[lg policy] India: ‘Urdu is the language of both poetry & revolution’

[Harold Schiffman]

‘Urdu is the language of both poetry & revolution’
Syed Mohammed, TNN | Feb 17, 2012, 04.52AM IST


HYDERABAD: Only a few days after he had first set foot in the lecture
hall of his college in June 1979 did the young S A Shukoor realise
that there were only five Muslim students in a class of 40. This set
off a controlled thought process of questioning and contemplation
culminating in a decision to help minorities, regardless of ethnicity
and religious denomination. Thirty three years later professor S A
Shukoor finds himself holding important positions on boards and
committees of various state run minority welfare organisations and
schemes. A man who wears many hats, he is now the director of the
Centre of Education Development of Minorities (CEDM), the executive
officer of AP State Haj Committee, head of the department of Urdu at
Nizam College and the general secretary of Idara-e-Adabiyat-e-Urdu.
With the condition of the minorities remaining largely unchanged,
Shukoor says his mission has just begun.

"I realised at a very young age that the minorities in the state were
socially and economically lagging behind," says Shukoor. "The root
cause of this backwardness among the lower and middle income groups of
the minorities wasn't restricted to Karimnagar district - where I hail
from - but was across India, and was and still is due to the lack of
education." He says that the lack of career guidance too is an acute
problem; the dropping out of students, an epidemic. With financial
crises gaining preponderance, parents are forced to pull their
children out of schools, forced to fend for their families.

While the government has initiated projects within the purview of the
CEDM for the improvement of participation and performance of students
from minority communities, student enrolment and performance peters
out after a while. Shukoor points out that the performance of Class X
beneficiaries of such schemes have indeed fared better than their
counterparts. "In the year 2011-12, there were 2,960 beneficiaries who
were given after-school coaching for Class X board exams. The pass
percentage was 75.54% as against the 69.14% of those who appeared
without being coached." However, pursuing education invariably takes
the backseat once they pass Class X examinations.

The participation of minorities in policy making bodies and
administration too is poor because only a handful of students from
minorities pass civil services examinations, says Shukoor. "If one
goes by statistics, only three bureaucrats are from the minority
community from the AP cadre and the rest are primarily North Indians,"
he says. Despite offering coaching for job seeking examinations such
as the civil services, Group 1,2 and 4, out of the 54,070
beneficiaries since 1994, only one student, Jeelani Basha, in 2009
managed to clear the civil services examinations and is now with the
Indian Revenue Services. "Preparation for the civils takes two years
and students bound by financial constraints think that appearing for
these exams is impractical. They prefer to live abroad to pursue
engineering or graduation followed by an MBA and are oblivious to the
plethora of opportunities the civil services give them. Immediate
financial gain is their only target," says Shukoor.

Most beneficiaries of these schemes are from Urdu medium schools and
suffer from an inferiority complex because they feel that the
connection of the language with employability has been severed, notes
Shukoor. "Every regional language lives in the fear of being
supplanted by English which has become the language of commerce," he
says. Despite this, Shukoor feels that there is no dearth of
opportunities for Urdu medium students in the country and abroad.
Pointing out the benefits of Urdu medium schools, Shukoor says that
learning becomes easier because the instruction given is easier to
comprehend. Describing Urdu not only as the ornate language of poetry
but also of revolution, he says, "Urdu electronic and print media is
very strong not just in the sub-continent but across the world. The
language is spoken in more than 200 hundred countries and there are a
large number of students who appear for the mahir, amil and fazil
examinations conducted by the Idara-e-Adbiyat-e-Urdu which is
committed to the promotion of the language since 1932.

India is on the road to become a superpower and it is time that the
minorities actively participate and be a part of country's
development, says Shukoor. "It is imperative on the minorities that
they look for employment in India than elsewhere," says an impassioned
Shukoor. "They will have a share in the country's development only if
its members stay in the mainstream and actively participate in policy
making."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Urdu-is-the-language-of-both-poetry-revolution/articleshow/11920336.cms

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