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?
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.
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!