It also borrowed heavily from Persian, Turkish and Arabic languages. Linguists and historians say Urdu and Hindi originally developed from Khadi Boli, a dialect of the Delhi region, and Prakrit. The Urdu language was born in northern India during the Mughal rule.
A signboard directing people to Urdu Bazar in the old quarters of Delhi Urdu was born in India “Hindutva” refers to a century-old Hindu supremacist movement which seeks to convert India into an ethnic Hindu state. And invisibilising Urdu is part of the larger project of marginalising the Muslim community, in fact, physically eliminating it,” Nivedita Menon, professor at the Centre for Political Studies at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Al Jazeera. “The Hindutva project sees Urdu as a ‘Muslim’ language. Soon, other members of the BJP and other Hindu nationalist groups started attacking FabIndia on social media, accusing the brand of “hurting” the religious sentiments of Hindus. Surya said the company “must face economic costs for such deliberate misadventures”. It has hundreds of showrooms across the vast country and abroad. When 2021 census takes place, my fear is that many speakers of Urdu might simply report Hindi as their mother tongue.įabIndia is a household name in India and sells clothes, furniture, home furnishings and food items. “This deliberate attempt of Abrahamisation of Hindu festivals, depicting models without traditional Hindu attires, must be called out.” “Deepavali is not Jashn-e-Riwaaz,” 30-year-old Tejasvi Surya posted on Twitter, calling Diwali by its more traditional name. The title translated to “A Celebration of Tradition”.īut a young parliamentarian belonging to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who often makes headlines for his Islamophobic remarks, was not happy. “Jashn” in Urdu means a celebration while “Riwaaz”, which is actually “Riwaaj”, means tradition.
The text at the top read: “Jashn-e-Rivaaz”. The company, FabIndia, issued an advertisement for Diwali – a significant Hindu festival that falls next month – showcasing its latest collection of clothes. New Delhi, India – Last week, Hindu right-wing forces in India forced a leading firm to withdraw its festive season advertisement after it featured a couple of words from the Urdu language, which in the popular imagination in the country is a “Muslim language”.