Urdu in india -- rabab naqvi
ARTICLE: Urdu in India
By Rabab Naqvi
Others can derive inspiration from Ramendra Jakhu Sahil's determination to learn Urdu. His enthusiasm for learning the language is almost infectious. He started learning the Persian script at the IAS Academy in Mussourie after joining the Indian Administrative Services. He perfected his language skill and enhanced his vocabulary with the help of Urdu primers. To sharpen his sensibilities of the finer points of Urdu poetry, he sought advice of the Urdu poet, Dr Gopal Krishan Shafak, who he still reveres as his mentor and guru.
Ramendra Jakhu's efforts to learn Urdu give credibility to the suggestion made by internationally renowned scholar of Urdu, Ralph Russell, that if Urdu is not used in official transactions and it is not taught in schools in India then perhaps it could be saved through individual efforts by teaching it at home. The proponents of Urdu dismiss the suggestion as not a workable alternative. In Canada, the Greek immigrants have been able to hold on to their language and culture through individual and community efforts. Ralph Russell goes on to add that "the protagonists of Urdu seem to me all too often to call upon somebody else to do something instead of doing it themselves".
Learning a language requires concerted effort, especially when it is used only for literary purposes. Ramendra Jakhu Sahil took on the responsibility of learning Urdu upon himself. He was attracted to Urdu through its ghazals.
"When I was in Amritsar, I used to listen to Mehdi Hasan on Radio Lahore. With my interest in music and poetry, I became interested in ghazals," says Ramendra Jakhu Sahil. He goes on to add, "I first started writing ghazals in Hindi, but I soon realized that to write ghazals I had to learn Urdu."
Jakhu has a flair for poetry and music. He won the best poet and best singer award as a student at the Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar. In 1987, he published his first collection of Hindi poems, Shabad Sailab, followed by his second collection of poems, Mere Hisse Ki Ghazal in 2001. The same year he released the audio cassette, "Mauj-i-Sahil", an album of twelve of his chosen Urdu ghazals. His ghazals have been sung by famous Indian artists, Jagjit Singh, Rajkumar Rizvi and Roop Kumar Rathod. In "Mauj-i-Sahil", he sings and recites the ghazals himself. Set to music and rendered beautifully by him, the cassette contains an enjoyable selection of his ghazals. His first collection of Urdu poems is scheduled for publication this year.
Singer, actor, poet, and a senior bureaucrat in the Haryana Government, Ramendra Jakhu Sahil is a multi-talented person. If he is not busy with official work or spending a quiet evening at home with his wife, then he is off to a mushaira in some far away place. In between he also finds time to write Hindi kavita, Urdu ghazal, indulge in his love of music, singing and occasionally also acting.
No less a person than the well-known Urdu poet, Padamshri Bashir Badar, has described Ramendra Jakhu Sahil as an important addition to the three-hundred-year-old tradition of Urdu ghazal. Sahil has been praised by his peers particularly for his couplets:
Have you ever seen a
healer who
Inflicts a wound and
asks does it hurt
And
Lost among the crowd of gods
I lost sight of the real god
Sahil has been compared to the famous Hindi poet, Ashok Vajpayee. Some have called him 'a high-tech poet', 'a gifted poet of conscious' and 'a post-modernist poet'. Others have traced the influence of Mir Taqi Mir and Firaq Gorakhpuri on his poetry. A versatile man, Sahil is also a versatile ghazal writer. He is a romantic and a passionate poet who can also be a down-to-earth realist.
The romantic in him glorifies trust in human relation-ship:
Do not look for faults in a friend
Accepting in parts is not
friendship
The realist in him reflects on the ways of the world.
If one looks for fairness in politics
Know that he looks for softness in thorns
And
There are no buyers of the truth
Lies have overwhelmed the trade
And
We have no right over life
The state surrounds us all
Sahil's style is uncomplicated. He writes without getting lost in technicalities. He captures the pleasures and woes of life and expresses them in simple language. His childhood friend, Aziz Parihar, has described him as 'the poet of the spoken word'. Sahil has been quoted as saying that "My lexicon has no place for complicated vocabulary for which the reader has to lug a dictionary."
