The National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL), an autonomous body under the Union Ministry of Education, boasts a substantial budget for its primary task of promoting, developing and propagating Urdu language across the country. However, in the current financial year, the Council has not been able to release even a single grant to further the activities concerning its core objectives. Such has been its total ineffectiveness.
The delay in the release of grants has visibly affected every aspect of the Council’s work this year. There has been no bulk purchasing of books, no assistance given to government organisations and NGOs for holding seminars. Nor has NCPL provided financial aid for book projects and for the consolidation of educational centres. It has not made offers of research projects either.
Many an observer is of the view that the crux of the problem lies in the alleged indifference of the Modi government – it has been dragging its feet in the matter of reconstitution of the general body of the Council. As of now, the 37-member NCPUL is functioning with four permanent members, among them the minister for education (as the chairperson), a director and two other officials from the ministry.
This issue was first flagged on January 28, when well-known literary critic and professor at Jamia Millia Islamia, Kausar Mazhari, in a public appeal, drew the attention of the Urdu-speaking fraternity to it. He stated that there had been no announcement regarding the grants discussed at a meeting six months earlier.
He wrote, “There are all manner of conspiracies being hatched against Urdu, some covert, some overt…if the grants are not released, it is Urdu alone that will suffer; the honourable minister and director have nothing to lose.” The appeal generated a flicker of concern, but it did not gain much momentum.
How effective can a body functioning much below its proper strength be is a serious question. But a former senior official of the NCPUL claims that the cause of non-release of grants is not so much its insufficient membership strength as deliberate politics being played in the name of Urdu. The fact that NCPUL’s activities have virtually come to a halt this financial year has made many from the Urdu fraternity raise questions about the Modi government’s intent. Urdu litterateurs and scholars have been more forthcoming about expressing their misgivings.
NCPUL director Aquil Ahmad has a different view on this issue. He told The Wire that no doubt there has been a delay in the process but there is no malafide intent behind it. In response to a question, he said that such delays (in the reconstitution of the general body) have not marked only organisations concerned with Urdu; it took two years before the general body of the Sindhi language (National Council for Promotion of Sindhi Language) was reconstituted. Hence, according to him, the claim that the government is trying to finish off Urdu is totally baseless.
Ahmad added that during the time of the Manmohan Singh-led UPA 2 government, NCPUL’s budget was a mere Rs 146 crore for five years, whereas the Modi government in its second term has allocated Rs 416 crore to it. You can get an idea of how and the extent to which the Modi government wants Urdu to be promoted, he said. He does not offer much clarity on the question of insufficient strength having a bearing on the release of grants, except to say that at the level of the ministry the process was duly followed.
To another question he replied that they had had an internal meeting about whom to give a grant to and under which head, but as the general body has not been reconstituted, the executive committee, too, has not been formed, which is why the decision about releasing grants is awaiting approval. The executive committee members are chosen from the general body.
For the current financial year, the Council was about to request a grant of Rs 102 crore (from the kitty of Rs 416 crore), he added.
If the director is to be believed, very soon the Ministry of Education will make available its list of members to the general body of the Council. Although, he says, following the approval, processing the grants would take them well beyond March, so technically, it would not be possible to release grants in the financial year 2022-23.
For all practical purposes, year 2022-23 is set to be a washout, as far as NCPUL is concerned.
In the same breath, Ahmad says that he will try to find a way so that the grants that have not been released this year can be adjusted in the coming financial year.
The previous general body had been constituted for a period of three years which came to an end on December 4, 2021. In this regard, Ahmad mentions that they had started the process of reconstitution of the general body in November 2021 by sending a list of names to the ministry, following it up with a reminder, but it is only now that the process has been completed.
On the other hand, a source within NCPUL told this reporter that there had been no negligence at their end; whatever happened, happened in the ministry. It is his view that for various reasons Urdu is just not a priority for the ministry.
The former NCPUL official mentioned earlier in this piece, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says that the way he sees it, Ahmad’s statement is merely an attempt to whitewash the issue. It does not matter that the general body has not been reconstituted, for the chairperson (the minister for education) has enough financial powers to approve the grants, he points out, saying that all that is needed is to submit a report to the committee after it is formed. Further, he claims that this can be done easily and indeed has been done when for a while the general body did not have a single member (apart from the permanent members). No obstacle was raised at that time.
The former official stresses the point that it all boils down to a question of will power. It is a quality that the present director seems to lack, he feels, adding that if the director had been more proactive, things would not have come to such a pass.
Former principal publication officer of NCPUL, Abu Bakr Abbad, who is a professor of Urdu at Delhi University, terms the entire affair unfortunate. He says that by rights, Urdu should have received what was due to it on time and that to be deprived (of the benefits) of such a substantial budget does not bode well for the language. Agreeing with the former NCPUL official, he says that the talk about the committee not being formed is but an excuse, for the grants could have been approved by special powers and placed before the committee later. How can everything come to a grinding halt just because the committee has not been formed, he asks.
