Focus on Urdu as HRD maps minority agenda

On HRD Minister Kapil Sibal’s agenda for 2011 is special roadmap for minorities. Experts will help the ministry chart out a Minority Agenda that will look at ways to ensure the restoration of the Urdu language, and it’ll help to create opportunities for Urdu speakers besides preservation of art and craft forms associated with the language and bring Urdu within the three-language formula popular in CBSE schools.

Therefore the agenda of the Annual General Meeting of National Council for promotion of Urdu language (NCPUL) is the new roadmap to empower the Urdu-speaking population. That meeting will be chaired by Sibal and meet on Wednesday.

Social worker Kamal Farooqi, Chairman CBSE, Vice Chancellor of Maulana Azad National Urdu University, P A Inamdar, DG Doordarshan and Chairman Commission for Scientific & Technical Terminology.

An official said in HRD ministry, “The idea is to reinforce those good technicians or experts need not have complete knowledge/mastery of English language but can also excel in the field while primarily speaking in Urdu. The aim is to focus on enhancing the capabilities and capacities of the Urdu-speaking population to enter these professions and we hope to do the same by developing equivalent technical terminology in the Urdu language”

Angare- An Urdu book

Karachi: Angare is different book of its time. It consists on ten stories by four writers including Rasheed Jahan, Ahmed Ali, Sajjad Zahir and Mehmood-uz-Zafar published in Lucknow in December 1932. That book was considered as, marked a major turning point in the history of Urdu literature.

The director of media and culture at Jamia Millia Islamia New Delhi, Rakshanda Jalil said this while talking to daily times, after a talk held during her visit. Angare was infact a declaration of war against existing political and social institution.

Rakshanda said about the book Angare was a unique and new thing of its time, which opposed such society in which Women were oppressed. At that time, it was perceived that the book opposed ‘Molviat’, however, the perception was not right, she added. She informed, the book was banned soon after its publication in 1933 on the pressure of religious segment.

Any book which may base on Urdu literature or any kind of literature that shouldn’t blame or raise political or Islamic issues.

Poet made to pay for anti-Modi remark

Allowing an anti-Narendra Modi remark to appear in an opinion piece carried in his poetry collection two years ago has brought the ire of higher-ups in Gujarat Urdu Sahitya Academy on Aqaal Shatir, a poet here. He has been asked to return the financial assistance that the Academy provided him for publishing the anthology.

his was the sentence that rubbed the Academy mandarins the wrong way: “Ho Narendra Modi ka ke iqtedar men aate hi us ne is riyasat se Urdu ka safaya hi kar diya, Modi ne sirf itne par he iktefa nahin kiya, balke 2002 men ek soche-samjhe mansoobe ke tehat poore Gujarat men firqawaranh fasadat aur haiveaniyat ka wo nanga khel khela ke poori insaniyat he sharmsar ho kar rah gaee. Har taraf loot mar, qatl o gharatgiri, ismat dari, aatish zani aur aqliyati nasl kushi jaisi sangeen wardaar karva kar oos ne poore mulk men khauf o harass paida kar diya tha”

The Academy had provided Rs 10,000 to bring out his Urdu poetry book Abhi Zinda Hoon Main. The Academy took exception to one sentence in the opinion piece written by Bhiwandi-based Raunaq Afroz and slapped a notice on Shatir asking to explain why he should not be asked to return the financial assistance, for “violating rules of acceptance”.