Abstract
The paper posits that Urdu is a naturally heteroglossic or polyphonic language which
was invariably exploited by its white colonizers to suit different administrative and
political purposes. A historical overview of Urdu is thus taken to explore its debatable
status as an indigenous language, its multiple roles and titles during its long history and
its exploitive use during the British Raj. Bakhtin‟s linguistic theory of Heteroglossia is
used as a framework for analyzing data taken from two sources: The “Glossary of the
British Raj” and “Kipling‟s glossary of Hindustani-Urdu-Hindi words”. The sample
consisted of words chosen to reflect three identities of Urdu during the British rule:
postcolonial, functional, and oriental. The findings revealed Urdu‟s natural tendency to
adapt to roles that are diverse in their range and import, for which reason it (Urdu)
cannot be restricted to a regional identity. A similar approach is used in analyzing the
language‟s status during the British Raj, a period in which its versatility is best
expressed through the diverse uses the colonizers employed it for: a lingua franca, a
functional language, the language of the subaltern and last but not the least, the alluring
language of the Orient. The paper offers new perspectives for rediscovering a linguistic
phenomenon: the Urdu language.
Sobia Ilyas. (2020) Urdu of the British Raj: A historical heteroglossic analysis of the postcolonial, cultural and Oriental strains in the Urdu language, The Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, Volume-28, Issue-2.
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