Bollywood writer, poet, and songwriter Javed Akhtar has now decided to declare that the Urdu language is an Indian language.
According to Indian media, Akhtar and his wife Shabana Azmi attended an event to launch Urdu poetry album, titled ‘Shayarana – Sartaj’, where they spoke about the importance of the language.
During the ceremony, Akhtar said that Urdu does not belong to Pakistan or Egypt but to India. “This language did not come from outside, it is our own language, it is not spoken outside Hindustan,” he said.
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Akhtar added, “Pakistan itself came into existence after partition from India, and that earlier it was only a part of India, so the Urdu language wasn’t spoken outside Hindustan.”
According to the Indian songwriter, Urdu is the local language of united India, but Punjab played an important role in promoting and popularising it. “It is not correct to consider Urdu a Pakistani language,” he repeated.
“Urdu language should be given importance, the new generation of India has forgotten the Urdu language. Today more focus is on English. We must speak in Hindi because it’s our national language,” he said.
