“Urdu of the British Raj: A Historical Heteroglossic Analysis of the Postcolonial, Cultural and Oriental Strains in the Urdu Language”

Abstract

The paper posits that Urdu is a natural heteroglossia or polyphonic language which was invariably exploited by its white colonizers to suit different administrative and political purposes. A historical overview of Urdu is thus taken to explore its debatable status as an indigenous language, its multiple roles, and titles during its long history, and its exploitive use during the British Raj. Bakhtin‟s linguistic theory of Heteroglossia is used as a framework for analyzing data taken from two sources: The “Glossary of the British Raj” and “Kipling's‟s glossary of Hindustani-Urdu-Hindi words”. The sample consisted of words chosen to reflect three identities of Urdu during the British rule: postcolonial, functional, and oriental. The findings revealed Urdu‟s natural tendency to adapt to roles that are diverse in their range and import, for which reason it (Urdu) cannot be restricted to regional identity. A similar approach is used in analyzing the language‟s status during the British Raj, a period in which its versatility is best expressed through the diverse uses the colonizers employed it for: a lingua franca, a functional language, the language of the subaltern and last but not the least, the alluring language of the Orient. The paper offers new perspectives for rediscovering a linguistic phenomenon: the Urdu language.