It seems that many South Indian Muslims are “Urdufying.” It’s interesting to reflect that if Partition hadn’t happened; the same thing might have happened to East Bengal.
The Muslims of India rallied under the banner of Islam, which was a catch-all term, but instead they could have easily made a linguistic argument for Urdu & Persianate culture.
Interesting graph, the middle part where kannada is the most spoken language seems to be where the lingyaat heartland is there.
Wonder if this is an instance of muslims in this region being interested in the lingayat and overall agrarian culture.
I am surprised that so many muslims in south karnataka speak Dakhini. Expected this for north karnataka.
I wonder how many of these muslims have migrated recently and how many have been here since before the british.
Coastal muslims are as expected.
Urdufication is a very real phenomenon. As Hindu identity consolidates so will Muslim identity.
But how many of these communities were dakhini or Urdu speaking in the first place?
Actually it’s the other way around. The wahhabization and subsequent coalescence of the IM to an Arab identity over an Indian one was the trigger for Hindu consolidation.
@xtm Perhaps Urdu follows institutional pathways? the most muslim parts of the subcontinent, almost as a rule don’t speak Urdu as a mother tongue, e.g. SIndh, Punjab, Bengal, Kashmir, Malabar. In order to become muslim majority, the dominant peasant castes needed to convert, and that was likely through some sufi/folk cultural transmission. The most Urdu places, natively, are the gangetic core and deccan, locuses of political power. This is why you see the coastal/interior Karnataka split. In fact, Urdu in its native spread is absent from any coastal region. Wherever Islam was introduced or sustained via Arab commercial interaction, the muslim community persists in identifying with the native language, whereas Urdu thrives where the Turkic military elites encamped.
Whats surprising, especially because this area is mostly covered by Koppal district, is that it was part of the princely state of Hyderabad, and hence had huge institutional patronage of Urdu, vastly more than any other region. The Kannada spoken in Gulbarga and other parts of it have a very high share of Persian diction in everyday speech, so Kannada persistence would be the inverse expectation for muslims there. My other observation of that area is that there are quite a few syncretic sufi / quasi-sufi shrines, like that of shri Changdev/Taj Baba. Perhaps some prominent sufi orders vernacularized themselves faster than they urdu-ised the population. This is also where a Lingayat Math recently ordained a muslim swamy. And more bizarrely, this is the home region of the deendar anjuman heterodox sect that was involved in some terror attacks perhaps 25 years ago. The founder of the sect, a local muslim in the early 20th century, had studied medicine at king edward’s in Lahore and came under the influence of Ahmediyyas. Later, he would innovate further and claim that the 12th century sharana Channabasaveshwara was a later prophet of Islam.
I had a feeling that mutt will be in this area.
Quite a stunning achievement all said and done. This place also seems to have resisted the urge to ‘purify’ islam, that is common place among subcontinental muslims much better than its surrounding areas.
My understanding is that pir worship and double identification was quite popular in deccan. Will be interesting to look into what is the state of it today.
//And more bizarrely, this is the home region of the deendar anjuman heterodox sect that was involved in some terror attacks perhaps 25 years ago. The founder of the sect, a local muslim in the early 20th century, had studied medicine at king edward’s in Lahore and came under the influence of Ahmediyyas. Later, he would innovate further and claim that the 12th century sharana Channabasaveshwara was a later prophet of Islam.//
Whoa!! Thank God this organization has been banned, it would be causing a lots of issues in this area today.
An interesting thing about Koppal district it seems it now home to one male tiger from either andhra or further north in karnataka.
Hope some females also wander to the dry deciduous forests in the area and overtime maybe elephants as well.
It will be great if the ecology of these areas returns to what it was barely a century ago.
+100
I vividly remember from childhood summer vacations to native villages where few local muslim families would enthusiastically participate in social aspects of Basavanna Jayanthi or Jatra for local village deity. Over the years that has dropped and Urdufication/Wahabification intensified.
Urdufication = Wahabification ?
in my parts of the woods, they go together. By wahabification I meant change in attire.
