The Indian Railways has decided to replace Urdu with Sanskrit on station signboards in Uttarakhand. As per the railway manual, the names of the railway stations should be written in Hindi, English, and second language of the state. In 2010, Uttarakhand became the first state in the country to give Sanskrit the status of second official language of the state; Himanchal Pradesh followed the suit in 2019.
“Earlier, Urdu was used on signboards since Uttarakhand was part of UP where Urdu is the second language. We are now making the change after someone pointed this out,” said Deepak Kumar, chief public relations officer, Northern Railway.
According to a local Sanskrit teacher, the name of the stations will be changed as following: “Dehradun will become Dehradunam, Haridwar will be Haridwaram and Roorkee will be Roorkeeh in Sanskrit.”
Uttarakhand was the first state to remove Urdu as the second official language/Additional official language. The other states should also follow the suit. In Bihar, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Union Territory of Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, Urdu is the additional official language of the state.
Given the fact that a very good automatic translation is available with the help of Google, the states should do away with the practice of multiple official languages. Now, even the government departments use the Google Translate to produce the content in secondary language, and therefore, all the resources and manpower spent on having an additional official language is nothing but a waste.
In the states union territories like Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh, where Muslims are majority population and a large number of them read and understand the Perso-Arabic script, having Urdu as official language does makes sense. In fact, the official language of Jammu & Kashmir is Urdu and Kashmiri- the language of the majority of the people in union territory- is recognized as a second language.
In the other states, the majority of population, including Muslims, do not understand Perso—Arabic script. The people in these states might use Urdu words in conversation, and will continue to do so as these words have become integral part of Hindi vocabulary, but they do not understand the script; and therefore, it is a futile exercise to have Urdu signages on Railway stations and in any official work.
Not even 1 per cent of the population reads the official documents in Urdu; majority of them read it in their native language or in English. Those who are hell-bent on reading the official documents in Urdu can use the sophisticated translation facility provided by Google.
The states like Bihar, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal, and Union territory of Delhi should dump Urdu language from the list of official languages or additional official languages for good. It will save the taxpayer’s money being wasted on keeping a second official language department.
