President Droupadi Murmu, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Union Ministers Kiren Rijiju, JP Nadda, Rajya Sabha LoP Mallikarjun Kharge and Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi during the Constitution Day (Samvidhan Divas) celebration, at Samvidhan Sadan in New Delhi on Tuesday. | ANI
Mumbai: Mumbai-based Urdu Markaz, an organisation working for the promotion of Urdu language and literature, wrote to the Speaker of Lok Sabha expressing resentment for neglecting Urdu language in the Constitution Day pledge by the MPs. The organisation said that neglecting the language has hurt sentiments of people as only Urdu was missed out of all the scheduled languages.
On Thursday, Urdu Markaz wrote a letter to the Speaker of Lok Sabha marking its protest against neglect of Urdu language from the pledge ceremony in the parliament on occasion of Constitution Day on Tuesday. The organisation has alleged that out of all the languages listed under the eighth schedule of the constitution, only Urdu was missed out in the pledge-taking ceremony.
“The language which gave the slogan of Inquilab Zindabad in the national freedom struggle, it was a couplet written in Urdu. To the utter dismay and anger of all the Urdu loving citizens of this great country, Urdu language has been neglected in the pledge by MPs in the parliament on the Constitution Day. We request the Speaker to take cognizance of this incident and act accordingly,” read the letter.
The pledge was taken by the MPs on occasion of Constitution Day and was attended by President Droupadi Murmu, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Speaker Om Birla, cabinet ministers and MPs. Urdu Markaz alleged that the copies of constitution’s preamble, to be pledged upon, were translated in all the languages except Urdu.
Zubair Azmi, founder of Urdu Markaz, said, “There is a disappointment within the Urdu speaking community as negligence of this beautiful language has hurt the sentiments of many people across the country. We respect every language listed as official language and even those which are unlisted but a language like Urdu which is listed in the constitution should not have been missed out.”