ENG 515A Lecture Notes - Lecture 24: Pakistan Studies, Naqvi, Babur
Name: Umaima Fatima Hashmi Instructor: Dr. Nauman Naqvi
Id: 01942 (reflection: 1) Date: 9/27/2016
The Emergence of ‘Urdu’ as a Language
In the 20th century
The language that we today know as Urdu has gone through a lot of transformation before
emerging as a unified entity from the spectrum of lingual diversity in the British India. When we
imagine anything about this language, the first thing that comes to our mind today is that it is the
National Language of Pakistan. However, before becoming the lingua franca or even a language
in itself, Urdu was acknowledged by a different Identity – Hindi. When studying a critical
process like that of the conversion of Urdu to Hindu, the key aspects of the relations of Hindus,
Muslims and British should be closely examined. Because language comes from the past, as a
result the study of a language must be the study of the history through which it came into
existence. It is visible in the modern history that it is chronological in form and omits some
events, mainly because they might not be considered as ‘relevant’ to an averagely educated
person (unless he/she wants to get hold of the truth and tries researching about the origin of a
specific language), or there might be some political reasons behind such a diplomatic exercise.
Similarly, the Pakistan studies textbooks profoundly talk about the main (mostly oversimplified)
arguments regarding the Urdu language and its literal meaning as the Language of the military
camp during the Mughal settlement in the subcontinent. The key objective of this essay is to
explore the chain of events that led to the advent of the process of nomenclature of Urdu and to
highlight some of the misconceptions about the meaning of the word ‘Urdu’.
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