Thirty-five years after Uttar Pradesh (UP) adopted Urdu as its second official language, chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s speech in the state assembly has revived the contentious issue over the language’s status.

It was in September 1989 when the state government, headed by Congress chief minister late Narain Dutt Tewari, moved the Uttar Pradesh Official Languages (Amendment) Act, 1989, granting second official language status to Urdu amid protests by 16 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members in a house of 425 members in undivided UP. The bill stated, “In the interest of Urdu language and the Urdu speaking people , Urdu shall be used as second official language for such /from time to time.” The implementation of the act was preceded by communal riots between pro-and anti-Urdu groups in Budayun in central UP, claiming a dozen lives.

Thirty-five years after Uttar Pradesh (UP) adopted Urdu as its second official language, chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s speech in the state assembly has revived the contentious issue over the language’s status.

It was in September 1989 when the state government, headed by Congress chief minister late Narain Dutt Tewari, moved the Uttar Pradesh Official Languages (Amendment) Act, 1989, granting second official language status to Urdu amid protests by 16 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members in a house of 425 members in undivided UP. The bill stated, “In the interest of Urdu language and the Urdu speaking people , Urdu shall be used as second official language for such /from time to time.” The implementation of the act was preceded by communal riots between pro-and anti-Urdu groups in Budayun in central UP, claiming a dozen lives.

State elections were due in October-November 1989, on the eve of which, the state government adopted Urdu as the second official language. The BJP had started to mobilise Hindu votes in the name of the Ram temple movement at the same time when the Urdu language controversy blew up. The BJP members, led by Rajendra Kumar Gupta, held a night-long protest in the well of the state assembly, which spilled over to the next day. Gupta said the move will disturb communal harmony in the state; the Budayun clashes was just an example.

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The bill, moved by then parliamentary affairs minister Ammar Rizi, was passed within 15 minutes amid protests by the opposition including the Janata Dal members who were demanding a discussion on Budayun riots. Outside the Vidhan Sabha, the UP Vidyarthi Parishad staged a protest burning the CM’s effigy while BJP demanded withdrawal of the act in the house. Both demanded Tiwari’s resignation. Incidentally, Tewari never returned to power in the state thereafter. The strength of the Congress party fell from 269 to 94, while a united opposition under the banner of JD won 208 seats and formed the government; the BJP’s seat count went up from 16 to 57.

The issue reached the Supreme Court where a petition was filed by the UP Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, challenging the Act. The matter was heard by a five-judge bench, which in 2014 dismissed the petition upholding the government’s legislation. The top court said the language laws of the country were not rigid but accommodative to secure the object of linguistic secularism. The SC also referred to the examples of several states, which had adopted other officially recognised languages in addition to Hindi.

The implementation of the legislation had remained in limbo and it was only after the SC order, the state government, then headed by Samajwadi Party’s (SP) Akhilesh Yadav, directed the state and district authorities to use Urdu as the second official language in government work. In all, Urdu was to be used in at least seven different functions of the government including accepting, and responding to, petitions and applications in Urdu; receiving documents written in Urdu by relevant registration offices; publication of important government rules, regulations and notifications in Urdu and issuing government orders and circulars of public importance in Urdu.

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“Urdu has constitutional validity as the 8th schedule of the Indian Constitution had defined 14 languages including Urdu. Also, scientifically and anthropologically, it is proven that Urdu is an indigenous language – developed in India,” Athar Hussain, a political analyst, said,

A decade later, Urdu remains the state’s second official language only on paper and perhaps only a few even remember the language’s status. The latest controversy cropped up after Satish Mahana, state assembly speaker, who has been on a drive to revamp and modernise the Vidhan Sabha, its corridors and galleries, had taken the initiative for live translation of house proceedings in four regional languages Awadhi, Braj, Bundeli and Bhojpuri besides English. The leader of the opposition from the SP, Mata Prasad Pandey, was quick to oppose the inclusion of English while omitting Urdu in the list of languages designated for translation.

Pandey’s move to oppose English has a context from the past as well. The party’s founder-president Mulayam Singh Yadav had launched a campaign to remove English from being used in official work and in courts. He countered opposition from various quarters, including southern states, by saying that he was in favour of promoting Indian languages but did not support imposing Hindu on any state. He visited the centre of anti-Hindi movement in Madurai soon after he announced the “Remove English” campaign to which the then Tamil Nadu chief minister Karunanidhi responded with: “We should develop all 15 languages”.

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The Mulayam government even issued a government order, banning the use of English in government work. Later, the party toned down its anti-English campaign, given the increasing need to be part of a globalised-industrial world

Ironically, Adityanath, in his written speech, took on the same party that had opposed English, accusing it of ‘sending their children to English medium schools and promote Urdu to turn the children into maulvis and katmullahs( fanatics). This has created a furore as Urdu lovers, which include famous Hindu poets, found the connection of the language with only the Muslim community as tenuous.