New Delhi:
The Supreme Court dismissed a petition challenging the use of Urdu in a municipality signboard in Maharashtra. The Supreme Court advocated the honor of the linguistic diversity of the country. The Supreme Court said that language should not cause partition among the people. Language has no religion, Urdu is the language of India. Let us be friends with Urdu and every language. Urdu is not a foreigner for India, it was born in India and has flourished here. The prejudice towards Urdu stems from the misconception that Urdu is foreign to India. The Supreme Court made these comments, dismissing the petition challenging the Bombay High Court’s decision, which allowed the use of Urdu on the signboard of the new building of the city council in Patur in Akola district of Maharashtra.
A bench of Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Vinod Chandran of Justice said that additional language performance is not a violation of the Maharashtra Local Authority (Official Language) Act, 2022. There is no restriction on the use of Urdu in the said Act. The court said that the purpose of the use of Urdu is only “effective communication” and diversity in the language should be respected. The judgment written by Justice Dhulia states that in the current case, it should be said that the city council is to provide services to the local community of the area and to meet their immediate day-to-day needs. If people living in the area covered by the city council or a group of people are familiar with Urdu, then at least there should be no objection to the use of Urdu in addition to the official language i.e. Marathi on the city council signboard.
Our strength can never be our weakness
Language is a medium of exchange of ideas that brings people closer to different ideas and beliefs and it should not cause their division. The Supreme Court said that our misconceptions, perhaps our prejudices towards a language will also have to be tested by boldly and truth, which is the great diversity of our country. Our strength can never be our weakness. Let us be friends with Urdu and every language. Urdu is not a foreigner for India. We are afraid that this opinion is wrong because Urdu like Marathi and Hindi is also an Indo-Aryan language. This is a language that is born on this land. Urdu developed and fluffy due to the need of people associated with various cultural environment in India, who wanted to exchange ideas and communicate among themselves. For centuries, it achieved even more sophistication and became the favorite language of many acclaimed poets. Even today, Urdu words are filled in the language of the common people of the country, even if they are not aware of it. It would not be wrong to say that everyday conversation in Hindi cannot happen without Urdu words or words from Urdu.
Language is not religion
The word ‘Hindi’ itself has derived from the word ‘Hindavi’ of Persian. This exchange of vocabulary is on both sides because many words have been borrowed from many other Indian languages including Sanskrit in Urdu. The interesting thing is that Urdu words have a profound effect on the court speech in both the criminals and civil laws. From the court to the affidavit to the affidavit and the muscle, the impact of Urdu in the language of Indian courts is clearly reflected. By the way, according to Article 348 of the Constitution, even though the official language of the Supreme Court and the High Court is English, but even today many Urdu words are used in this court. These include Vakalatanama, Dasti etc. Language is not religion. Our concepts should be clear. Language is of any community, region, people, not of any religion. Language is culture. Language is a measure of measuring the journey of civilization of a community and its people. The case of Urdu is also similar, which is a great example of Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb, or Hindustani Tehzeeb, which is a mixed cultural nature of the plains of northern and central India. But before becoming a means of learning language, its first and primary objective will always be communication.
A bench of Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and K Vinod Chandran said that it is a misconception that Urdu is an alliance for India. The court said, “We should respect our diversity and be rejoiced in it, including many of our languages. There are more than 100 major languages in India. Also, there are other languages called dialects or ‘mother tongues’, whose number is also in hundreds. According to the census of 2001, there were a total of 122 major languages including 22 Scheduled Languages, including the total 122 major languages and a total of 234 mother tongues in India. Wali was a scheduled language. In fact, it is spoken by a part of the population in all states and union territories, except for our north-eastern states
This decision has come at a time when people are being attacked in many states, especially in Maharashtra, not speaking local language.
Also, there are incidents of dividing language across the country.