📮___________________📮 *FASCIST ONSLAUGHT ON URDU: a barbaric communal assault on the living example of cultural and linguistic diversity of India* ✍️ Progressive Artists' League 📱https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BKdWF6kT8/ ______________________ Recently, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath called Urdu a language of “maulvis,” Islamic clerics and “kathhmullas,” (literally meaning dogmatic but often used by the fascists as a communal slur for the muslim community.) Irony jumped off Burj Khalifa but it was still found alive as Yogi himself used few Urdu words while making this communal statement! All of this happened in the state assembly of UP during the budget session when speaker of the house announced that along with English assembly proceedings will be available in four "regional languages", Braj, Bundeli, Bhojpuri, and Avadhi which are basically the dialects of Hindi. An SP MLA Mata Prasad Pandey demanded that translation should be available in Urdu as well. In response to Mata prasad Yogi Adityanath came up with those communal remarks. If you are wondering what is the logic behind such wild claims then please take note that the entire fascist politics is basically the aestheticization of politics and you can’t reason with fascists. Has not Yogi ever heard of literary figures such as Premchand, Rajender Singh Bedi, Krishan Chander, Raghupati Sahay or Firaq Gorakhpuri who have widely written in Urdu language? In fact, a huge portion of Premchand’s early work including his first short story collection 'Soz-e-Vatan' was in Urdu itself which was seized and burnt by the imperialist British state. Though it seems highly improbable that he would never have heard about these renowned authors. However, with Indian fasicsts, you never know! Since he is calling Urdu the language of Muslims, so what are his views about our revolutionaries Bhagat Singh, Bismil and many others who spoke and wrote in Urdu? The objective of his statement was to reinforce those notions and stereotypes that see Urdu only as a language of Muslims in order to strengthen the purely constructed ideological community which doesn’t exist. The Indian fascists including Yogi Adityanath have been propagating among the masses that Hindus and Muslims have different interests and the two community are not just the different religions but completely separate cultures which cannot live together. Fascist ideologues like Savarkar and M S Golwalkar laid the foundation of fascist ideological concepts such as 'Punya Bhoomi' (holy land) and 'Pitr Bhoomi' (the paternal land) and claimed that only those who consider India as their paternal as well as holy land belong to this nation and the rest do not. Such are the exclusivist and pathological forms of hyper nationalism their purely ideological "Hindu Rashtra" is built upon. And rhetoric like "Hindu, Hindi, Hindusthan" echoes that very fascist narrative only. However, Hindustani language in itself is a glaring example of a shared culture among various religions that exposes their fascist lies and myths. So how can they digest this truth? Yogi Adityanath could not stop himself using few Urdu words while making those bizarre claims! That speaks volumes about the integral relation of Urdu with India and other Indian languages. But fascists have mastery over turning myths into history so let us have a look at the history of the formation of Urdu. The idea of Yogi Adityanath is to associate Urdu solely with Muslims who are constructed as a 'false enemy', as an 'other' by the Hindutva communal fascists. But the history of the development of Urdu and Hindustani language would be enough to destroy the shallow claims of their fascist propaganda. Urdu language itself is a product of the fusion of north Indian dialects such as Khari Boli, Braj, etc. with Persian and Turkic and Arabic. The history of its formation goes back to the Sultanate period and it kept developing in various forms and versions for many centuries in different regions. The making of this language attests to the cultural exchange and diversity among people. In fact, the development of Urdu language and what we know today as Hindi was happening at the same time and these two languages were spoken together and were commonly referred to as 'Hindustani' or 'Hindavi' for quite a long period. Verb forms used in both of these languages are still similar. As far as the point about the different scripts for the both is concerned this in itself does not negate the common origin and similarities between the two, that is, Urdu and Hindi. And nor is there any ground for the fascists to prove that Urdu is a foreign language as it originated in the Indian subcontinent. There had been some attempts to make Urdu more Persianized in 18th century and similar attempts towards the Sanskritization of Hindi in the 19th century but it emerged as a movement in the latter part of 19th century and the early 20th century which was the reflection of communalization done by the British colonialists. After the great revolt of 1857 English colonialists badly terrified by the unity of Indian masses carried on with their 'divide and rule' policy and found Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists as their besties in this mission. By 1880s, on one hand, the revivalist current among Hindus was demanding for the Sanskritization of Hindi and on the other hand, the Muslim revivalist trend was advocating for the persianization of Urdu in reaction. The division on religious lines and large-scale communalization created a gulf between Urdu and Hindi. But both languages are still spoken together by a huge population and a rich literature is available in both languages written and widely read by the people irrespective of their faith. Any language is shaped in a particular geographical area and people living in that place can speak a common language in its various forms. It has nothing to do with the religion of the speakers. Had that been the case then Tamil, Malayali and Kannada Muslims would also be speaking Urdu. And why Urdu, if it is the religion that determines the language of a community then every Muslim should have been speaking Arabic as their first language as that is the language of Islamic scriptures. But definitely that is not the case. The same holds true for Hindus living in different parts of India who speak the language of their respective nations. The fact is that the descendants of Hitler and Mussolini, the Indian fascists are using and reinforcing that language divide, which was the expression of communalization and the reactionary politics, for their own ideological purpose and ulterior motives. It is not just this statement alone but fascist RSS-BJP have systemically attacked Urdu especially since they came to power. Few years ago, the CBSE stopped providing question papers in Urdu language and thousands of Urdu medium schools were affected due to this decision. They have been peddling a narrative against Urdu since long through their 'godi media' and social media machinery including other ideological state apparatuses at their disposal. Progressive artists League strongly condemns the communal statement made by Yogi Adityanath and calls upon all the artists, student-youth and justice loving people to unite against the fascist onslaught on our shared culture. Millions of people speak Urdu and a vast pro-people progressive literature, cinema and art is available in this language. It is also an attack on that art and literature and we must resist this fascist onslaught by all means. We firmly stand against any sort of linguistic chauvinism and all kinds of reactionary and identity-based politics. We believe that every individual must be free to speak and express themselves in the language of their own choice and education and employment must be accessible to the people in the language they are comfortable with, which only means that there should be equality among all languages.