Not only the ‘subjects’ of J&K even Urdu too has suffered due to divisive notes Part-I
By Daya Sagar
J&K Legislative Council on 13th June unanimously adopted a resolution asking for filling up the posts of Tehsildar in Revenue department with only Urdu knowing candidates. Speaking on the private member’s resolution moved by Congress MLC Naresh Gupta J&K Revenue Minister Syed Basharat Bukhari is reported as having said that government was planning to make the knowledge of Urdu compulsory for Tehsildars and Naib Tehsildars as government is facing problems in comprehending and maintaining the revenue records. Another Congress MLC is reported to have said that only Urdu knowing people should be considered for new recruitment of Naib Tehsildar posts. Urdu is the official language of J&K but work in Urdu RDU is not done by higher officers and a large population of J&K (particularly that of Jammu region) does not voluntarily read Urdu as a language in schools. At occasions objections have been raised against use of Urdu for police, judicial and revenue records.
No meaningful efforts have been done to improve the effectiveness in the use of Urdu that could have been done by undoing the wrong concepts about the ‘religion’ and origin of Urdu as a language and by making more and more people in J&K to read Urdu. People of J&K have been exploited all these years, particularly after independence, both on the religious and regional lines. Not only the ‘subjects’ of Jammu & Kashmir even Urdu as a language has suffered on such like divisive notes.
And it will not be an over statement to make that the result of the wrong treatment given to Urdu at the social and administrative levels has also added to mal administration, exploitation of the common people and even corrupt practices due to use of Urdu as official language (of course also Urdu terminology) for basic documentation in police stations, revenue recordings as well as judicial processes. Inspite of the common understanding that there is a large number of senior officers in J&K who cannot write and read Urdu , that so often people face difficulty in getting the copies of docs written in Urdu translated since even a Urdu knowing person is found finding it difficult to read the documents written in Urdu by some other person and that with such ground realities many are suffering undue harassments, no any remedial measures have been taken or could be taken since whenever questions were raised the same were pushed into religious / regional controversies.It was in 2015 that controversy flared up over the government prescribing Urdu language test/ knowledge for the Naib Tehsildar recruitments. The controversy was suppressed under the pressures of regional overtones. Earlier also such controversy cropped up as regards recruitment of patwaris since by prescribing URDU as condition for recruitment a large population of Jammu Region was put to disadvantage. The government should have taken such issues seriously since in addition to cultivating hurdles in administration such controversies if allowed to live are sure to divide people of J&K on communal lines due to lack of information about the origin of Urdu.
..continued
(Daya Sagar is a Sr Journalist and a social activist and can be reached [email protected].
