Urdu speakers

[Raveen Satkurunathan]

On Tue, 5 Sep 2000 16:26:47 -0400, Rajarshi Banerjee

<rajarshi.banerjee at SMGINC.COM> wrote:

>Samar

>I have never come across a single bangladeshi who can speak
>hindi/urdu/hindustani or sharqi or whatever you may want to call it. I am
>not sure why you refer to the bengalis as converts,

Just like "high" caste Indians (irrespective of ethnicity) wanted to be
associated with "immigrant" Indo -Aryan roots (versus the new nativist
Aryan movement now) "high" caste Muslims known as Sharif do not want to
have anything to do with Indian indigenous culture and roots whether it is
Aryan or Dravidian. They proclaim to be pure descendants of Turks, Pathans,
Arabs (specially Prophet Mohammad’s Qureshi tribe!!) and Iranians. (See
http://adaniel.tripod.com/foreigners.htm)
 It is only the Bengalis and most Tamil/Malayalam speaking Muslims who
proclaim their native roots even if they had part Arab ancestry. Thus
the “lofty” Shariffs look down upon the converted “Kafirs”. Many Pakistani
history books (and websites) impose this self-identity of Shariffs on all
Muslim Punjabis, and Sindhis even if it is obviously bogus.

{Infact the part Arab ancestry of Mapillas and Rawuther Muslims of
Kerala/TamilNadu/Sri Lanka has more historic legitimacy than that of the
hundreds of thousands of “Syeds” across North India and Pakistan who
proclaim Arab origins}

Sameer Abba’s effort at deriving Urdu from Iranian, Turkish and Arab is on
these same ideological lines. It is as unscientific as Dr.
Rajaram’s “decipherment” of Indus valley “script”.


>all muslims in south
>asia are converts including ones in pakistan. Conversion must have taken
>place pretty early in east bengal during sher shah suri's rule.


>Whatever happened to the urdu speakers. Is the arabic script ever used? Did
>retaliatory genocide and govt policy suppress use of urdu dialects?

>RB

They are known as "Biharis" and live like refugees in Bangladesh. They are
discriminated and many try to illegally immigrate to Pakistan Many such
illegal "muhajeers" can be found in Karachi. Some have also gone back to
India. Their total number is estimated to be around 250,000.

http://www.muslimemail.com/~wilma/archives/inin-net/9904/msg00102.html
http://www.refugees.org/world/countryrpt/scasia/bangladesh.htm
http://landow.stg.brown.edu/post/bg/bgpeople.html
http://www.saarc.com/spbangla.html

Raveen