activity in post-liberation India. Market forces will not allow Arabic, Persian and Urdu to survive in India, and the "secularists" would not let them die â what a predicament!
The religio-political dimension of teaching these languages canât be overlooked. The "secularists" and Muslim scholars might want us to believe that these languages are congenitally "secular" (whereas Sanskrit is programmed to churn out RSS men), but our historic experience is quite different.<span style='color:blue'> To begin with, letâs take the case of the most refined and most elitist Persian. Persian (though 40 million people use it in Iran) was the Latin of India in the Muslim period. "Pade Farsi beche tel (Study Persian and then sell oil for livelihood)" became a popular joke in the 19th century because there was little "market value" left in it as Mughal power began to decline. This "market value" of Persian was actually an artefact of political power. Persian was the language of government and administration in the Mughal era, and all public services were the monopoly of the Muslims, mostly of foreign descent, except at the lowest levels where some Hindus were also allowed to serve, on learning Persian.
The French traveller of the medieval era, Francois Bernier observes, "It must not, however, be inferred that offices of trust and dignity are exclusively held by those of the Mogol race, or that they alone obtain rank in the army. These situations are filled indifferently by them and strangers from all countries; the greater part by Persians, some by Arabs, and other by Turks. To be considered a Mogol, it is enough if a foreigner have (sic) a white face and profess (sic) Mahometanism; in contradistinction to the Christians of Europe, who are Firanguis, and Indous (Hindus), whose complexion is brown, and who are Gentiles." (Travels in the Mogul Empire, AD 1656-1668, page 3)
Hindus and native Muslims had to depend upon scribes knowing Persian, whenever and wherever they came into contact with the administrative machinery. Of course, given the predominance of Persian, many Hindus, especially Kayasths and Kashmiri Pandits, had not only mastered it but also contributed to its literature, for example, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Dwarka Prasad "Ufuq," Munshi Hargopal (Mirza Ghalibâs chief disciple). In 1837, the British replaced Persian with English from the higher echelons of the administration and with Urdu in the lower levels. Overnight, this artificial premium on Persian collapsed. However, Urdu continued as a vestige at the lower level of administration, unwilling to yield an inch to Hindi.</span>
Mulayam Singh, who is an English-baiter and a Hindi-zealot, seems uninformed that the Persian-Urdu politics tried to thwart Hindi which was actually rescued in the British era. And the case of UP (United Province in the British era, Uttar Pradesh in independent India) is most symbolic because it is the cultural heartland of both Islam in India and Hinduism. With its Dar-ul-Uloom at Deoband, Dar-ul-Uloom Nadwatul Ulama at Lucknow, and Aligarh Muslim University at Aligarh, UP has been the epicentre of Muslim politics in India.
<span style='color:blue'>In Bihar and the Central Provinces (Madhya Pradesh) the British replaced Urdu with Hindi in 1872 and 1881 respectively. The majority of the people spoke Hindi in each of these states and one-sixth of the people, mostly Muslims, could claim Urdu as their own language. In UP, the majority, now free from Muslim rule, demanded the same. But it met with rough weather under the influence of Sir Syed Ahmed Khanâs Aligarh lobby which, ironically, was patronised by the British themselves. It was in 1894 when Antony MacDonnell became the lieutenant governor, that he prudently kept Urdu as the official language but placed Devnagari script at par with the Persian script, and knowledge of both scripts was made compulsory for all those who aspired for government services at certain levels where English was not essential.
This act of the parity of scripts was too much for the Urduwallas (who in independent India claim to be the sole custodian of "secularism") and they raised the bogey that their "sublime language" Urdu (actually born in Army cantonments) has been brought down to the level of "Hindi gandi" (noxious Hindi)! They pointed that Hindus "all these years" (i.e. under Muslim rule) were learning Urdu. And Urdu, next to Arabic and Persian, was the language of Islamic "religion and culture."</span>
But the pragmatic reason behind this veneer of "religion and culture" peeped out soon. "Prosperous and wily" Hindus, they said, had many avenues of employment, but the "poor and simple" Muslims were solely dependent on government patronage. With a slight change of script (pun intended) the story is being repeated again. Hindus have shown initiative towards IITs and polytechnics while Muslims are sought to be patronised by the "secularists" for Arabic, Persian and Urdu. Unlike during the Mughal rule, Hindus have little stake and less interest in learning these languages and master their scripts. These languages will not solve the basic problems of Muslims but provide them with an alibi for agitation. <b>The campus of the proposed MMAJU can only be expected to become a "<span style='font-size:25pt;line-height:100%'>sovereign Muslim intellectual territory" like say the JNU is for Marxists, at the cost of the public exchequer.
