NEW DELHI: Part-time musician Aniruddha Pratim was always interested in learning Urdu, believing that it was key to better understand the range of music from the subcontinent.
For the past few weeks, the Delhi-based consultant has been spending his free time and coffee breaks glued to an app called Humzaaban, which allows him to learn the language that was for centuries used prominently in Indian culture and poetry.
“I’ve always been a little keen about Urdu, I feel like it sounds very poetic, sounds very soulful,” Pratim told Arab News.
“I open (the app) whenever I get a chance to … It has got a very interactive user interface with a lot of audio visual cues and everything, so it’s a fun app to use,” he said. “Maybe someday I can write a poem of my own in Urdu.”
Humzaaban is the brainchild of Tausif and Tanzil Rahman, who set out to preserve and promote the language they grew up with at a time when interest in speaking Urdu was waning among people in India.
Despite Urdu’s prominent role throughout Indian history, the language has been facing multiple threats from communal politics and the quest for economic prosperity in more recent decades.
Urdu has been stigmatized as foreign, the language of India’s archrival Pakistan, while families increasingly choose to enroll their children in schools that teach English or other Indian languages to better equip them for the job market.
While millions still speak Urdu today, they make up less than 5 percent of India’s 1.4 billion population. The language is also no longer taught in the majority of schools across the country.
“There has been a consistent decline in Urdu post-independence of India and also if you look at the you know (how) English is having all the economic value and it is you know thriving in the world,” Tausif told Arab News.
“Urdu has lost its economic value, none of the business transactions are being done in Urdu language and because of the same reasons there are not enough jobs available, people are not choosing Urdu as a language.”
Yet the language still holds a special place for many people across India, the wider subcontinent and in the diaspora, who grew up humming songs from Bollywood musicals that draw heavily on Urdu poetry.
For Tausif, the motivation to create an app dedicated for learning Urdu stemmed out of his own passion for Urdu poetries.
“We speak Urdu at home and we were discussing about the future of Urdu in India and outside India,” he said.
“We decided to create a beautiful learning app which will enable you to read and write Urdu, which will enable you to understand what is happening in the Urdu world, what are the trends that are going on, and with this idea and with this vision we started our journey.”
After five years of research, trial and error, the brothers whose day jobs are in the corporate world launched Humzaaban in October to reach a wider audience.
Tanzil said interest in Urdu transcended generations, as he saw diverse participation at an offline Urdu learning program he teaches on the weekends.
“The program participation from across generations, communities and professions gave us confidence that there is a yearning to explore this language that is born out of a long process of fusion and yet is essentially Indian,” he said.
The Rahman brothers believe that Urdu has a potential to flourish, and made a dedicated app that they claim is more comprehensive than others in the market.
With around 3,000 Humzaaban users and counting, many said they were drawn to the app because of its interactive features and user-friendly design.
“There are very few platforms that focus on Urdu learning … but after looking into Humzaaban app I am very much impressed that someone is taking the effort to increase the availability of Urdu from end to end and (through a) step-by-step journey,” Mohd. Azam, a Delhi-based marketing professional, told Arab News.
“I am very much interested in poetry and all, (and) Urdu has very beautiful words … which inspire me a lot so I want to learn from this app and maybe write some poetry.”
For Sahar Rizvi, who is based in London, the app has been a bridge to reconnect with her roots. After learning Urdu as a child, she lost touch with the language while growing up and had forgotten the basics.
“My father mentioned about the Humzaaban app and it has been awesome to catch up again. It teaches right from the beginning! I often play around with it during my time on the train,” Rizvi said.
“I’m re-learning to read Urdu … It’s a beautiful language and I do want to incorporate it in my daily usage.”
