Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, where it is also an official language alongside English. In India, Urdu is an Eighth Schedule language whose status and cultural heritage is recognized by the Constitution of India; it also has an official status in several Indian states. In Nepal, Urdu is a registered regional dialect.
Hindustani is the lingua franca of Northern and Central India and Pakistan. Hindustani is a pluricentric language with two standard registers, known as Hindi and Urdu. Thus, the language is sometimes called Hindi–Urdu. Despite these standard registers, colloquial speech in Hindustani often exists on a spectrum between these standards.
Sir Syed Ahmad KhanKCSI was an Indian Muslim reformer, philosopher, and educationist in nineteenth-century British India. Though initially espousing Hindu-Muslim unity, he became the pioneer of Muslim nationalism in India and is widely credited as the father of the two-nation theory, which formed the basis of the Pakistan movement. Born into a family with strong debts to the Mughal court, Ahmad studied the Quran and Sciences within the court. He was awarded an honorary LLD from the University of Edinburgh in 1889.
Urdu poetry is a tradition of poetry and has many different forms. Today, it is an important part of the cultures of South Asia. According to Naseer Turabi there are five major poets of Urdu which are Mir Taqi Mir (d.1810), Mirza Ghalib, Mir Anees, Allama Iqbal and Josh Malihabadi (d.1982). The language of Urdu reached its pinnacle under the British Raj, and it received official status. All famous writers of Urdu language including Ghalib and Iqbal were given British scholarships. Following the Partition of India in 1947, it found major poets and scholars were divided along the nationalistic lines. However, Urdu poetry is cherished in both the nations. Both the Muslims and Hindus from across the border continue the tradition.
Kauravi, also known as Khaṛībolī is a set of Western Hindi varieties of Shauraseni Prakrit mainly spoken in Northwestern Uttar Pradesh.
Urdu literature is literature in the Urdu language. While it tends to be dominated by poetry, especially the verse forms of the ghazal غزل and nazm نظم, it has expanded into other styles of writing, including that of the short story, or afsana افسانہ. Urdu literature is mostly popular in Pakistan, where Urdu is the national language and India, where it is a recognized language. It is also widely understood in Afghanistan and has a moderate amount of popularity in Bangladesh.
The Bengali language movement was a political movement in former East Bengal advocating the recognition of the Bengali language as an official language of the then-Dominion of Pakistan in order to allow its use in government affairs, the continuation of its use as a medium of education, its use in media, currency and stamps, and to maintain its writing in the Bengali script.
Hindustani is one of the predominant languages of South Asia, with federal status in India and Pakistan in its standardized forms of Hindi and Urdu. It is widely spoken and understood as a second language in Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Persian Gulf and as such is considered a lingua franca in the Indian subcontinent. It is also one of the most widely spoken languages in the world by total number of speakers. It developed in north India, principally during the Mughal Empire, when the Persian language exerted a strong influence on the Western Hindi languages of central India; this contact between the Hindu and Muslim cultures resulted in the core Indo-Aryan vocabulary of the Indian dialect of Hindi spoken in Delhi, whose earliest form is known as Old Hindi, being enriched with Persian loanwords. Rekhta, or "mixed" speech, which came to be known as Hindustani, Hindi, Hindavi, and Urdu, also locally known as Lashkari or Lashkari Zaban in long form, was thus created. This form was elevated to the status of a literary language, and after the partition of colonial India and independence this collection of dialects became the basis for modern standard Hindi and Urdu. Although these official languages are distinct registers with regards to their formal aspects, such as modern technical vocabulary, they continue to be all but indistinguishable in their vernacular form.
Mirza Beg Asadullah Khan also known as Mirza Ghalib was an Urdu and Persian poet of the 19th century Mughal and British era in the Indian Subcontinent.
Mohammad Ajmal Khan, better known as Hakim Ajmal Khan, was a physician in Delhi, India, and one of the founders of the Jamia Millia Islamia University. He also founded another institution, Ayurvedic and Unani Tibbia College, better known as Tibbia College, situated in Karol Bagh, Delhi. He was the only muslim to chair a session of the Hindu Mahasabha. He became the university's first chancellor in 1920 and remained in office until his death in 1927.
Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Munir Nawaz Jang, also known as Syed Mehdi Ali, was an Indian Muslim politician. He was a close friend of Syed Ahmed Khan, was involved in the Aligarh Movement and was one of the founders of the All India Muslim League in 1906.
The Hindi–Urdu controversy arose in 19th century colonial India out of the debate over whether the Hindi or Urdu language should be chosen as a national language.
The Scientific Society of Aligarh was a literary society founded by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan at Aligarh. The main objectives of the society were to translate Western works on arts and science into vernacular languages and promote western education among the masses.
The Urdu movement was a socio-political movement aimed at making Urdu the universal language and symbol of the cultural and political identity of the Muslim communities of the Indian subcontinent during the British Raj. The movement began with the fall of the Mughal Empire in the mid-19th century, fuelled by the Aligarh movement of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. It strongly influenced the All India Muslim League and the Pakistan movement.
Old Hindi was the earliest stage of the Delhi dialect (Khariboli) of the Hindustani language, and so the ancestor of Modern Hindi and Modern Urdu. It developed from Shauraseni Prakrit and was spoken by the peoples of the Hindi Belt, especially around Delhi, in roughly the 13th–15th centuries. It is attested in only a handful of works of literature, including some works by the poet Amir Khusrau, verses by the poet-saint Namdev, and some verses by the Sufi saint Baba Farid in the Adi Granth. The works of Kabir also may be included, as they use a Khariboli-like dialect. Old Hindi was originally written in Devanagari and later in the Perso-Arabic script as well.
Islam in Uttar Pradesh is the second largest religion in the state with 38,483,967 adherents in 2011, forming 19.26% of the total population. Muslims of Uttar Pradesh have also been stereotypically referred to as Indian Musalman. They do not form a unified ethnic community, but are differentiated by sectarian and Baradari divisions, as well as by language and geography. Nevertheless, the community shares some unifying cultural factors. Uttar Pradesh has more Muslims than any other Muslim-majority countries in the world except Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Egypt, Iran and Turkey.
Tehzeeb-ul-Ikhlaq is a journal established by the Muslim reformer Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in 1871. The journal published alternative Muslim perspectives, written in plain language. It gave voice to the publisher's religious, social, and reforming opinions, and is credited with establishing him as one of the fathers of Urdu fiction. The same journal was restarted by Syed Hamid Vice-chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University in 1981; and since then it is being published regularly. There is now a separate office of Tehzeeb-ul-Ikhlaq.
The Aligarh Movement was the push to establish a modern system of Western–style scientific education for the Muslim population of British India, during the later decades of the 19th century. The movement's name derives from the fact that its core and origins lay in the city of Aligarh in Northern India and, in particular, with the foundation of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in 1875. The founder of the oriental college, and the other educational institutions that developed from it, was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. He became the leading light of the wider Aligarh Movement.
Native speakers of Urdu are spread across South Asia. The vast majority of them are Muslims of the Hindi–Urdu Belt of northern India, followed by the Deccani people of the Deccan plateau in south-central India and the Muhajir people of Pakistan. The historical centres of Urdu speakers include Delhi and Lucknow, as well as the Deccan, and more recently, Karachi.
The Simla Deputation was a gathering of 35 prominent Indian Muslim leaders led by the Aga Khan III at the Viceregal Lodge in Simla in October 1906. The deputation aimed to convince Lord Minto, then Viceroy of india, to grant Muslims greater representation in politics.
