Unfortunate that Hindi-Urdu got linked to religion: Irfan Habib

Noting that religion had nothing to do with Urdu and Hindi in the past, historian Irfan Habib said today that it is difficult to teach children three languages at the same time.
"Urdu and Hindi got linked to religion when nothing of that sorts happened with Persian and Sanskrit. Christopher King did a survey which tells that in 1879 the circulation of Urdu newspapers were eight times than those of Hindi papers in India
"This tells that everyone... Hindu, Muslim or Punjabi were well versed in Urdu. This proves the fact that religion had got nothing to do with it then," Habib said while speaking in a session at the 'Jashn-e-Rekhta' festival.

On the question whether the Urdu language is dying a "slow death", Habib said the problem is that "you can't force a child to learn three languages."
"Hindi is important because it is our national language. English is important, because otherwise no one in India will offer you a job. Now here you can't ask your child to learn or write another language," said Habib.
He also pointed out a unique similarity that "unites" Hindi and Urdu.

"Both in Hindi and Urdu we give genders to each and every noun. We have to make everything either muzakar (masculine) or mo'annas (feminine).

"Because of this my pen becomes a muzakar and this table is a mo'annas. It is funny, because many of such words we use are Persian but they never use it like this. I guess this makes us more cultured," he quipped.
Habib, however, said that more than deliberating on language, one should be more concerned about content as intermixing of languages is bound to happen.
"A 100 year old important book in English says prime importance while saying something should be given to 'shorter words' and least importance should be given to the 'language' from where it is coming from.

"So the sense is important. The content is important. What counts is that your words are far reaching," he said.
Habib shared anecdotes about how Urdu is misused in the name of promoting the language.
"An institute in Uttar Pradesh wanted to hire some teachers, knowing that they can't advertise for Muslim recruitment for the post because Supreme Court will strike down; they advertised saying Urdu recruitment.
"Now none of these recruited teachers have any knowledge about Urdu. Also, recently I saw a person giving lecture on minority issues and his fingers were moving left to right on paper. This is the reality," he said.