That’s probably true in everyone’s part of the woods. The pressure to wahhabize especially for women is a lot. Both in attire and in rigidity of belief. I personally hadn’t seen this two decades back. But the difference is no longer just visually stark, there’s a strong simmering undercurrent of “we are not like them”.
Very visible to anyone who has lived and travelled through Karnataka. Having spent almost half of my life there – head-to-toe cladding for women is now much more common not just in Bangalore but even in the Manipal-Mangalore-Udupi coastal area. You see this even in Kodagu-Chikmagaluru. I hear from my Coorg friends that the population of Mappilla migrants in to the region has increased significantly and so has their relative Wahabization. Anecdotally, having visited syncretic sites like Baba Budan Giri a couple of times over the last decade and half, veils are much more prevalent now. Even girls under 5 aren’t spared.
Yes true. Have seen it in parts of KA as well as in MH. Trend of covering young girls is just nuts. The Malays in SG and MY do this as well. Indonesia has also gradually become more Wahabized.
Saw this article which was unsurprising, yet very concerning:
https://www.onmanorama.com/news/kerala/2026/08/24/migrant-study-gender-norms-kerala.amp.html
The paper, titled ‘Beyond Money: Does Migration Experience Transfer Gender Norms?’, finds that returning migrants from Saudi Arabia tend to exhibit conservative values on gender-based violence and extreme attitudes pertaining to the perpetration of physical violence against women.
Not at all surprising. I am not so sure about the causes though – wouldn’t be surprised if migrants working in non-Islamic countries also reinforced the same attitudes.
I am a bit skeptical of drawing parallels with Malays though. While very conservatively Islamic in many ways, I don’t think they are gripped by the same psychosis as Indian (South Asian?) Muslims. I have never seen kindergarten girls wearing the full dress in the metropolises of ASEAN. Girls under 10 are allowed to just be kids largely. Of course, this may not be true everywhere – given to understand Aceh is an Islamist hellhole. I think this may be attributable to the generally relaxed attitude of Malays. From my interactions, they are very easy going people who are pious and largely okay to let others be. This is more true for Indonesia than Malaysia which, with its Bhumiputera laws is the opposite of the Indian state in how it treats its minorities.
As a side note, I do think the salience of religious identity is growing. For example, happened to notice more than one young Malay scrolling through shorts of radical subcontinental hate mongers like Deedat and Zakir Naik on their phones.
Urdu is the default language of all the madarsahs in South Asia, irrespective of sect (Shia/Barelvi/Deobandi/Wahabbi). The Dars e Nizami is the currciulum developed in South Asia for madarsahs accross the land, and while originally being in Arabic, is mostly taught in Urdu since the 18th century. This produced Islamic literature in Urdu on a wide scale as every Madrassah students grew up knowing Urdu and produced Islamic literature (poems, short stories, religious interpretations, legal and social commentary, debates etc) in every region. This is why the British deemed Urdu/Hindustani as the lingua franca of India (they saw it had penetrated everywhere in their empire) and they used it for administrative purposes due to that utility. And this is why Urdu is associated with Islamic identity, just like Arabic & Persian, and unlike other local languages.
People have started associating Urdu with Wahabbism or Deobandism but that’s simply because the more religious a person is, the more he would know and speak Urdu in South Asia, because Urdu is where all the Islamic literature is.
How interesting ..
Urdu of course being originals the language of the Hindus of the Delhi Sultanate, which is probably what Pakistanis ultimately are.
No Urdu originated in areas of Muslim dominance, primarily in Delhi and spread from there. Hindus adopted it later under the patronage of nawabs and sultans wherever Urdu replaced Farsi. Hindus after being encouraged by the British also later tried to distort this language with the abomination known as Modern Hindi
Hindus after being encouraged by the British also later tried to distort this language with the abomination known as Modern Hindi
Lol! Your pride and joy is itself an abomination that is built on the foundations laid by Khariboli. If anything, at least modern Hindi is truer to its Sanskritic/Prakritic roots than Pakistani Urdu, which, like its people doesn’t know if it wants to be Indian or Persian.
C’mon, let the poor troll have his moment, he was so enjoying smelling his own fingers after flinging around his fantasy history.