In response to another question Abbad makes it clear that in his opinion, the NCPUL affair does not smack of a conspiracy against Urdu; it reflects the director’s shortcomings. He makes a simple point: if there was a delay at the ministry end, the director should have alerted the Urdu fraternity to the issue. Letters would have been written to the ministry in this regard. After all, it is the director who is the crucial link, so he should be accountable as well.
Former vice chairperson of NCPUL, well-known poet Chandrabhan Khayal, who is the convenor of the Urdu Advisory Board of Sahitya Akademi, has his own perspective on this issue. He says the state of affairs shows that both the government and the director of NCPUL have been found wanting.
After pointing out that the director should have been more proactive, he says, look at it this way – the minister for education is the chairperson, he holds sway. The matter of approving grants could have been accomplished, but having a committee in place is also necessary. If the country is run as a democracy, then all its institutions will be democratic as well. In the absence of a functioning democracy, a free-for-all situation is created, where everyone does what they want to, in the manner they want to. The dispensation will function as it wants to.
Khayal says he cannot say whether this affair is indicative of a conspiracy against Urdu, but what he can say with certainty is that ultimately, it is Urdu that stands to lose.
A more stringent view comes from Shahidul Islam, the news editor of Urdu newspaper Hindustan Express, who has been a prominent commentator on issues concerning the Council. He says now NCPUL liberally publishes the works of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, that the director does not want to be seen as lagging behind in propagating and promoting Bhagwat’s ideological views, not caring whether the core objectives of NCPUL are met or not. Islam’s reference is to Bhagwat’s Mustaqbil ka Bharat (2021), translated by director Ahmad.
A section of Urdu writers and scholars had sharply criticised NCPUL’s move to publish and promote the book at the time of its release, saying that it furthers the ideology of a divisive organisation like the RSS and is an attempt to destroy an institution of national significance.
Islam feels that the only thing that interests Ahmad now is getting his photos printed and earning brownie points. He feels that all that is happening in the NCPUL at present is a ploy to reduce grants so that the ministry can one day slash its budget on the grounds that it was lying unused anyway. The journalist points out that if there are no forceful voices of protest from the Urdu fraternity, it is because no one wants to bite the hand that feeds them.
Mazhari, who was the first to raise an alarm over this issue, says that the biggest question is, why did Ahmad fail to get the general body and executive committee constituted by the ministry? As he says, the loss to Urdu language has been immense. Even if the grants are released soon, there will be scarcely be any time left to hold a seminar or print books.
Mazhari holds that Ahmad should clearly state as to what happens next – will the funds from the budget of 2022-23 be sent back, or will the next budget suffer a cutback? The director’s frequent presence at NCPUL’s book fairs and other programmes is all well, but why has he not accomplished his core work, Mazhari asks.
He too, like Islam, is of the view that there is a general reluctance on the part of people in the Urdu fraternity to debate the issue because it would be seen as raising their voices against the director of NCPUL, thus incurring his wrath. How does one explain to them that the intent behind voicing the issue is not to take aim at a specific individual but to speak in the interest of Urdu, he asks.
More light is thrown on the issue by a former NCPUL research associate, Moid Rasheedi, who now teaches at Aligarh Muslim University. He claims that this is the first time in the history of the organisation that no grants have not been released during the financial year. He says that this scenario has to be read differently – the NCPUL issue has to be seen in a larger context where scholarships to minorities are being dispensed with, and Urdu, to some extent, is seen to be the language of a minority. In every way, there is an assault on communities and languages.
If one were to concur with Rasheedi, it would appear that l’affaire NCPUL is not just a matter of negligence; it is part of a well-thought-out agenda. As the government is wary of being transparent about its intent, this is one way of weakening the Council gradually, to the extent where it is no longer capable of carrying out its mandate, and is reduced to being a mute monument to Urdu. Rasheedi points out the irony of it: on the face of it, a wonderful budgetary allocation, but in reality, an organisation thirsting for grants simply because there is no executive committee in place. Is this another instance of this dispensation flattering to deceive, he wonders.
Further, Rasheedi adds, it is not clear how hard the director of NCPUL worked to resolve the issue, but what is clear is the message that the government has no interest in Urdu language.
Echoing a similar vein, noted Urdu poet and film lyricist Shakeel Azmi points out that a body such as the NCPUL is extremely important for Urdu language and its speakers, and that a little negligence can result in a huge loss for it.
Azmi points out that the Council may be having the biggest budget for the promotion of Urdu across the country, but if for some reason the grants are not released, and books are not purchased, it bodes ill for Urdu literature and our culture. Moreover, the poet adds, the responsibility for keeping NCPUL true to its mandate lies both with the government and the Urdu fraternity.
In the coming days, it will be interesting to see the manner in which the Council’s existing budgetary allocation is adjusted, and what the Modi government does with the grants of the current financial year. The NCPUL saga is not over yet.
Translated from the Hindi original by Chitra Padmanabhan.
Edited by Jahnavi Sen.