Overview

Urdu, presently the national language of Pakistan and the identity symbol of Indian Muslims, is linked with Islam in South Asia. This alliance was forged during British colonial rule when modernity first impacted India. The British replaced Persian, the authorized language of Mughal rule, with Urdu at the junior level and English at the higher one in parts of North India and present-day Pakistan. Urdu was spread by networks of education and communication in colonial India. It became the instruction medium in the Islamic seminaries (madrasas) and the main language of religious writings. It also became part of the Muslim distinctiveness and contributed, only to Islam, in mobilizing the Muslim community to demand the creation of Pakistan, which was carved out of British India in 1947. Urdu, distinguished from Hindi by its script and vocabulary, is also one of the official languages of India. It is one of the most extensively spoken languages of South Asia, and has attained a wider distribution in other parts of the world, particularly the UK, where it is regarded as their main cultural language by most Muslims from Pakistan and northern India. Besides its significant role as the chief vehicle of Islam in South Asia, Urdu has a vital secular literature, whose poetry is strongly based on Persian models. Urdu is also the official language of Pakistan and one of the formally recognized national languages of India. Urdu is also spoken by chief populations in some Middle Eastern countries and South Asian communities in various countries. Urdu is on the list of significant languages compiled by the U.S. State Department. To meet the need in the United States for the Urdu speakers, the State Department, among other agencies and institutions, offers competitive scholarships for language study and travel abroad for students studying Urdu.

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