I’ve grown to enjoy the Pakistani delusions on this site, it makes for some very entertaining fiction.
Self hate is a deep well of unhappiness into which the bottom dweller desperately grasps for company. As I oscillate between pity and schadenfreude, I cheer and castigate in equal measure.
This whole Hindi/Urdu debate is actually quite meaningless since the linguistic consensus is that they are two standardized registers of the same language.
Languages are defined by their grammar and obviously Hindi and Urdu have the exact same grammar.
Any Urdu speaker can learn Hindi from Duolingo for example. It’s only a matter of learning to read and write a different script. Most of the vocabulary is the same. Unless one is referring to highly literary versions of the language.
As a South Indian I find Sanskrit words in Hindi comfortable, the more Sanskritised, the easier it gets and consequently the pleasanter it sounds.
Heavily Persianised Hindi/Urdu and I reach for subtitles. Naturally, like anything human, taste is simply a matter of comfort and familiarity.
For Q’s pathetic attempts at language put downs – watch an Indian show you how.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea-fUHCfgtI
Agree – my Tamil-Bengali in laws speak ‘better’ Hindi than my own family because our register is much more Urdu/Persianate. Interestingly, Bengali also has a significantly Sanskritized vocabulary which probably also helps the average Bengali understand Hindi.
I don’t know about South India but North Indian “Hindi” is basically the same as “Urdu”.
It’s really for political reasons that we act like they are two different languages. It’s the same language with two different scripts. Languages are defined by grammar not vocabulary.
This is a matter of academic consensus.
Honestly, this is one of the more meaningless debates that happens on this website.
Inserting tatsam Sanskrit words forcefully in Hindi does not make it “truer” to its roots since the langauge was never spoken like that ever. Its like adding “roots” to a fruit salad. Nobody wants to eat that now. The word Hindi itself is Persian when are you purging that lol
Persian-ising the language is equally as forced. Even Amir Kushro was making the language unintelligible when he was forcefully inserting farsi words into Urdu poetry. The reality is Hindi lies a lot closer to somethings like Braj Bhasha than it does with the Brothel tongue of Urdu. Persian was never consider natural vocabulary in either language and is just a fetish of Muslim writers and poets who have projected it as real.
“Brothel tongue”?
Really? Why do you need to insult someone’s language like that?
Insulting Urdu is just a cover for insulting Muslims.
I agree with you – but no need to communalise it
In OM’s defence, he was just responding in kind to SQ. Provocation usually stems from the usual suspects here.
Nobody wants to eat that now. The word Hindi itself is Persian when are you purging that lol
Never? Lol, I am equally comfortable with both and see no need to hate something that was part of my childhood. Unlike the Abrahamic mind, the Hindu can hold more than one, often opposing ideas in his mind at once.
tbf the Indo-Islamic culture is far more syncretic, in practise, than Shudh culture, which is by definition “purer.”
Biryani is a real hodge podge
So why destroy Urdu/Hindi in the name of Shuddhi?
Perhaps this assertion is therefore incorrect.
Urdu means camp. I had lots of problems in understanding my Pakistani pathan driver in gulf, when he used vazir e ala , vazir e kharja, etc.!!!
It just takes familiarity.
Pakistanis have watched enough Hindi shows to know things like “mukhiya mantri”, “pradhan mantri”.
The fact that Pakistani housewives watched Hindi soaps without subtitles shows you that it is essentially the same language.
That is sad to hear.
In re “the same thing might have happened to East Bengal.”
Nope – that is beyond insane! The beginning of the end of Pakistan started in 1948 when Jinnah declared in Dhaka that “Urdu and Urdu alone” would be the national language. There is no way in hell that it would ever fly, and the Pakistanis gave up that particular ghost after the famous 1952 Language Movement. Bangladesh today is perhaps more “Islamic” than it was ever before – but there is no love lost for Urdu. There is simply affinity for it among the Bengali Muslims at large. As an English-speaking elite Bengali (two of my cousins were in Hasina’s last cabinet) who has lived in the US for over 50 years, I am dismayed by the coarse Bengali now in vogue in Bangladesh, but I can’t imagine the masses turning to Urdu for even for even a New York minute!
