URDU IN DOGRA RULE

By the fall of the nineteenth century, Urdu had effectively replaced Persian as the language of the court and emerged as the new lingua franca connecting a diverse Jammu and Kashmir. Dr Nitin Chandel, in this paper, details how the official patronage encouraged the Kashmir scholars and journalists to make Urdu popular within a few decades

- Dr Nitin Chandel

The Dogra period (1846-1947) witnessed the emergence of most Kashmiri authors and poets who wrote in Persian, Sanskrit, Urdu, English and Kashmiri and thus created a taste for literature. It is noteworthy that Persian, which was the official language of Kashmir for over four centuries, influenced and enlarged Kashmiri vocabulary to a large extent. Persian, however, slowly ceased to be the language of the court and of the elite with the eclipse of the Mughals. Urdu took its place steadily and step by step.

The part that Kashmiris played in Urdu’s development and enrichment has again been historic and all-important. In point of that fact Kashmiris, whether Hindu or Muslims, who migrated to various parts of India from the middle of the seventeenth century onwards and settled down in Punjab, Delhi, Rajasthan, Central India, UP and even Eastern India, slowly forgot their mother tongue, Kashmiri and used Urdu as such. They ultimately came to regard Urdu as their mother tongue.

INTRODUCTION OF URDU

In Jammu and Kashmir State itself, with the accession of Maharaja Pratap Singh and with the efforts of British Resident C Plowden, Persian the court language was replaced by Urdu. The fact behind this change was that Urdu was used regularly and popularly outside the state.