Sahil sees a close relationship between Urdu ghazals and music. According to him gaeyki is the other side of ghazal. Through his unpretentious style of writing and his melodious voice, he hopes to reach the young, the uninitiated and those who have some inclination for shero shaeri, but have neither the time nor the knowledge. He is a popular attraction at mushairas, and he has travelled to Dubai, Qatar and Lahore for Indo-Pakistan mushairas.
Ramendra Jakhu was born in India after partition. His family came to Nakodar from Bahawalpur. The language spoken at home contained more Urdu than Hindi words. As a young man he heard Urdu words at official functions because the Hindi translation had not been completed. In those days, prime minister was wazir-i-azam not pardhan mantri.
Jakhu regrets that after partition, Urdu has been wrongly identified as the language of Muslims in India. "A language is free of cast and creed. Besides, not more than 25 per cent of Indian Muslims speak Urdu," he says.
The number of people who can read and write Urdu in the Persian script in India is decreasing. Many Indian Urdu writers have proposed changing over to the Devanagari script. Sahil is optimistic that Urdu will survive in India in the Persian script because of its rich literature and cultural tradition.
Keenly interested in culture, he had an open air theatre, Rangshala, built in Ambala and he is the founding director of the prestigious cultural organization, Indradhanush, in Chandigarh. He is the driving force behind the organization which has arranged many functions with eminent Indian and Pakistani artists. Under the aegis of Indradhanush, Mehdi Hasan, Ghulam Ali, Munni Begum and Tahira Syed have been invited to India from Pakistan to perform at musical concerts.
However engrossed he may be in his literary and cultural pursuits, or occupied with his work - he holds two positions, Managing Director Confed Haryana and Secretary Haryana Urdu Academy - he has not forgotten to attend to the needs of the less fortunate. When he was DC in Ambala, he had 622 girls and boys married in a mass marriage ceremony. Local newspapers called him the messiah.
Jakhu is happily married to Shakuntala, who is also a senior bureaucrat.
English translation of verses by Aquila Ismail.
By Rabab Naqvi
Others can derive inspiration from Ramendra Jakhu Sahil's determination to learn Urdu. His enthusiasm for learning the language is almost infectious. He started learning the Persian script at the IAS Academy in Mussourie after joining the Indian Administrative Services. He perfected his language skill and enhanced his vocabulary with the help of Urdu primers. To sharpen his sensibilities of the finer points of Urdu poetry, he sought advice of the Urdu poet, Dr Gopal Krishan Shafak, who he still reveres as his mentor and guru.
Ramendra Jakhu's efforts to learn Urdu give credibility to the suggestion made by internationally renowned scholar of Urdu, Ralph Russell, that if Urdu is not used in official transactions and it is not taught in schools in India then perhaps it could be saved through individual efforts by teaching it at home. The proponents of Urdu dismiss the suggestion as not a workable alternative. In Canada, the Greek immigrants have been able to hold on to their language and culture through individual and community efforts. Ralph Russell goes on to add that "the protagonists of Urdu seem to me all too often to call upon somebody else to do something instead of doing it themselves".
Learning a language requires concerted effort, especially when it is used only for literary purposes. Ramendra Jakhu Sahil took on the responsibility of learning Urdu upon himself. He was attracted to Urdu through its ghazals.
"When I was in Amritsar, I used to listen to Mehdi Hasan on Radio Lahore. With my interest in music and poetry, I became interested in ghazals," says Ramendra Jakhu Sahil. He goes on to add, "I first started writing ghazals in Hindi, but I soon realized that to write ghazals I had to learn Urdu."
Jakhu has a flair for poetry and music. He won the best poet and best singer award as a student at the Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar. In 1987, he published his first collection of Hindi poems, Shabad Sailab, followed by his second collection of poems, Mere Hisse Ki Ghazal in 2001. The same year he released the audio cassette, "Mauj-i-Sahil", an album of twelve of his chosen Urdu ghazals. His ghazals have been sung by famous Indian artists, Jagjit Singh, Rajkumar Rizvi and Roop Kumar Rathod. In "Mauj-i-Sahil", he sings and recites the ghazals himself. Set to music and rendered beautifully by him, the cassette contains an enjoyable selection of his ghazals. His first collection of Urdu poems is scheduled for publication this year.
