Word: urdu
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...speeches to the peasants, Nehru displays none of the perfervid oratory of the demagogue, and could not if he wanted to, since he speaks only one Indian language, Urdu, with any proficiency. Ordinarily he gives long, rambling, extemporaneous talks in English, full of digressions and schoolmasterly asides, that are translated into the local dialect by interpreters. Vast crowds of up to a million assemble to hear him, but the contact is more emotional than verbal. What happens is called by Indians darshan, communion. The multitude is somehow comforted and reassured not by the words but by the presence of Nehru...
...nine, eight are printed in Urdu, the other in English. Seven are strictly one-man shows in which the proprietor hustles ads and copy, cribs items from the old newspapers arriving by train, cuts by hand the pothook stencils of the Urdu script. Then he makes the rounds of Quetta's three print shops, pursuing the lowest print rate of the week. Advertisers are rare, since Quettan merchants prefer to do all their pitching over a hookah at the bazaar, so the publisher must seek revenue from other sources. From Baluchistan's maliks (tribal chieftains), the shrewd editor...
...citizen from East Pakistan must fly 1,000 miles across Indian territory-the distance from Massachusetts to Missouri-or travel 3,000 miles by sea. All that unites the two widely separated provinces is the Moslem religion. They even speak different languages: in the East, Bengali; in the West, Urdu. East Pakistan is mostly swamps and rivers; West Pakistan, deserts and mountains. The East is almost drowned in water; the West parched for lack...
...music was an intricate work in five movements, the last a musical inversion of the first, the fourth the reverse of the second. Most listenable was No. 2, an aria on the Song of Songs, which British Tenor Richard Lewis made sweet and plaintive as an Urdu love song, each syllable quivering through half a dozen notes. Elsewhere, the 70-voice chorus surged in powerful chant, defeating the squeaking, thudding, 50-piece orchestra. When it was over, Stravinsky bowed to the orchestra in the thundering silence and bounced off. Said one festival official: "In a cathedral the audience cannot applaud...
Behind Nehru's pronouncement (which was promptly endorsed by the education ministers' conference) was the knowledge that Hindi has failed to replace English as a national language. With an Urdu base and a Sanskrit script, Hindi is spoken by the biggest single language bloc in all India-roughly 100 million people, most of whom live in Uttar Pradesh, the sprawling area that has traditionally supplied New Delhi with most of its politicians. Hindi has remained largely unknown in southern India, which prides itself on its command of English...