The university being named after Maulana Mohammed Ali Jauhar (1878-1931), who hailed from a courtier family of Rampur and spearheaded the Khilafat Movement, is suggestive. He said, "I belong to two circles of equal size, but which are not concentric. One is India, and the other is the Muslim world⦠We as Indian Muslims belong to these two circles, each of more than 300 millions, and we can leave neither." Mohammed Ali, on his premature death, was buried in Jerusalem, as per his wishes.</b></span> Babasaheb Ambedkar has pointed out this incident as an indicator of pan-Islamism. But whatever it might be, teaching Arabic, Persian and Urdu will also find themselves caught between two non-concentric circles â India and the Muslim world, the "glorious past" and the 21st century, cultural ties and market forces.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Urdu or déjà vu?
- By Balbir K. Punj
The news that Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM) at IIT-Kharagpur has expanded its infrastructure and is increasing its studentâs intake from 90 to 120 in 2005 and 150 thereafter (Vinod Gupta School to expand capacity, Business Standard, November 27) and that itâs offering a tailor-made dual degree programme combining engineering and management (IIT plans to roll out two-in-one courses, The Telegraph, November 27) bear a curious contrast with the passage of a Bill by the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly on November 30 for the establishment of the Maulana Mohammed Ali Jauhar University (MMAJU) for Urdu, Persian and Arabic at Rampur.
VGSOM was founded by a US-resident IIT-Kharagpur alumnus, Vinod Gupta, at his alma mater with an initial donation of $2 million to which he has added $8 million more in the last one decade. Hailing from a small village (also called Rampur) near Saharanpur, this IIT-Kharagpur graduate reached the United States in 1967. He currently heads his database company based in Omaha (Nebraska), InfoUSA, that employs 2,000 people and earns a revenue of $300 million per year. He is one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party fund and is a close friend of former US President Bill Clinton. In spite of being one of the richest Indians in the US, he has not forgotten his village where he has established the Ram Rati Gupta Womenâs Polytechnic, in memory of his mother. On April 8, 2001, Bill Clinton during his second visit to India, inaugurated the Hillary Rodham Clinton Centre for Multimedia technology in the polytechnic (Clinton revisited the institute during his third visit in November, 2003).
Rampur, the village off Saharanpur, and Rampur, the town near Moradabad (a distance of around 100 kilometres) despite being homonymous, are not the same places, geographically or temperamentally. Despite being in the same state, they reflect, thanks to the "secularists," two different states of mind. One is a village polytechnic established with private funds to make girls self-reliant in the 21st century, another is a "hallowed" university to be built with "secular" patronage to take the Muslim mind from the 18th century to backwards.
But in an age where even engineers and commercial pilots are finding it difficult to get employment (the engineer parents of Indiaâs child genius Shubham Prakhar from Muzaffarpur, Bihar are unemployed) can Mulayam Singh Yadav ameliorate the situation of Muslims with a university exclusively devoted to Urdu, Arabic and Persian? Remember, learning English is an anathema to him. He publicly criticised governor T.V. Rajeshwar who in his Independence Day speech had exhorted students to learn English for its practical utility.
For Mulayam Singh Yadav, MMAJU is not really an educational project, it is a political project aimed at cultivating the Muslim vote bank. The Congress and the BJP both staged a walkout in protest when the Bill was being passed. But while the BJP was against the project, the Congress was merely against the appointment of urban minister Azam Khan as its pro-chancellor for life. Essentially, there is no difference between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party on this issue. The dispute is only over which "secularist" will control the levers of this proposed academy.
I am not speaking about the literary merits or religio-cultural sanctity of these languages, but about their viability in the 21st century. Muammar El Gaddafi is free to think that "they speak Arabic in Paradise." But why a university devoted exclusively to these languages, when they are already offered by many other universities in UP in particular and India in general? Think of the subsidy â enormous salary for faculty members, a colossal waste of paper and stationery, churning out hundreds of graduates, post-graduates, research scholars who are not only unemployed but also unemployable except in mosques, which must also proliferate to keep abreast of "qualified" graduates.
I am against this Urdu university because I feel it is an instrument to cocoon the Muslim mind further. Discontent amongst Muslims is only going to increase by this act of electoral appeasement. Certainly no product of this university can expect to find an employment in any industrial or commercial activity in post-liberation India. Market forces will not allow Arabic, Persian and Urdu to survive in India, and the "secularists" would not let them die â what a predicament!
The religio-political dimension of teaching these languages canât be overlooked. The "secularists" and Muslim scholars might want us to believe that these languages are congenitally "secular" (whereas Sanskrit is programmed to churn out RSS men), but our historic experience is quite different.<span style='color:blue'> To begin with, letâs take the case of the most refined and most elitist Persian. Persian (though 40 million people use it in Iran) was the Latin of India in the Muslim period. "Pade Farsi beche tel (Study Persian and then sell oil for livelihood)" became a popular joke in the 19th century because there was little "market value" left in it as Mughal power began to decline. This "market value" of Persian was actually an artefact of political power. Persian was the language of government and administration in the Mughal era, and all public services were the monopoly of the Muslims, mostly of foreign descent, except at the lowest levels where some Hindus were also allowed to serve, on learning Persian.
