Dhakaiya Urdu

Writing system

Dhakaiya Urdu currently does not have a standardised writing system, as it traditionally formed the diglossic vernacular, with standard Urdu forming the codified lect used for writing. Recently, Dhakaiya Urdu is being written in the Bengali script and also in Urdu Nastaliq script by organisations "Dhakaiya Movement", "Dhakaiya Urdu Zaban" [Dhakaiya Urdu Language]; "Dhakaiya Urdu Learning Centre" and "History of Urdu in Dhaka" aiming to preserve it.

History

The city of Jahangirnagar (now Dhaka) was Bengal Subah's capital in the mid-eighteenth century, and Urdu-speaking Muslim merchants from North India started pouring in. Eventually residing in Dhaka, interactions and relationships with their Bengali counterparts led to the birth of a new Bengali-influenced dialect of Urdu. The descendants of these North Indian settlers came to be known as Khusbas (other names included Sukhbas and Subbas), meaning "the happily settled". The Bais and Bara panchayets used to converse in this dialect. Their Urdu language also influenced the dialect of the Bengali Muslims in Old Dhaka city which came to be known as the Dhakaiya Kutti and vice versa. However, Abdul Momin Chowdhury denied the contribution of Urdu as the source of this language. Because the dialect was not born yet. Sobbasi/Khosbasi is not the name of any language but the adjective and identifies some communities, as referred to by Hakim Habibur Rahman in Dhaka Pachas Baras Pahle.

The late 18th-century in Dhaka hosted the migration of Mirza Jan Tapish and other Urdu poets from Delhi, migrating to the urban hub after an invitation from Shams ad-Daulah, the Naib Nazim of Dhaka. Poetry and literature in Standard Urdu grew in popularity in Dhaka with the presence of organisations such as the Anjuman-i Taraqqi-i Urdu and the patronage of it by Dhaka's Nawabs, Sardars and Zamindars such as Khwaja Abdul Ghani and Mir Ashraf Ali. The 19th-century poet Mirza Ghalib of Agra was a close friend of Dhaka's poet Khwaja Haider Jan Shayek. The collaboration between Ghalib and Shayek was collected and compiled by Hakim Habibur Rahman, a later Urdu poet of Dhaka, in his book Inshaye Shayek. Habibur Rahman was a prominent Dhakaiya physician and litterateur whose most famous books include Asudegan-e-Dhaka and Dhaka Panchas Baras Pahle. He was the editor of Bengal's first Urdu magazine, Al-Mashriq in 1906. He later collaborated with Khwaja Adil in 1924 to found another monthly journal called Jadu. His works are celebrated for preserving Urdu, Persian and Arabic literature, compiling them into his Thulatha Ghusala.

Shortly after the Bengali language movement of 1952, Urdu culture decreased significantly, with many Urdu-speaking families switching to speaking Bengali to avoid controversy. During the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, several Urdu-speaking families subsequently migrated to Pakistan. As a result, the use of Urdu has become very limited to a few families and a community south of the Dhaka railway line. Furthermore, the new nation of Bangladesh deemed their newly founded nation on Bengali culture, which would later alienate the other ethnolinguistic communities of the country.

Often described as a wealthy and closed-off community, speakers of the dialect honour the Dhakaiya Urdu poets of the past in privacy within their mushairas. Other modern examples of usage include the University of Dhaka's dwindling Urdu department as well as the Urdu sermons and Islamic lectures given in Dhaka.

Due to globalization in the culture and entertainment sector, many Hindi words have entered the language today.

Nazir Uddin and Muhammad Shahabuddin Sabu, an associate professor of zoology at Savar Government College, released a Bengali-Dhakaiya Sobbasi bilingual dictionary published by Taqiya Muhammad Publications in 2021. Further, the Dhakaiya Urdu Jaban editorial board published another Bangla to Dhakaiya Urdu in February 2024.

Poets

These Dhakaiya poets wrote in Standard Urdu:

• Mirza Jan Tapish (d. 1814)
• Mahmud Azad
• Ghaffar Akhtar
• Agha Ahmad Ali (1839–1883)
• Ubaidullah Al Ubaidi Suhrawardy (1834–1885)
• Khwaja Ahsanullah (1846–1901)
• Munshi Rahman Ali Tayesh (1823–1908)
• Nawab Syed Muhammad Azad (1850–1916)
• Khwaja Muhammad Afzal (1875–1940)
• Hakim Habibur Rahman (1881–1947)
• Reza Ali Wahshat (1881–1953)
• Syed Sharfuddin Sharf Al Hussaini (1876–1960)

Media

The language flourished in the media during the 20th-century cinema. Khurshid Alam and Sabina Yasmin sang a song, Matiya Hamar Naam, in this dialect for the Bangladeshi film Jibon Niye Jua which released in 1975 after the Independence of Bangladesh.