Why Do All Muslims in Tamil Nadu Speak Urdu?
Yesterday I was reading my motorcycle its last rites at the mechanic shop a couple hundred meters from my front door. For the last year I've had trouble talking to the man because of an intractable language barrier. But recently things have begun to change. He hired a Muslim assistant from nearby who speaks urdu and since then I've been able to explain exactly how dilapidated by bike really is.
When I asked the mechanic why he spoke Urdu he looked at me as if I had just asked the stupidest question he had ever heard and said "Mai Musalmaan hoon", as if that explained everything.
So call me crazy, but since when did being a Muslim imply that you definitely know Urdu? I've traveled all around India and found that most Muslims do speak it--even in some rural outposts in the middle of nowhere--but it doesn't really make sense to me. Most of these people have never traveled North and must only speak Urdu with their family. Many of their families have lived in Tamil Nadu for dozens of generations. So how did Urdu spread so widely down here?
I'm not complaining. The fact that most Muslims understand Urdu is a huge boon to me and allows me to travel all over the country with the understanding that at least I will be able to speak to someone in every village and t own. I just would like to know how it happened. Was it Mughal influence? Were there huge migrations of Muslims from the North to south? Were there mass conversions/language lessons? I refuse to believe that every muslim in south india is a recent north Indian transplant, and yet I can't understand how the whole community can keep the language intact over the generations.
Labels: Urdu
posted by Scott Carney @ 9:30 AM
11 comments
11 Comments:
Good question. Though in Karnataka and Kerala they also speak the local lingo. As also in Chennai. But I speak from limited experience.
What about Bengal? That's an answer I'd like to find.
Perhaps you would like to read
http://indianmuslims.in/urdu-and-unity/
and http://wishsubmission.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/urdu-and-unity/
Most muslims in Tamil Nadu are 'labbai' muslims, Hindu converts from coastal areas of Tamil Nadu who've been converted by Arab or Muslim traders over the centuries. A lot of them don't speak Urdu.
The others are descendants of the Mughals or the Iranian muslims who ruled over North India and the Deccan and moved south.
i think that the mechanic you met is an exception to the rule. generally muslims in TN speak Tamil..
Urdu was and is in a way the lingua franca in the country. With fauj (army) that travelled across the country and the camps, the language was born across the country as a result of interaction between varied groups of people.
People feel that South India is not a homeland for Urdu, which is a wrong perception. In fact, the regions under the rule of Nizam and Tipu Sultan and the other Muslim states of South India, Urdu flourished.
Even the southern most tip of Tamil Nadu viz. Vaniambadi, Arcot etc Urdu exists in a purer form than in parts of North India.
The reason is that in North, Urdu was wiped out and Urdu medium schools were overnight killed in 1949 in UP, and due to the closeness with Hindi, the langauge and its speakers didn't pay attention to its purity. However, in South Indian states where the dominant language is not Hindi but other regional languages, the Muslims tried extra hard to preserve their culture and thus Urdu is alive in Maharashtra, Karnataka, AP and TN than in say UP. Maharashtra has 4000 Urdu schools and UP has not even 4!
"indscribe"
vaniambadi and arcot are the northernmost part of tamil nadu... not southernmost.... thats as far as the mughals went...
As someone posted previously, a large population of muslims(>70-80%) in Tamil Nadu are Tamil muslims...
this is not the fact that most of the muslims speak urdu. there is a lingustic distinction that the muslims who have been living in the northern part of tamil nadu are speaking urdu. and there is a scant population which speaks urdu in other part of tamil nadu. it is believed that all tamilians are speaking only tamil...it is untrue..the tamil community is a composition of multiple linguistic groups which is living with cultural diversirty.
First of All, Urdu is not an alien language, as it is made to believe by Sangh pariwars. Hindi and Urdu are sister languages born from the mix of Parsi, Prakrit (language spoken over majority of north India around 1500 AD) and Sanskrit. Basically Urdu and Hindi are same except for alphabets, Urdu uses alphabets borrowed from Parsi while Hindi from Prakrit and Sanskrit.
Moghuls (probably after Akbar) spoke Urdu and made it as Royal language and language of courts. As all other muslim rulers like nawabs, nizams, sultans came from Moghul background, they also spoke Urdu. Thus majority of Muslims in India speak Urdu now. A Hindi speaking Hindu convert to Islam can easily become Urdu speaking Muslim. This explains Muslims living even in remote villages speak Urdu.
However, this is not true in states where Hindi is not spoken language. And also Moghuls are not the first muslims in India. Southern states especially Kerala and Tamil Nadu were exposed to Muslim traders long before Muslim invasion in north. That is why many of tamil and Keral muslims know only tamil or Malayalam.
But as muslim rulers who spoke Urdu spread as far as Tamil nadu, you can find Urdu speaking muslims settled here centuries back.
Hope that you got the right answer!
If all the Muslims are suppose to speak Urdu, then Brahmans should speak in Sanskrit, and all the Christians should speak Romanian as the Christ is born in Rome!
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