The French traveller of the medieval era, Francois Bernier observes, "It must not, however, be inferred that offices of trust and dignity are exclusively held by those of the Mogol race, or that they alone obtain rank in the army. These situations are filled indifferently by them and strangers from all countries; the greater part by Persians, some by Arabs, and other by Turks. To be considered a Mogol, it is enough if a foreigner have (sic) a white face and profess (sic) Mahometanism; in contradistinction to the Christians of Europe, who are Firanguis, and Indous (Hindus), whose complexion is brown, and who are Gentiles." (Travels in the Mogul Empire, AD 1656-1668, page 3)
Hindus and native Muslims had to depend upon scribes knowing Persian, whenever and wherever they came into contact with the administrative machinery. Of course, given the predominance of Persian, many Hindus, especially Kayasths and Kashmiri Pandits, had not only mastered it but also contributed to its literature, for example, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Dwarka Prasad "Ufuq," Munshi Hargopal (Mirza Ghalibâs chief disciple). In 1837, the British replaced Persian with English from the higher echelons of the administration and with Urdu in the lower levels. Overnight, this artificial premium on Persian collapsed. However, Urdu continued as a vestige at the lower level of administration, unwilling to yield an inch to Hindi.</span>
Mulayam Singh, who is an English-baiter and a Hindi-zealot, seems uninformed that the Persian-Urdu politics tried to thwart Hindi which was actually rescued in the British era. And the case of UP (United Province in the British era, Uttar Pradesh in independent India) is most symbolic because it is the cultural heartland of both Islam in India and Hinduism. With its Dar-ul-Uloom at Deoband, Dar-ul-Uloom Nadwatul Ulama at Lucknow, and Aligarh Muslim University at Aligarh, UP has been the epicentre of Muslim politics in India.
<span style='color:blue'>In Bihar and the Central Provinces (Madhya Pradesh) the British replaced Urdu with Hindi in 1872 and 1881 respectively. The majority of the people spoke Hindi in each of these states and one-sixth of the people, mostly Muslims, could claim Urdu as their own language. In UP, the majority, now free from Muslim rule, demanded the same. But it met with rough weather under the influence of Sir Syed Ahmed Khanâs Aligarh lobby which, ironically, was patronised by the British themselves. It was in 1894 when Antony MacDonnell became the lieutenant governor, that he prudently kept Urdu as the official language but placed Devnagari script at par with the Persian script, and knowledge of both scripts was made compulsory for all those who aspired for government services at certain levels where English was not essential.
This act of the parity of scripts was too much for the Urduwallas (who in independent India claim to be the sole custodian of "secularism") and they raised the bogey that their "sublime language" Urdu (actually born in Army cantonments) has been brought down to the level of "Hindi gandi" (noxious Hindi)! They pointed that Hindus "all these years" (i.e. under Muslim rule) were learning Urdu. And Urdu, next to Arabic and Persian, was the language of Islamic "religion and culture."</span>
But the pragmatic reason behind this veneer of "religion and culture" peeped out soon. "Prosperous and wily" Hindus, they said, had many avenues of employment, but the "poor and simple" Muslims were solely dependent on government patronage. With a slight change of script (pun intended) the story is being repeated again. Hindus have shown initiative towards IITs and polytechnics while Muslims are sought to be patronised by the "secularists" for Arabic, Persian and Urdu. Unlike during the Mughal rule, Hindus have little stake and less interest in learning these languages and master their scripts. These languages will not solve the basic problems of Muslims but provide them with an alibi for agitation. <b>The campus of the proposed MMAJU can only be expected to become a "<span style='font-size:25pt;line-height:100%'>sovereign Muslim intellectual territory" like say the JNU is for Marxists, at the cost of the public exchequer.
The university being named after Maulana Mohammed Ali Jauhar (1878-1931), who hailed from a courtier family of Rampur and spearheaded the Khilafat Movement, is suggestive. He said, "I belong to two circles of equal size, but which are not concentric. One is India, and the other is the Muslim world⦠We as Indian Muslims belong to these two circles, each of more than 300 millions, and we can leave neither." Mohammed Ali, on his premature death, was buried in Jerusalem, as per his wishes.</b></span> Babasaheb Ambedkar has pointed out this incident as an indicator of pan-Islamism. But whatever it might be, teaching Arabic, Persian and Urdu will also find themselves caught between two non-concentric circles â India and the Muslim world, the "glorious past" and the 21st century, cultural ties and market forces.
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