Urdu Language, Education and Identity (Part 9)
Konkani Muslims are fluent in Konkani, an Indo-Aryan language grammatically and structurally close to and written in Marathi script. Konkani is the official language of Goa, a neighboring state. The Konkani dialect spoken by Muslims is heavily infused with words of Arabic and Persian origin. But Konkani was not used by the Muslim intelligentsia for scholarship, barring a handful of religious tracts transcribed in it using the Urdu letters.
Konkani remains the common language of public communication in the rural area, and in semi-urban and urban areas Urdu is often an alternative language. Children are taught to learn and memorize the Qur'an for use in the five prescribed daily prayers. The knowledge of Arabic is restricted to a very small class of people who have had access to schools of higher Islamic education. Many Konkani ulama wrote scholarly works on Qur'an and Islamic studies, exemplified by the cases of Ahmad ibn Abd al-Qadir Konkani, (d. 1320.) and Shaykh Abd Allah Konkani (d. 1325.) and the better known Shaykh Makhdum Ali Mahaimi (1372-1431) in the medieval period, and the case of Shaykh Abd al-Samad Sharaf al-Din (1901-1906) in our own time.
Leaving aside this small group of scholars, common Konkani Muslims, like their coreligionists in the 19th century Bombay Province lagged far behind Hindus and Parsis in education, as noted by the government reports of the time. The difficulties facing Muslims in acquiring modern education were recognized by the more enlightened members of the faith. One of the original members of the Bombay Board of Education, a Konkani Muslim named Muhammad Ibrahim Muqba, had been successively munshi to the East India Company cadets, interpreter to the Supreme Court and magistrate of the Court of Petty Session. He was very much aware of the need to create an interest in higher English education among Muslims, and had himself founded an Urdu school in Bombay and prepared books for it. Although the school did not prosper, it produced at least one pupil who continued his education until 1840 at the Elphinstone Institution. This was Ghulam Muhammad Munshi, the grandson of an Ahmadabad Muslim who had prospered in Bombay as a laundryman for washing Europeans' clothes. Munshi sought and received, after initial hesitation, the cooperation of Muslim commercial magnates of Bombay to establish educational institutions for children of the community, his efforts accelerated after a visit to Aligarh and contacts with Sayyid Ahmad Khan there.The first to lend a hand was the Tayyibji family of Sulaymani Bohras, headed by brothers Qamar al-Din and Badr al-Din. The Tayyibjis had already formed an organization of their own to feed, clothe, and educate boys of their community who managed to get to Elphinstone High School. Their endeavors in assisting Munshi attracted the interest and friendship of Muhammad Ali Roghay, (1852-1910) the man who had helped build the Jama Masjid. Roghay though in his early twenties, was a landlord of great wealth and position.
Roghay had been well educated and was influenced by the ideas of Sayyid Ahmad Khan, to which he advanced his even more liberalism. 'His ideas were all of the most modern type,' remarked the Victorian traveler and Islamophile Wilfrid S. Blunt, after meeting him 1883, 'far too modern on some point to please me. Roghay's interest in Sayyid Ahmad Khan brought him into contact with Ghulam Muhammad Munshi when the latter returned to Bombay from a visit to Northern India. He called on Roghay and described to him the anjumans that had been established to help Muslims in several cities, Roghay consulted the Tayyibjis, and in March 1876 the Anjuman-i Islam of Bombay was founded. The Anjuman's aim was "the amelioration of the Mohammedan community and to effect some improvement in their education, and moral and social state." 43 From 1874 to 1880 Qamar al-Din Tayyibji was its President and Roghay its Vice-President. In 1889, Roghay rose to be the President of the Anjuman remaining in office until 1890. When the first school of the Anjuman opened, Roghay rose to the occasion with a princely donation of 10,000 making him the largest single donor. The Anjuman, which celebrated its hundredth anniversary in 1986, is the premier educational institution founded by Muslims for Muslim education in Maharahstra today .
In addition to imparting modern education, its role in the spread of Urdu among Konkani and other Muslims is clearly crucial. The language of instruction of the Anjuman schools is Urdu, and it runs as many as 25 schools in Mumbai, Pune, and several towns of Konkan. The example of the Anjuman was replicated in other neighboring towns, in Bhiwandi for instance by the Kokan Muslim Education Society (KMES) founded in 1927 with a number of schools. In late 1999 the KMES was in the process of establishing a medical school.
A detailed study of Urdu schools in the region from 1903-95, entitled Konkan main Urdu taalim, by Abd al-Rahim Nishtar shows the growth of Urdu schools in the area. The Konkani Muslims today are equally at ease in Urdu as well as native Konkani. Their socialization with the Urdu speaking Deccani and North Indian Muslims resident in Mumbai and elsewhere accelerated familiarity with Urdu. As Urdu is the richest repository of literature in Islamic studies, and since it is associated with the aristocratic culture of Deccan and North India through its status as the language of power, authority, and law courts, it began to be widely adopted by Bombay Muslims such as the Konkanis and the Tayyibji family as far back
as the nineteenth century.
In the twentieth century, the spread of Urdu, particularly through poetic symposia called mushairas and mystical music called qawwali performed at the Islamic shrines further intensified the familiarity with Urdu. Movies produced in the Bombay studios erroneously certified as Hindi films, with high content of Urdu songs and dialogs played their own role in the popularization of Urdu. The advent of radio and television quite literally brought Urdu programs to homes almost everywhere in the region.
The Konkani intelligentsia is now thoroughly Urduized. In this process of Urduization, defined as the learning of Urdu, its use in formal education and mass communication, the role played by the monthly journal Naqsh-Kokan, published since 1962 is crucial. The Naqsh is a virtual chronicle of the Konkani Muslim society and its institutions for more than three decades. Led by its energetic founder Dr.Abd al-Karim Naik, its publications in Urdu on Konkani history and culture are the primary source of information indispensable for any understanding of the Konkani Muslim community today.
The efforts of the Naqsh is supplemented by other literary associations such Konkan Urdu Writers' Guild, which publishes a quarterly journal Tarsil since 1994.
The wholesale adoption of Urdu by the Konkani Muslims has brought the group into the mainstream of Urdu culture of the Deccan and North India, in the same manner as it has the Panjabi, Kashmiri, Memon, and Meo Muslims of India and Pakistan, in contrast to the indifference of the Bohras and Khojas toward Urdu. If several generations of Kokanis receive their basic education in Urdu, it is likely that most will be homogenized with the Urdu speakers in the rest of India.
