Urdu: Everything just 'official' about it

LUCKNOW: Though Urdu is second official language of Uttar Pradesh, it gets least official backing for its development and promotion.
The official apathy towards Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy, the premier institution for the development of this language in the state, is suffice to prove the point.
For the last two years all the developmental activities have come to a halt as the Academy has no executive body which is authorised to take policy decisions.After Shahidullah Khan, who had resigned in August 2002, Haji Mohd Azam Khan was appointed chairman.
Frustrated, he too resigned a fortnight ago and the Academy is being managed by its secretary. In the absence of executive body, the secretary is authorised to perform only day-to-day business.
The government gives an annual grant of Rs 60 lakh to the Academy, the bulk of which is spent on salaries of 51—strong staff. The Academy gives financial award annually on new Urdu titles.
Even this practice was stopped last year as in the absence of executive body, nobody is authorised to give awards. The Academy is not inviting new titles this year.
On March 28, 1999, on the occasion of Academy''s silver jubilee, the then chief minister Kalyan Singh in the presence of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had announced that Rs 25 lakh would be given to the Academy — 10 lakh for the library and 15 lakh as recurring amount.
He had also announced to institute two awards of two lakh each in the name of Mirza Ghalib and Firaq Gorakhpuri.
All his promises proved a hoax as the Academy has not got the amount till now despite different reminders sent to the government. Now Kalyan Singh is part of the coalition government. Let us hope he would honour his promises.
The decision to shift Academy into a new building in Gomtinagar was not well received by Urdu-knowing people. When it was in Qaiserbagh, it was near the Muslim population and people used to visit its reading room frequently.
From an average of 100 to 125 people that used to visit Academy library daily, the number has dropped to 10-15.
Like Academy, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad Committee is also a testimony of government''s apathy. Its chairman Hasan Nizami has also resigned in disgust and all its activities have come to a grinding halt in the absence of a executive body.
In January 1999, Prof Ralf Russell of Britain in an article had suggested that if government help was not forthcoming, non-governmental bodies should come forward and arrange learning of "Urdu through self-help".
He had given the example of Britain where people whose mother tongue was Urdu, desperately tried to protect their ethnic identity and formed many bodies for Urdu-learning. In India this is successfully done by madarsas where Urdu is taught compulsorily.
Some minority schools are also imparting Urdu education upto class VIII. But after that there is is no facility in Urdu medium. The state government made no efforts to translate books of different streams in Urdu.
Mulayam Singh Yadav had taken a pioneering step to appoint Urdu teachers and Urdu translators. All such teachers are now working as general teachers as no corresponding arrangement was made of Urdu teaching in government primary schools.
Similarly, the translators posted in different department had no work as applications in Urdu were not received. In order to save their job, they took up other assignments.
If the government is really serious to push Urdu forward, it should take more concrete steps than to take cosmetic decisions like all nameplates in Urdu also in the Vidhan Bhawan and secretariat.