By the fall of the nineteenth century, Urdu had effectively replaced Persian as the language of the court and emerged as the new lingua franca connecting a diverse Jammu and Kashmir.
The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.
“YOU praise the firm restraint with which they write / I’m with you there, of course: / They use the snaffle and the bit all right, / But where’s the b - horse?” Roy Campbell’s critique of ‘Some South African Novelists’ makes one wonder if it was not true of the leaders of the freedom movement as they began constructing their brand of the democratic state after they won independence for their countries.
They drank freely at the fount of democratic states and admired hugely the working of democracy in the European countries which had oppressed them. Unforgivable, however, is their donning the mantle of Caesar after their countries’ independence. The leaders of the Third World were not shining examples of democratic rule. They emulated their erstwhile oppressors.