Welcome to BP!
I caveated it by saying “if Partition had not happened.”
Thank you for the welcome. Yes, you did – I just wanted convey that no matter how “Islamic” Bengali Muslims get, there is simply no affinity for Urdu. Bangladeshi Muslims are not the kind you get in Calcutta. Ever since Sher-e-Bangla Fazlul Huq & the great poet Nazrul Islam, Bengali Muslims in the modern era have wrestled with their dual identities, and the tension will perhaps manifest in perpetuity. As a Bangladeshi Muslim of Brahmin descent on one side, and “Syed” on the other, I know it palpably.
fascinating; I had no idea that there was such a difference between Calcutta Muslims and Bangladeshi Muslims in terms of cultural uptake.
this is a good area to delve into since Islamic-Muslim identity in other parts of the Subcontinent is our current topic 🙂
Some years ago, the Calcutta Telegraph reported a story about a meeting wherein the topic of discussion was: “Can the language spoken in Bangladesh be properly called Bengali?” The nerve of those effeminate, pompous asses is remarkable, but Bangladeshis fought and died for Bengali – they didn’t. My American neighbor would be baffled by Australian English, as am I by the Southern twang – but it’s all English nonetheless. Ditto Bengali. And the glory days of Calcutta-based Bengali “culture” is a distant memory. I occasionally watch the Calcutta morning TV music shows – and they are invariably singing in Hindi!
As for Urdu “supremacy” – the Pakistanis and their Bangladeshi quislings conflated Urdu & Islam, but it didn’t work because the Quran confers no such holy status to the language. My paternal grandmother was related to the Dhaka Nawabs, and hence Urdu speaking. My aunts, born in the early 1900’s, spoke Urdu with her. I read Bengali with difficulty, and my nephews and nieces in the US don’t read it at all. And Urdu in Bangladesh has gone with the wind! The current regime in Dhaka is talking about making Arabic mandatory, but if the state of English language skills in Bangladesh today is any indication, that would be a bridge too far! Pakistan was hijacked after Jinnah croaked by the Punjabi military and Urdu-speaking UP/CP refugees who tried to impose their language upon everybody else. It certainly backfired in East Bengal – but that is a whole another story!
Fascinating. So there’s no love lost between the Bengalis across the border or just the Calcutta types? The rest of India doesn’t have much love lost for the Bhadralok types either fwiw.
Was curious about the steady Islamization of Bangladesh. Do you think the powers that be currently can push it like Jinnah did to Pakistan?
1. It was not my intention to focus on Urdu in Bangladesh, but it is a spent force there, if indeed it ever was one. Abdul Hafeez Kardar, an Oxford grad who played for pre-partition India and captained the first Pakistan test cricket team, was sent to Dhaka to convince Bengali officials to ditch Rabindranath Tagore. Upon hearing his pitch, a Bengali told him: “Mr. Kardar, we can expect this kind of trash from a Tonga-wallah in Lahore, but not from an Oxford graduate like you! You are an educated man – can you imagine English without Shakespeare? How can you imagine Bengali without Tagore?” Kardar wrote that he never felt so ashamed in his life, and he abandoned the Pakistani propaganda forthwith. Kardar had lived and worked in East Bengal, and later helped Bangladesh obtain ICC membership.
2. Revisionist Pakistani history now refers to Iskander Mirza, who became the first president when Pakistan adopted a constitution in 1956, as a “Bengali.” Iskander was a direct descendant of Mir Jafar, the general who betrayed Nawab Sirajuddowlah at Plassey in 1757, and thus facilitated the conquest of Bengal, Bihar & Orissa by the EIC. The Mirza family, descended from Iraqi Shias, were domiciled in Murshidabad, West Bengal, but never spoke a word of Bengali. Iskander, who grew up in Bombay, was amply rewarded by his British masters who selected him to be the first Indian to graduate from Sandhurst (in 1920). But these Urdu-speaking folks, though “domiciled” in Bengal, were not “Bengali” in any way, shape or form.
