Justice for all

Justice for all

1985 12 December 8 Justice for all (52) Muawiyah, the son of Abu Sufyan, asked Dharar to describe ‘Ali. Part of Dhirar’s description went like this. “He was like any one of us. No powerful person could have his way with him in pursuit of falsehood, and no weak soul had cause to despair of being treated justly by him.”

Lost Opportunities

1985 12 December 8 Lost Opportunities (304) “There are thousands of Hindus whose mother tongue is Urdu and who can well be considered scholars in Urdu language. Pandit Moti Lal Nehru and Dr. Sir Tej Bahadur Sapro are amongst them.” This is a quotation from Mahatma Gandhi’s journal, Harijan of the 29th October, 1938.

An even earlier testament to the position of Urdu in India is the wedding card of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru whose superscription was couched in Urdu (1916). This can be seen in the Nehru section of the Allahabad Museum.

In the period leading up to the freeing of India from foreign rule, even the Europeans who came to India learned to speak Urdu fluently, because. for a variety of historical reasons, the Urdu-speaking community enjoyed an eminent position in the country.

But now the position has greatly changed and foreigners who wish to make close contacts with India now learn Hindi. A case in point is that of the daughter of former U.S. Ambassador to India, Dr. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. During the Festival of India organized in the U. S. A. this year, Miss Moynihan acted as one of the project coordinators. A photograph of her was published in the newspapers on June 8, 1985, sitting by the side of an Indian girl. It was pointedly mentioned in the caption that she was fluent in Hindi.

This is the sign of a new era in India and one which has been to the detriment of the Urdu-speaking section of the nation. Why is this now so? It is because its members failed to realize that a time would come when God-given opportunities, which all along had been theirs for the grasping, would be taken away from them forever. It is from this failure to seize and make the most of such opportunities that Urdu speakers are now suffering.