ISLAMABAD, April 15: If historiography is an art seeking to establish a meaningful order in the chaos of facts and materials then the most recent issue of Akhbar-i-Urdu, published by ‘Muqtadara Qaumi Zuban’ (National Language Authority, should be seen as a monumental study in the kinship between Sindhi and Urdu languages.

Published this month, the monograph carries a collection of 35 scholarly essays. Eminent scholars, present and past, who have contributed to the study, include Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, Shaikh Ayaz, Pir Hassamuddin Rashdi, Prof Rahmat Farrakhabadi, Dr Sharfuddin Islahi, Dr Shahida Begum, Japanese scholar Mamyakin Sako, Syed Mustafa Barelvi, Mirza Qaleech Beg, Dr Muhammad Yousaf Kushk, Syed Mazhar Jameel, Mohan Lal Premi, Dr Moinuddin Aqeel, Prof (Dr) Riazul Islam, Asif Farrukhi, Himayat Ali Shayer, Dr Mahmudur Rahman, Samina Qureshi, Shaukat Siddiqui, Prof Fateh Mohammad Malik, Dr Mughni Tabassum and Muhammad Arif Iqbal.

A case has been made in these essays showing relationship between Sindhi and Urdu languages by eminent men of letters with a known track record of the kind of research which leaves an impact on the architecture of languages, linguistics and literature.

They have explored the attachment binding Sindhi and Urdu languages, as well as the deepening influence of Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit on them. This encyclopaedia journal should be looked upon as an important tool for study of Pakistan link languages, in the national context. For instance, noted Sindhi scholar the late Pir Hassamuddin Rashdi argues, in one essay, “Arabic and Persian languages have a lasting impact on the Sindhi language and because of this enabling factor the Urdu language was born, as it were, from the womb of Sindhi”. An important fact reflected in the issue of Akhbar Urdu is, though Urdu poetry grew in Deccan, it was more or less contemporaneous within Sindh. Poets such as Mullah Abdul Hakeem Ata Thattavi, Mir Saddruddin Kamil, Mir Mahmud Sabir, Ruhul Fakir, Syed Sabit Ali Shah, Ziauddin Zia, Azimuddin Thattavi, Sachal Sarmast, Akhund Qasim Bali, Mir Ghulam Ali Mayel, Mir Nasiruddin Jafari, Qadir Bakhsh Bedil, Mir Husain Ali Khan Talpur Husain, Mir Fateh Khan Fateh, Mirza Abbas Ali Beg, Hakim Fazal Muhammad Hatim, Syed Ghulam Muhammad Shah Gadaa, Nawab Faqeer Vali Muhammad, Mian Muhammad Yusuf Haidery, Syed Misri Shah Nasapuri, Mir Abul Hasan Khan Sangee, Mirza Qaleech Beg, Mir Ali Nawaz Khan Talpur were outstanding writers of ‘ghazal’ or ‘rekhta’ in both Persian and Urdu verses, and expressed with great felicity in Urdu, writes Prof Rahmat Farrakhabadi. For that matter Shah Habib, the father of patron saint of Sindh, Shah Abdul Latif, both conversed and also wrote poetry in Urdu. The great Sindhi educationist and poet, Shaikh Ayaz, who has translated Shah jo Rasalo in Urdu, has an assured place in the pantheon of Urdu letters. Many different roads have been traversed in this in-house journal of Muqtadara. One essay describes common phonetics of the two languages, as well as transfer of literary and scholarly works from Sindhi to Urdu, done by great scholars, such as Pir Hassamudddin Rashdi, Ghulam Ali Allana and Dr Nabi Bukhsh Baloch, Mirza Qaleech Beg.

Of course it is easy to guess that in this painstaking work the stature of the great Pir raises a notch higher than others. An interesting chapter discusses the impact of Sir Syed’s bid for Muslims to adopt the English system of education. This message reached Sindh where we discover that Khan Bahadur Hasan Ali Effendi as a worthy promoter of this idea. Hassan Ali Effendi later established Sindh Madrassatul Islam, the alma mater of Muhammad Ali Jinnah who rose to be the nation’s founder. For this reason, says scholar Dr Yousaf Khushk, the late Effendi is celebrated as the Sir Syed of Sindh province.

One gets the impression that the study gives a partial view and apart from Shah Abdul Latif’s works and those of other religious personalities very little mention has been made of Sindhi literary and scholarly works having been translated and brought within reach of Urdu readers. However, the study also devoted itself to discussion of attempts at learning the Sindhi language and literature made by Urdu speaking population of the province, especially those living inland towns and villages where Sindhi and Urdu have become interchangeable, and here those who speak Urdu language also use Sindhi with ease. It can be said with hindsight that a scholarly study of this kind would have been very opportune in July 1972 when the Sindh province was wrecked in a silly fashion because of language feud, caused by a myopic group within the two communities, without realizing that the two languages were cousins.—Jonaid Iqbal