3. An aside: I have lived in various parts of the US for over 50 years, and in my experience Bangladeshi Muslims and West Bengali Hindus are utterly segregated communities. There is virtually no interaction between the two. To paraphrase Churchill, we are truly “divided” by the same language! When I attended the West Bengali “Bongo Shommelon” cultural festival in Las Vegas a few years ago, their attitude was: “Why are you here?” I had gone there hoping to listen to Tagore songs – but it was mostly Hindi most of the time! In fact, the only West Bengali I have socialized with in years is not a Hindu – but a Christian!
4. When not under military rule, two political parties, Awami League and BNP, have held sway in Bangladesh. The recent 15-year spell of Awami League has set new standards for elite politicians. Whereas in the old days a house in Gulshan and a Mercedes was a pretty good deal, now they aspire to houses in Dubai, London, New York & California, and millions in Swiss banks & the Cayman Islands. The easiest way to do this to encourage foreign-financed mega-projects, inflate prices, skim 10%-20% right off the top, and stash it abroad. The Awami Leaguers smuggled dollars on such a scale that the currency lost 50% of its value in a few years! (As I said earlier, two of my cousins were in Hasina’s last cabinet.) And, of course, they literally looted the local banks at gunpoint and scammed all they could from the stock market. Not surprisingly, Bangladesh today has excess capacity, but not enough fuel to produce electricity! The economic crises, runaway inflation and widespread unemployment caused by massive corruption and incompetence makes millenarian Islam more attractive by the day. Jamaat won 38% of the vote in the last election, rigged or not, and the economic crisis is only getting worse. But Jamaat still has a “woman” problem, historical baggage from 71, and lacks clarity about what they really want – an Islamic state or a secular one. A charismatic mullah – like Maulana Bhashani – might tip the scales in their favor, but there is none on the horizon. You need a pukka salesman to pitch the “Makkah Model” – or Ram Raj – for that matter! LOL
I have never met a Bangladeshi that grew up in Bangladesh and does not – at least – understand Urdu despite never having been taught it at home or at school.
This is the brutal reality that cements Urdu supremacy throughout South Asia and beyond.
I guess I have more Bangladeshi friends than you because many of them can’t understand a lick of Urdu/Hindi but speak Bangla rather fluently. Urdu supremacists like to think of themselves as Americans do in some European backwater but its really more like a regional backwater peasant trying to make someone else understand by ignorantly speaking slowly and loudly.
the “many of them” is pretty funny which tells me that most do understand Urdu
You just want to be a contrarian here..
You would expect them to speak their mother tongue, but apparently that is too much to expect..
Unlike you I don’t make generalized assumptions based on my limited experience with a given nationality. Perhaps these are the kinds of assumptions that led to your country losing half of its population.
“based on limited experience”
speak for yourself because I got a lot of experience.
lol, Bengalis understand Hindi due to the subcontinental force that is Bollywood.
All the same, they still learnt a language that they claimed to reject.
Overall, Bangladesh seperation from Pakistan is an own goal of massive proportions. Now they are trying to course correct by throwing out Hasina, burning down Mujeeb’s memory and trying to join the Mecca agreement.
But much work needs to be done before we entertain these ideas.
chaddi sambhaali nahi jaati, chale duniya fateh karne
Decades ago I was watching shaheed masood, interviewing a retired Bangladeshi army officer.
The officer speaking in English refused to be drawn into the conversation in Urdu, stating that after the behavior of pak army in 1971, he had stopped speaking in Urdu.
Only towards the end of the program he relented and spoke a couple of lines in Urdu.
The Bangladeshi armed forces members on average seem to not have been bitten by the Islamist bug unlike their Pakistani counterparts.
I posted this on the open thread a few days ago but given all the talk about Bangladeshis and Urdu, it seems more relevant here:
“Soundscape: Pakistani Music and Bangladesh’s Gen-Z”
By Maruf Hasan
https://www.dawn.com/news/2024732/soundscape-pakistani-music-and-bangladeshs-gen-z
wow very interesting piece
Yes, clearly there is love for certain aspects of Pakistani culture in Bangladesh.
I’ve always said art and culture should not have political implications.