Urdu
Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and serves as the lingua franca or a link language' for all the regions. The origin of Urdu can be traced to the Muslim invaders who came to the subcontinent speaking first Turkish and Iater Persian. These languages became intermixed with the local dialect spoken in the area of Delhi, which was most often the seat of Muslim power. When the Mughul armies carried out their campaigns from Delhi, their speech came to be called zaban-e-urdu-e-moalla or the language of the dignifed camp or court. The name was shortened eventually to Urdu.
From its earliest use in the subcontinent, it was written in the Persian script. Its vocabulary came from local Hindi, Punjabi, and Sanskrit to which were gradually added Persian and Turkish words. From the time of the Mughals, it was used as the Muslim form of a western Hindi speech that preferred a Persianized vocabulary and sought inspiration from Persian literature and the atmosphere of Islamic faith and culture.
Poetry has been significantly prevalent in Urdu for centuries. Amir Khusro (1253-1325), occupied the most eminent position in the court of six successive rulers of Delhi starting with Balban. He is also traditionally looked upon as the father of Urdu poetry. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the most remarkable contribution was made by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan who compiled a number of scientific works in Urdu. Deputy Nazir Ahmad, Muhammad Husain Azad, Maulana Altaf Husain Hali, and Allama Shibli, besides Syed Ahmad Khan himself, greatly enriched Urdu prose producing their masterpieces in the latter part of the century.
During the initial period of British rule the Fort William College, Calcutta, gave a new look and form to the Urdu prose, and John Gilchrist wrote its first formal Grammar. But as soon as the British Colonial grip grew tight it played with the Hindu sentiments to raise the claim of Hindi written in the Deonagri script against urdu. The policy was cleverly carried to the point where it was identified with the revival and growth of the Hindu culture: and thus whatever official support it received, in the beginning, was henceforward withdrawn.
But in spite of this setback, Urdu flourished as one of the most important languages without any official patronage. Both the Hindus and the Muslims owned and developed it, but when the Hindu's warlike tendencies increased, they started demolishing all the symbols of unity developed before the advent of the British rule and so the Urdu suffered the harshest propaganda of the Hindu press. But it survived and served the cause of Muslim revivalism faithfully, the role it deserved, and the role it successfully played.
In the present day, Urdu has two-told functions to perform in Pakistan. It has to provide for the cultural, educational, and intellectual needs of a technologically oriented developing society; and has to forge the unity of purpose among the various sections of the society as a language of communication, coordination, and administration. The Government of Pakistan is now contemplating taking practical steps to make it a forceful medium of national integration and this task can well be performed by a language that is a by-product of mutual contracts and understandings.
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