By Hussain
Come Ramzan (Ramadan) and one is pitchforked into the middle of a fierce battle of semantics, not amongst friends or relatives but journalists, ‘commentators’ and the ilk. Most of these eager souls want to vigorously defend you against the grandest of all designs the Wahhabis have on “Indian Muslims” – Ramadan
Until now, the mainstream discourse on Muslims in India has predominantly borrowed phrases from Urdu, the lingua franca of most Muslims in the subcontinent. So you have Khuda Hafiz, Adaab and other phrases that have always been part of Indian Muslim culture and Identified with Muslims, but not Arabic in origin. These phrases originate from Persian and are used mainly in the subcontinent. There are exceptions here – Many Muslims who speak Bengali, Tamil or Malayalam wouldn’t even have heard of Adaab and the like. Likewise, the Arabic word for prayer is salah, not Namaz. Incidentally, the Malayalam word for Muslim prayer is ‘Namaskaram’ (Niskaram is used commonly)– Which I’m sure many Indians will be familiar with :)
Over to Ramzan. Every year, we have India based ‘experts’ pointing out this diabolical conspiracy by “Wahhabis” against “Indian Islam” (Whatever that means) by replacing ‘z’ with a ‘d’. Is it really that bad? Are we on the throes of a total takeover of “Indian Islam”? