Mumbai: Maharashtra Minister of Minorities Development Eknath Khadse in his first meeting with the officials urged them to take Urdu Academy programmes beyond poetry and "shayari" events. He also advised them to put efforts on making popular excellent old Urdu literary works.
Khadse's order is interesting for the fact that, like other minorities institutions, state Urdu Academies too have been used by the Congress as symbol of tokenism, formed merely to please 'coterie' and 'sycophants' for their loyalty to the party, and reward them for being silent on key community issues.
A quick check on any, past or present, Urdu Academy will reveal that in most of the cases chairman and members of this, otherwise very effective, state funded institution are those whose only merit is their closeness to their political bosses.
In some cases, those given the responsibilities do not even have any proven record of literary work or the needed expertise of the Urdu language. It is not surprising hence to note that the Urdu Academies seldom do anything concrete except limiting their activities to organising seminars on insignificant topics and Mushaeras.
The other favourite activity of these academies has been to reward authors, scholars, poets, journalists, teachers and the likes. Looks impressive, but this annual event too is not free from controversy. Eyebrows are raised each time the academy released the list of awardees as the names of such people are found included in these lists who are in no way eligible for the awards they have been selected for.
More interestingly, the event which was supposed to be organised every year is always behind its schedule. For example, the Maharashtra Urdu Academy conferred awards for the years 2004 to 2008 in March 2011 – after six long years, and all at once.
As a matter of fact, Urdu Academies in different states have clearly defined aims and objectives with sanctioned budgets. If the academy members had desired and had worked beyond pleasing their political bosses, at least some results must have been seen on the ground. This would have surely helped the language in regaining its lost glory.
Interestingly, the Urdu language is born and grown up in undivided India. It also played a very important role during the freedom struggle. Urdu newspapers and Urdu slogans were part and partial of the India's freedom movement. Slogans like 'Inquilab Zindabad' and songs like 'Saare Jahan se accha Hindustan Hamara' are all the gifts of the Urdu language.
Moreover, an assessment based on religion, caste and other such factors will also reveal that the Urdu language was lovingly adopted by people belonging to all castes and religions. In fact even today when Urdu is facing lot of challenges, it is the only language which has a pan India presence.
However, after Independence a section part of the government encouraged the propaganda that Urdu is the language of Muslims and of foreigners, and hence does not deserve any kind of support from governments. It was expected from the Urdu Academies to counter this myth. However, the academies recklessly watched even as the language suffered along with Muslims.
Against this backdrop, it will be interesting to see how successful are Khadse's plans to revamp the functioning of the Maharashtra Urdu Academy.
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