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This chapter examines the question of the Urdu language and the modernizing agendas of the Muslim intellectuals associated with Osmania University by taking a closer look at their activities outside the domain of the university proper, in Urdu-language organizations and as literary scholars. It first considers the politics of the Urdu language and its relationship to place before turning to two Urdu organizations headquartered within the boundaries of Hyderabad: the Anjuman-i Taraqqī-i Urdu (Organization for the Advancement of Urdu) and the Idāra-i Adabiyāt-i Urdu (Institution for Urdu Literature). In particular, it discusses the two organizations' connection to the Deccan. It also explores the history of Urdu literature and Mohiuddin Qadri Zore's assertion that Deccani has as much claim to Hindustani language as do Hindi and Urdu. Finally, it looks at Urdu's position with the question of Indian nationalism.

This chapter examines the projects pursued at Osmania University, with particular emphasis on efforts to create Urdu-medium textbooks that would allow students access to higher education through an Indian language. It considers the work of Osmania University's Bureau for Translations and Compilations in translating English texts to Urdu and its attempt to create new terminology in the Urdu language with the help of both scientific specialists and linguistic and literary scholars. It also discusses the negotiation involved in the university's modern project of vernacularization—aiming to make Urdu a gateway to high scholarship while retaining some of its historical inflections. The chapter argues that those who produced textbooks for Osmania University were also involved in a fundamental reform of the Urdu language and in reconceptualizing its relationship with other languages in order ultimately to emphasize its secular and national credentials. Finally, it highlights the tension caused by the textbook project as translators and linguistic experts argued over and tried to fix the relationship between Urdu, an Indian national culture, and the Islamic past.

This book examines Muslim engagements with twentieth-century Indian nationalism, and more specifically their project of imagining a secular national culture that would include both Hindus and Muslims. It considers the ways in which Muslim intellectuals of Hyderabad sought to replace the English language with Urdu as the medium of instruction at the university level by founding Osmania University, India's first vernacular university. The book thus shows how Urdu language in the early twentieth century became a means not only of asserting difference but also of envisioning a common secular future. Secularism in this case refers to a set of projects that was essentially productive, reordering traditional epistemologies and creating new and conflicting ways of understanding one's heritage, language, and culture. By founding Osmania University, Hyderabad's Muslim educators hoped to challenge the increasing pervasiveness of English as the language of higher education and hence also a language of prestige in colonial India.

This chapter examines the Urdu language's position in relation to other vernacular languages by focusing on the first large-scale student protest at Osmania University that took place in 1938. It also considers how the claims of Urdu to national status in Hyderabad came increasingly to be questioned not by Hindi speakers but by the speakers of South Indian vernaculars, Telugu, Marathi, and Kannada. It asks whether the student protest, which began with students singing the “Vande Mataram” song and then reciting the “Vande Mataram” prayer on the campus of Osmania University, points to a failure of the language movement at the university; whether it was a Hindu protest aimed at a Muslim sovereign, or, alternatively, the beginnings of a secular movement toward independence. The chapter relates the student protest to these two common ways of understanding the “Vande Mataram” movement that emerged at Osmania University. It shows that the student protest was linked to the activities of national organizations such as the Hindu Mahasabha and the Arya Samaj.

This chapter traces the beginnings of Osmania University and the significance of its foundation against the background of the various suggestions for educational reform that were being articulated in Hyderabad at that time. It examines the educational context in which Osmania University was inaugurated and the extent to which language rather than religion became the preferred means for enacting educational reform, for forging a united public, and for producing Indian students who could face the challenges of the modern world. It discusses three different projects that present different ways of understanding the problems posed to Muslim education in the modern age: a proposal by W. S. Blunt advocating a total reformation in Muslim thought; the educational ideas of Sayyid Hussain Bilgrami; and the history of a religious institution, Dār-ul 'Ulūm. The chapter also explores the idea of employing Urdu language as the medium of instruction in higher education by focusing on the case of Osmania University.

This book has explored how Osmania University engaged with the Urdu language as an attempt to make Muslim cultural and intellectual forms the center of a shared secular future. What is significant about the history of Osmania University is that it draws attention to the competing models of secular nationalism being imagined in colonial India. The case of Osmania University has important ramifications for the question of whether Islam has the ability to accommodate Western science, secularism, and democracy. This concluding chapter considers subsequent Urdu literary production and what it might contribute to a broader understanding of the production of secular and minority cultures in the modern world. It discusses the intellectual projects pursued at Osmania University in relation to minoritization experienced among Muslims and suggests that such projects reveal a different kind of objection to Indian nationalism. It also looks at new agendas for the Urdu language in the twentieth century, with particular emphasis on Abdul Haq's call for a progressive literature.