Urdu: Anita Desai

 

'Urdu poetry? How can there be Urdu poetry when there is no Urdu language left? It is dead, finished. The defeat of the Mughals by the British threw a noose over its head, and the defeat of the British by the Hinduwallahs tightened it. So now you see its corpse lying here, waiting to be buried.'

This is not just the anguish of a living Urdu poet in Anita Desai's novel, but a summation of the anger of Urdu-speakers who were appalled by the treatment meted out to the language. The story of a weak, gasping poet in In Custody is also the story of Urdu language and literature.

Source: http://www.rediff.com/freedom/03legacy.htm