(This is my Protest)

– Kaloji

There were sixteen districts in the Hyderabad Dominion – eight Telugu, five Marathwada and three Karnataka. The Telugus were a crore. The eight districts were together called Telangana. In the population of the dominion, the Telugus were 50%, the Maharashtrians 25%, Kannadigas 11% and the Muslims 12%. All over the dominion the patels (land owners) and patwaris (land clerks) were present in large number. These people wrote the kavilekattalu (records) in Telugu in Telangana, Marathi in Marathwada and in Kannada in Karnataka. The strange thing was that at the beginning of this century the administrative language was Persian. This language was spoken by a few families who came from Persia (present day Iran). In the Nizam’s dominion, the commoners and the elite too spoke Urdu. But some Muslims, some kayasths (record keeping castes)and some brahmans learned Persian and Arabic – as some learned English seeking jobs under colonial rule. As there are Bhasha Praveena and Vidwan examinations in Hindi, there were examinations called “Munshi Faazil”, “Kabir” in Arabic and Persian. The Muslim courtiers of the nawab sought Persian language expertise. Common Muslims did not know Persian; Arabic, not at all. Only those who came from Arabia spoke Arabic at home.

Take for example, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s family – such families came from Arabia several generations ago. There was good command over spoken Arabic in these houses. These people said that the Koran must be read in Arabic (just as vaidika brahmins alone must chant the Vedas). Reading the Koran was called Kiraat. Azad wrote this in one of his letters from jail: “We brothers learned the Koran from a Bengali Maulvi (who, though a native Bengali speaker, was a teacher of Arabic). When my aunt (father’s sister) came from Arabia, she listened to the Maulvi. She called my father and said ‘This teacher is spoiling the children with his wrong pronunciation – stop these lessons’. She insisted that we ‘send the teacher away’”. I remembered Sripada Subramania Shastry’s autobiography Experiences and Memories. At that time, whatever was written was in Sanskrit, and therefore whatever was read was in Sanskrit. When on one occasion Sripada wrote a poem in Telugu it is said his father broke his hand. In Sansrkit drama, women and sudra characters would not speak Sanskrit. They would speak Prakrit. Sita would speak Prakrit, and Ramudu garu (Kaloji’s inflection of respect is sarcastic: translators) would speak Sanskrit. It meant that even as characters in the same family, men and women could not speak the same language. The plot would have to be related to the divine, to the Puranas and the language was to be Sanskrit only. The huge task of freeing the national languages from this hegemonic grip belonged to some great Englishmen. Just as Yeats freed Telugu with these words: ‘Poetry must be written in the language of the common man’ [Kaloji is referring to J A Yeats, inspector of schools in colonial Andhra, who promoted simple language], a Britisher did the good deed for each national language. Whatever their intention was, the result of this was a benefit to our languages. It is likely that behind these men, there were bishops and others who used these languages to proselytize. Be that as it may, if today Telugu, Bengali, Marathi and Hindi remain in use, they have an Englishman behind them. In like manner, in Calcutta, Gilchrist worked for Urdu. The British worked for tribal languages – as did Haimendorf for Gondi. Similarly, the administrative language, once Persian, slowly changed to Urdu.

People never wrote poetry in Urdu even a hundred years ago. Just as Telugu was prohibited, so was Urdu. Writing was in Persian. Arabic was written only to praise God and pray to Him; any other use was prohibited. This was like Vishwanatha Satyanarayana asserting that praise of the Lord must be in the language of the Lord. As Muslims spoke Urdu but wrote poetry in Persian, a few non-Muslims too (about one in a crore) became famous as Persian poets. Speaking in Urdu was looked down upon.

I once told Vishwanatha Satyanarayana, “What you write in Telugu, even people like me cannot understand. Because you write in Telugu, your stature remains unknown in the non-Telugus areas. So, if you kindly stop writing in Telugu and write in Sanskrit, your merit will be known to people who know Sanskrit. Those of your standard will understand you. Why should you write in Telugu? And why indeed should we, without understanding your Telugu, suffer so? Further, why should we listen to you say, ‘what will you understand anyway’? So please write only in Sanskrit!” (In order to make Vishwanatha’s merit known to the North, his Veyi Padagalu [The Thousand Hooded Cobra of Vishnu] was translated into Hindi by the current prime minister PV Narasimha Rao under the title Sahasra Phani). Such were traditional views about the vernacular. First gods, then goddesses, after them the incarnations, and thereafter the great familial lineages – filled the Puranas. These were recited in the divine language. This was not the people’s language and was not of their life either. Thus it was in every language. A descent from the royal language of Persian to the common language of Urdu was a great change was it not? However, this benefited only a single class.

These scholars became expert in Persian, a language that was not their mother tongue. The language of the rest, even though they couldn’t read and write, was Urdu. Therefore, for people who spoke Urdu at home and for those who knew Urdu, since the official communication occurred in Urdu, learning that language and gaining expertise in it was easy. A Telugu or a Kannadiga, or any other non-Muslim, however much he learned Urdu, would never be counted as an Urdu expert. The Kayastha whose mother tongue was not Urdu, even though he had certificates like Munshi, Munshi Faazil or Kabir etc., could never be seen appointed to teach Urdu in any primary or middle school. Even in poetry reading sessions, if twenty poets participated, one non-Muslim presence was exceptional. “Unless you know Persian, you cannot know Urdu! What do these people know of writing Urdu?” they asked. It was like asking, “Without knowing Sanskrit, how can you write Telugu?” In the Nizam’s Dominions, the non-Muslims were eighty to eighty five out of a hundred. The remaining were Muslims. How many of these were educated? These were only those scholars of Arabic and Persian among the courtiers who came with the first Nizam-ul –Mulk from Delhi. It was their hegemony. Just as the Mughals came from outside the land and ruled these people did too. Their family names were distinct, e.g., Siddiqi, etc. Even though they came from Arabia twenty generations ago, they would boast, “We have come straight from Arabia, what will the locals know of our pronunciation? How can they speak?” and look down upon ordinary people – just as those who came from Bezawada and Sarkar districts would say to us, “What do you know of Telugu?” One says we don’t know Telugu, the second says we don’t know Urdu, and the third, that we don’t know English! If so, what language we do know is the question that remains!

 

Translated by Shajahana Begum and R Srivatsan.
From Kaloji’s autobiography, Idi Naa Godava, Pg.No.15-17, Swecha Sahithi Publications 1995.
Kaloji Narayan Rao (1914-2002), or Kaloji for short was a poet, freedom fighter, thinker and activist who was awarded the Padma Vibhushan.
Shajahana Begum is a Telugu poet and story writer