The Supreme Court of India recently maintained the Urdu language on the signboard of the Maharashtra Municipal Council Building, a major ruling that underlined the linguistic and cultural diversity of the country.
The judge composed of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and K Vinod Chandran firmly said that “language is culture” and should not be the reason for the division, emphasizing Urdu as “the best specimen for Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb or Hindustani Tehzeeb”.
The Supreme Court of India rejected a petition filed by a former MP that questioned the use of Urdu on the signboard of the Pat Municipal Council Building in Akola district of Maharashtra, Indian Express Report.
The bench refused to interfere with the previous ruling of the Mumbai High Court that the Maharashtra Local Authority (Official Language) Act or any other existing law prohibited the use of Urdu.
Dhulia made a judgment on the bench, showing that the court’s perception of Urdu and language generally urged a reassessment of potential bias.
SC asserted: “Our misunderstandings, even our prejudice against one language, must be brave and true to reality, and this is the great diversity of our country: our strength will never be our weakness. Let us make friends with every language in Urdu.”
The court directly resolved the “misunderstanding of Urdu’s unfamiliarity with India” and firmly pointed out that “it is a language born on this land.”
Dhulia elaborates: “Language is not religion. Language does not even represent religion. Language belongs to a community, a region, a people; not religion.”
The court emphasized that the main function of language is a kind of communication, noting that: “Urdu is the earliest and main purpose of language will always be maintained until it becomes a learning tool… The purpose of using Urdu here is merely communication.
“What the municipal council wants to do is communicate effectively. This is the main purpose of the Mumbai High Court emphasizes a language.”
multilingual
The SC in India continued to emphasize the country’s huge linguistic diversity and recorded 122 major languages and 234 native languages with 2001 census data, while Urdu is the sixth spoken language spoken in most parts of India.
The 2011 census further increased the number of native languages to 270 (considering people with 10,000 spokespersons), which suggests that the actual number could be thousands.
The court addressed the historical context, noting that “the prejudice against Urdu originated from the misunderstanding of Urdu’s strangeness to India,” clarified that, like Marathi and Hindi, Urdu is an Indian-Arri developed in India, due to the need for intercultural exchange.
The Jews said, “For centuries it has achieved…greater refinement and has become the preferred language of choice for many famous poets.”
The court also pointed out the general influence of Urdu in everyday Hindi and even in Indian law overviews and quoted examples such as “.Adalat“ (Court),”Halafa“(Affidavit) and”pea“(appeared in court), and terms used in the Supreme Court, such as”vakalatnama” (Part 1 Authorization Document).
It also noted that some Indian states and trade union territories have adopted Urdu as the second official language.
It says: “When we criticize Urdu, we also criticize Hindi in some way because according to linguists and literary scholars, Urdu and Hindi are not two languages, but one language.”
The court said: “Under Article 343 of the Constitution, Hindi is the official language, and the use of English can be used for official purposes for 15 years.
“But that doesn’t mean that Hindustan and Urdu are extinct. It’s never the intention of the constitutional makers.”
“Even today, the language used by ordinary people in the country is full of Urdu language, even if people don’t know it.”
Ultimately, the judge of SC concluded that using Urdu with the official language (MARATHI) is an effective communication problem for municipal councils designed to serve their local communities and should not face objections if a portion of the population is familiar with it.
“Language is a medium for exchanging ideas, allowing people to have a wide variety of perspectives and beliefs more intimately, which should not be the cause of their division,” the bench said.
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