Urdu, a language born and brought up exclusively in India, was willfully guillotined by the Congress rulers, most of whom were motivated by the Hindu high Caste imagery. These leaders who ruled India after Independence were committed to imposing Sankritized Hindi as the national language and worked overtime to cleanse India of Urdu. One can identify a deeply entrenched anti-Urdu vision from the attitudes of Congress leaders like Lala Lajpat Rai, who, though not well-conversant with the Hindi varnmala or alphabets, was one of the most prominent votaries of the slogan, ”Hindi-Hindu-Hindusthan.”
We can also see examples from the entertainment sector. Films, with mainly Urdu dialogues and songs, were given censor board clearance as Hindi films. The lobby, inimical to Urdu, even suggested changing Urdu script from Nastaʿlīq script to Devanagari. There were, of course, exceptions like MK Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru who resisted such attempts. Gandhi, conscious of the inimical attitude of the Congress leaders towards Urdu, gave it a new nomenclature – Hindustani. It was an attempt to further ‘Indianise’ an already Indian language. With this objective, he established the Hindustani Academy at Allahabad (now Prayagraj), which still exists in a pathetic condition.
Those who declare Urdu as an ‘anti-national language,’ due to hatred for India’s composite character, remain blind to the great role Urdu literature played in the freedom struggle. After the first war for Indian Independence in 1857, more than 100 leading Urdu journalists, poets, authors, and calligraphers, were hanged to death in Delhi alone.
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