Urdu has been a controversial language in Pakistan despite its official and holy status. The Bengalis rejected it way back in the 1940s when Jinnah, advised by a bureaucracy, with imperial moorings ...

Who does Urdu belong to? India's right-wing seems to think it's a foreign import, forced upon by so-called Islamic invaders. The latest fracas happened in April when a reporter from a far-right news ...

There are more than five crore Indians who speak Urdu, as per the last census, but this poetic language, which is one of the country’s official languages, experienced a 1.5 per cent drop since 2001.

This weekend of May 16–17, 2026, Ishara Art Foundation invites art enthusiasts, families, and book lovers to explore the ...

Speaking at the convocation of Dacca University in March 1948, the Quaid-e-Azam emphasised that he wanted Urdu to be the sole national language of Pakistan because it had been ‘nurtured by a hundred ...

Much has been written on the origin of Urdu. The word `urdu` itself is Turkish and means `army` or `camp`; our English `horde` is said to be connected with it. The Muslim army stationed in Delhi from ...

In the 1930s, no foreign language was more dominant in Afghanistan than Urdu. At no time in Afghanistan’s history did Urdu have more influence in the corridors of power in Kabul than in the 1930s.

Javed Akhtar challenges the misconception that Urdu is a Muslim language, emphasizing it's region-specific, not religion-specific. During an event, he asserted that Urdu and Hindi were equals until ...

National Conference (NC) president Dr Farooq Abdullah today called out forces stoking controversy over the Urdu language, ...

It’s on a Tuesday evening in January, under a canopy of incandescent bulbs, that I receive my first lesson in Urdu: the difference between alcohol and mirages.I am part of a small mehfil gathered in ...