By TwoCircles.net staff reporter,
Patna: “There is sufficient evidence to show that Urdu suffered from deliberate official neglect in some of the states. Jawaharlal Nehru complained about it to the Chief Ministers as early as 1954. Half a century later and belying the requirement of Article 350A, large segments of a generation have grown up without knowing their mother tongue. Equally glaring is the failure of Urdu-knowing people to nurture the language, particularly among the youth” said Vice President of India Hamid Ansari.
He was delivering Khuda Bakhsh memorial speech at Khuda Bahksh Oriental Public Library in Patna on Saturday to mark the 100th death anniversary of Khuda Bakhsh Khan.
The Vice President, Shri Mohd. Hamid Ansari delivering the ‘Khuda Baksh Memorial Lecture’
Recalling an international conference on Urdu language in 2003, he said: “The conference recommended that in order to protect Urdu in its land of birth, while it flourishes abroad, a national movement for the revival of Urdu commanding strong political will is the need of the hour.”
The vice president came especially to attend the event and for that state capital was decorated. There was high alert security at Bailey Road, Frazer Road, Gandhi Maidan, and Ashok Rajpath through which the motorcade of the Vice President passed.
Calling low percentage of education in Muslims as the cause of economic crisis he said: “The patterns of differentiation in the employment of Muslims in the public and private sectors as well as deprivation from other forms of state largesse, identified by the Sachar Report and other studies, combined with low performance levels in education, has caused economic hardship and given a fresh impetus to the demand for reservations, notwithstanding its evident limitations. Some of the state governments have seen merit in it and responded in varying degrees. The Ranganath Mishra Commission, whose report is yet to be made public, is said to have recommended specific steps based on assessment of backwardness irrespective of religion.”
On AMU he said: “The demand for minority character of the Aligarh Muslim University has been a persistent one but it seems to have lost its centrality in community perceptions with the emergence of good quality minority-run institutions of higher and professional education in several states. It remains to be seen whether the new attempt to reincarnate AMU in different parts of the country serves the purpose of the minority community’s education, he added.
Hamid Ansari also said that there is a need to ensure for Muslims social, economical and educational security along with physical security.
He accepted that Indian Muslims are facing lots of challenges which should be addressed with enthusiasm and good policy.
“Muslims should maintain good and candid interaction with fellow citizens without a syndrome of superiority or inferiority. They should make efforts for the empowerment of all segments of the community, particularly women who constitute half the population of them and equal responsible for social development as Muslims men. They should try to get self-empowerment in areas where competence already exists making the best use of government assistance that is available and creating capability to benefit from the opportunities being offered by an expanding economy” he added.
On Muslims Personal Law, he said: Article 44 of Indian constitution does not demand a mechanical application of a single family law to the entire nation by one stroke of legislation since it goes against its rationale and ignores ground realities. This is supported by the Supreme Court’s observation that a uniform law though it is highly desirable, enactment thereof in one go may be counter-productive to the unity and integrity of the nation” he added.
Governor of Bihar Devanand Konwar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar also spoke on the occasion while library director Imtiaz Ahmad welcomed the vice-president. The program was attended by many scholars, intellectuals, dignitaries of the city.
[Photo by pib.nic.in]