The Supreme Court of India has clearly said that it is wrong to believe that Hindi is the language of Hindus and Urdu is the language of Muslims. The court called this belief a “pitiable digression from reality”. It explained that a language is only a way to communicate and has nothing to do with religion.

This strong message came during a judgement related to the use of Urdu on a signboard of a government building in Maharashtra. A bench of justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Vinod Chandran gave this decision, highlighting the importance of protecting India's language diversity and cultural unity.

Why was the case in court?

The case started when Varshatai, a former member of the Municipal Council in Patur, Akola district of Maharashtra, objected to Urdu being used on a signboard of the Municipal Council’s new building. The signboard had the name ‘Municipal Council, Patur’ written in Marathi first, followed by Urdu.

Varshatai said this was wrong because Marathi is the official language of Maharashtra. But the Supreme Court did not agree.

The court said that Urdu is not an “alien” language but a language that was born, grew, and flourished in India. It said Urdu has been spoken and written in India for centuries and has contributed to the country’s culture, especially in poetry.

“The prejudice against Urdu stems from the misconception that Urdu is alien to India. This opinion, we are afraid, is incorrect, as Urdu, like Marathi and Hindi, is an Indo-Aryan language,” Justice Dhulia said.

What did the Supreme Court say about languages?

The judges said that people often wrongly link languages with religion. But languages do not belong to a religion. They belong to people, to regions, and to cultures.

“Language is not religion. Language does not even represent religion. Language belongs to a community, to a region, to people, and not to a religion. Language is culture. Language is the yardstick to measure the civilisational march of a community and its people,” the court said.

They added that Urdu is one of the best examples of Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb — a term used to describe the shared cultural life of Hindus and Muslims in northern India.

The court also said that Urdu and Hindi are very close. “When we criticise Urdu, we are in a way also criticising Hindi… True, Urdu is mainly written in Nastaliq and Hindi in Devanagari, but then scripts do not make a language. What makes languages distinct is their syntax, their grammar and their phonology. Urdu and Hindi have broad similarities in all these counts,” the judges said.

The court blamed British colonial rule for dividing these two languages. “A schism exploited by the colonial powers in dividing the two languages on religion. Hindi was now understood to be the language of Hindus and Urdu of the Muslims, which is such a pitiable digression from reality, from unity in diversity, and the concept of universal brotherhood,” Justice Dhulia wrote.

The court said Hindi uses many Urdu words, and Urdu also borrows words from Hindi and Sanskrit. For example, the word ‘Hindi’ itself comes from the Persian word ‘Hindavi’.

Many states, like Bihar, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal, have Urdu as their second official language. Union Territories like Delhi and Jammu & Kashmir also follow this rule.

“We must respect and rejoice in our diversity, including our many languages,” the court said, noting that the 2011 Census found 270 mother tongues with more than 10,000 speakers each. The actual number of languages and dialects in India may run into thousands.

 

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