Singer, actor, poet, and a senior bureaucrat in the Haryana Government, Ramendra Jakhu Sahil is a multi-talented person. If he is not busy with official work or spending a quiet evening at home with his wife, then he is off to a mushaira in some far away place. In between he also finds time to write Hindi kavita, Urdu ghazal, indulge in his love of music, singing and occasionally also acting.
No less a person than the well-known Urdu poet, Padamshri Bashir Badar, has described Ramendra Jakhu Sahil as an important addition to the three-hundred-year-old tradition of Urdu ghazal. Sahil has been praised by his peers particularly for his couplets:
Have you ever seen a
healer who
Inflicts a wound and
asks does it hurt
And
Lost among the crowd of gods
I lost sight of the real god
Sahil has been compared to the famous Hindi poet, Ashok Vajpayee. Some have called him 'a high-tech poet', 'a gifted poet of conscious' and 'a post-modernist poet'. Others have traced the influence of Mir Taqi Mir and Firaq Gorakhpuri on his poetry. A versatile man, Sahil is also a versatile ghazal writer. He is a romantic and a passionate poet who can also be a down-to-earth realist.
The romantic in him glorifies trust in human relation-ship:
Do not look for faults in a friend
Accepting in parts is not
friendship
The realist in him reflects on the ways of the world.
If one looks for fairness in politics
Know that he looks for softness in thorns
And
There are no buyers of the truth
Lies have overwhelmed the trade
And
We have no right over life
The state surrounds us all
Sahil's style is uncomplicated. He writes without getting lost in technicalities. He captures the pleasures and woes of life and expresses them in simple language. His childhood friend, Aziz Parihar, has described him as 'the poet of the spoken word'. Sahil has been quoted as saying that "My lexicon has no place for complicated vocabulary for which the reader has to lug a dictionary."
Sahil sees a close relationship between Urdu ghazals and music. According to him gaeyki is the other side of ghazal. Through his unpretentious style of writing and his melodious voice, he hopes to reach the young, the uninitiated and those who have some inclination for shero shaeri, but have neither the time nor the knowledge. He is a popular attraction at mushairas, and he has travelled to Dubai, Qatar and Lahore for Indo-Pakistan mushairas.
Ramendra Jakhu was born in India after partition. His family came to Nakodar from Bahawalpur. The language spoken at home contained more Urdu than Hindi words. As a young man he heard Urdu words at official functions because the Hindi translation had not been completed. In those days, prime minister was wazir-i-azam not pardhan mantri.
Jakhu regrets that after partition, Urdu has been wrongly identified as the language of Muslims in India. "A language is free of cast and creed. Besides, not more than 25 per cent of Indian Muslims speak Urdu," he says.
The number of people who can read and write Urdu in the Persian script in India is decreasing. Many Indian Urdu writers have proposed changing over to the Devanagari script. Sahil is optimistic that Urdu will survive in India in the Persian script because of its rich literature and cultural tradition.
Keenly interested in culture, he had an open air theatre, Rangshala, built in Ambala and he is the founding director of the prestigious cultural organization, Indradhanush, in Chandigarh. He is the driving force behind the organization which has arranged many functions with eminent Indian and Pakistani artists. Under the aegis of Indradhanush, Mehdi Hasan, Ghulam Ali, Munni Begum and Tahira Syed have been invited to India from Pakistan to perform at musical concerts.
However engrossed he may be in his literary and cultural pursuits, or occupied with his work - he holds two positions, Managing Director Confed Haryana and Secretary Haryana Urdu Academy - he has not forgotten to attend to the needs of the less fortunate. When he was DC in Ambala, he had 622 girls and boys married in a mass marriage ceremony. Local newspapers called him the messiah.
Jakhu is happily married to Shakuntala, who is also a senior bureaucrat.
English translation of verses by Aquila Ismail.
posted by temporal at 11/01/2005
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