Urdu is a sweet and beautiful language and is still loved and learnt in Bangladesh, despite the trauma of the separation of East Pakistan, after which it was presumed that there will be no prospect for Urdu in the new country (Bangladesh), Dr Kulsoom Abul Bashar, a professor at University of Dhaka, has said.
Dr Bashar was in Karachi recently to attend the 2nd International Urdu Conference. She is currently a professor at the Department of Persian, University of Dhaka and has Masters degrees in Urdu and Persian from the same university. Dr Bashar, who has done her PhD from Mumbai University, India, is one of the many people in Bangladesh who enjoy learning and teaching Urdu language despite the fact that her mother tongue is Bengali.
Dr Bashar said that after the creation of Bangladesh, many people thought that Urdu would not survive because Bengali would be the national language of the new country. She said, however, that Urdu became popular and more people began learning the language. She added that presently more than 10 PhD holders in Urdu language teach around 300 undergraduates and graduates at the University of Dhaka’s department of Urdu.
“People were attracted towards Urdu through Bollywood films, which have Urdu songs and dialogues; Pakistani drama serials of the late 1970s and 80s also played a part,” she said, adding that another reason for the survival of Urdu was that it was taught in the Medressahs of Bangladesh. “Urdu is taught in Madressahs all over the subcontinent, from Kashmir to Tamil Nadu and from Maharashtra to Assam; Bangladesh is no exception” she said.
University of Karachi (KU) Department of Urdu Chairman Dr Zafar Iqbal said that languages have no frontiers, and Bengali, Urdu and Hindi are inter-connected with each other.
Dr Iqbal has attended a number of Urdu Conferences in Bangladesh and hosted many teachers of Urdu from Bangladeshi universities and knows the basic facts about the unexpected growth of Urdu there. He credits the stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh, commonly called Biharis, for retaining their language (Urdu) despite all the hardship that they have encountered for more than 20 years. “They are the people who have guarded their cultural asset, Urdu, zealously,” he said.
Moreover Dr Iqbal added that Urdu is equally popular in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and it acts as the Lingua Franca for the people of the subcontinent. “I think it is the cultural bond that has kept the language alive in all these countries,” he said. “It is interesting to note that 60 percent of the people who have decided to learn Urdu are Bengalis. It was not compulsion to learn the language for business or teaching purposes. It was the love for the language.”
