Urdu,Hindi,and Sanskrit

[Aditya, the Cheerful Hindu Skeptic]

Satya Upadhya <satya_upadhya at HOTMAIL.COM> has written as follows:

>Here is the url of an extremely interesting article that you may wish to
>read:
>
>http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2000-weekly/tapest-24-08-2000/#2
>
>Comments?

It is a very interesting speech by Justice Katju who is a well know Urdu
poet but there are a few flaws in his observations and conclusions that Urdu
is not a muslim language.

While talking about Justice Reddy, it is worthwhile asking why was Urdu and
not Telgu the language of instruction in Osmania if not due to it being a
language related to the muslim ruler Nizam. Had Reddy gone to any other
state, would he have learned Urdu equally well?

Both Katju and Reddy became conversant in Urdu not because of any love of
the language but primarily because they were planning a career in Judicial
system where Urdu was the official language till 1947 as mentioned by Katju
himself.  It is just like English being the preferred language now due to
its importance in the job market.

It is true that when I went to school during last days of British Raj, 50%
of both Hindu and Muslim students studied Urdu because of its being
preferred in job market. Of course, English was a compulsory subject for
all.

The court language of Urdu was never easy to comprehend specially due to its
script which makes it much harder at least for me to decipher since often
one has to guess which dot belongs to which character in a string of
characters.

It is to the credit of Kamal Pasha who realized the failings of Arabic
script and changed the script for Turkish. A common script for Hindi and
Urdu would have made them indistinguishable. When Katju talks of language of
the market place he does not mention that the market place does not have a
script but only sound.

The news in today's paper about the conversation between Musarraf and Bajpai
was so easy and natural to conduct on telephone but had they communicated to
each other in writing, it would have been impossible without an interpreter,


Have a peaceful and joyous day.
Aditya Mishra
Primary email: a018967t at bc.seflin.org
Primary homepage: http://www.pompano.net/~aditya
ICQ # 1131674 Phone #: (954)746-0442  Fax # (209)315-8571
Random thought of the day:
        When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you. - Lao-Tzu