Supreme Court on the Use of Urdu on the Signboard

Prelims (GS I) – History and Culture of India.

Mains (GS I) – Indian heritage and culture.

Why in news?

The Supreme Court recently upheld the use of Urdu on a municipal signboard in Maharashtra’s Akola district, declaring that language should unite, not divide.

• Origin of Urdu – Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language emerged around the 12^th century in Northern India.
• Constitutional Status – In India, it is an 8^th Schedule language and it has been adopted as the second official language by several states.

Article 345 of the Constitution of India states that a state's legislature can adopt one or more languages or Hindi as the official language of the state.

Supreme court Judgement

• The Supreme Court described Urdu as the finest specimen of Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb, or the Hindustani Tehzeeb.

• Similarities with Hindi – Supreme court noted that Hindi and Urdu were fundamentally one language with similarities in syntax, grammar and phonology.

The main difference is that Urdu is mainly written in Nastaliq script and Hindi in Devanagari script.

• Exchange of vocabularies – The word Hindi itself comes from the Persian word Hindavi.
• Urdu also has many words borrowed from other Indian languages, including Sanskrit.
• Hindi-Urdu controversy – The separation of Hindi and Urdu was partly due to moralist on both sides where Hindi became more Sanskritised and Urdu more Persian.
• Religious polarization – The framing of Hindi is the language of the Hindus and Urdu of the Muslims undermines the principles of unity in diversity and universal brotherhood.
• Sc emphasized that A language is only a means of communication and does not represent a religion.
• Language is the yardstick to measure the civilizational march of a community and its people.

Reference

The Hindu| Supreme Court on the Use of Urdu on the Signboard