The Union government has suddenly raked up the issue of making Hindi the national language, citing that non-English speakers of the country can communicate with each other in Hindi. South Indian states have opposed the move as expected, but Telangana has a peculiar situation to deal with.
This is not the first time Telangana is stuck at the cross roads on this– the States Reorganisation Committee report of 1955, based on which the Indian linguistic states were formed, made a recommendation for Hindi in the former State of Hyderabad.
“As for the utility of the State for the propagation of Hindi in the South, it is true that with the background of Urdu education, Hindi can easily be made popular in Hyderabad (state). The obvious suggestion, however, is not only that Hindi should replace Urdu as the medium of instruction at the Osmania University but the former government’s policy of instruction through Urdu in the primary and middle schools should be continued, now of course, through Hindi, throughout the state,” the Committee report read.
The implementation, however, did not concede to the extreme recommendation, but replaced Urdu with English as the medium, although dominated by Andhra Telugu faculties replacing Urdu-speaking Hyderabadis. Hindi replaced Urdu as a second language in the majority of schools and colleges. Only a few government schools continued with Urdu as the medium of instruction.
My paternal grandfather, Tulasi Venkata Narayana, a BC Hindu from Warangal, worked as an Urdu teacher for the Nizam government before Hyderabad's annexation to India in 1948. By the time his children grew up, Urdu was no longer used in schools. He also wrote Urdu poetry for the Urdu weeklies Siasat and Rahnuma-e-Deccan. How is one to inherit this legacy when the state has systemically erased the possibility?
Of the many tragedies of the Hyderabad State/Telangana, the de-Urduisation is one. We, the children and grandchildren of an Urdu teacher and poet, stand witness, not knowing how to read and write the language. Even in Muslim families, the ones who got lucky with Urdu were the students of government-run schools where Urdu was the medium. A sizeable number of Hyderabadi and Telangana Muslims cannot read or write the Urdu script.
Urdu has a complicated history in Telangana. It was unfairly made the only state language during the Nizam period when the demographic was 50% Telugu speakers, 26% Marathi, 11% Kannada, and 11% Urdu. This was a major departure from their predecessors, the Qutub Shahis who constituted both Telugu and Persian as state languages. Not making Telugu the state language majorly contributed to the un-doing of the Nizam state in 1948.
Bringing Telugu back as a medium of instruction was also on the manifesto of the Telangana Armed Struggle (1946-51) headed by both Muslim and Hindu leadership, one of the few successful communist movements in the world.
Although the Indian state had to bring Telugu back, it didn't have to do it at the cost of the near-eradication of Urdu. Almost all of Telangana's history is documented in Farsi and Urdu, and newer generations post-1948 cannot read or write Urdu because it was forcefully removed from the curriculum.
If one were to introduce the three-language policy to correct historical mistakes, then I recommend that Urdu be brought back as a language in schools if Telangana students are to be equipped to read their own history – even if it means replacing Hindi as the second language.
When French is being offered in schools as a second language as an alternative to Hindi, why not Urdu, the language of the land?
Moses Tulasi is a filmmaker and freelance journalist who writes on Hyderabad and Telangana history and culture.
Views expressed are the author’s own.