Contact: Rainer Kimmig, M.A.
Urdu is a rather young language by South Asian standards. It is based on the colloquial language of the Delhi region, where, after the Islamic conquest of northern India in the early 13th century, a soldierly and commercial language developed that integrated Persian, Arabic, and Turkish elements which spread rapidly over wide areas of northern India; the language of the Islamic courts, administration, courts, and literature, however, remained Persian. Urdu did not develop into a literary language until the 16th century in the southern Indian Sultanate of Golconda; there, Persian was replaced as the language of poetry by the language brought by the local dynasty from their homeland in the north. At the beginning of the 18th century, this literature becomes known in Delhi; Urdu now rapidly gains an independent place alongside Persian here as well and largely replaces it in the 19th century, not only as a literary language but also as the language of administration and the courts; the British colonial power, which de facto rules Delhi from 1803, plays an essential role in this. In this phase, Urdu (which is now also consistently referred to by this name for the first time) becomes the elegant written and colloquial language of the educated urban elites of northern India and, as such, is used equally by members of all religions. In the 20th century, precisely because of this secular character, Urdu became one of the most important languages of the anti-colonial independence movement.
Since the middle of the 19th century, there have been efforts on the part of many Hindus to replace Urdu with a language that follows its grammatical norms, but systematically replaces the Persian-Arabic vocabulary with words and neologisms from Sanskrit and is written not in Arabic script but in the Indian Devanagari. This new language was called Hindi ('Indian'), in deliberate contrast to Urdu, which was rejected by this side as 'Islamic'. In the 20th century, the opposition between the two languages quickly became ideologized to the point that it contributed significantly to the alienation between Muslims and Hindus, and thus to the partition of British India.
Why should you study Urdu?
Today, Urdu is the national language of Pakistan; in India, it is one of the officially recognized languages and is spoken by a portion of the population in a number of states. The number of people who speak Urdu as their mother tongue is estimated at about 70 million, plus about 160 million who speak Urdu as a second language. This makes Urdu the second most important language in South Asia after Hindi and next to Bengali.
Urdu has a rich literature; the great poets of the 18th and 19th centuries are still present in the general consciousness today, even among people who cannot read the Arabic script. To this day, the language of Urdu poetry is an essential element of the language of Bollywood, especially film songs. Since the second half of the 19th century, a rich narrative literature has been rapidly developing alongside the poetry, which is unfortunately still too little known outside South Asia. Knowledge of Urdu is also indispensable for any deeper study of South Asian history of the last 300 years.
Since Urdu differs almost not at all from Hindi in grammar and hardly at all in basic vocabulary, it is possible to base language acquisition on a good knowledge of Hindi; what really needs to be relearned is the Arabic script.
Levels of language offered: Beginner/ Intermediate/ Advanced
The Department of Indology in Tübingen therefore offers regular reading courses to provide students with elementary knowledge from which they can continue to work independently. Islamic Studies in Tübingen currently also offers courses for beginners, which do not require any knowledge of Hindi.
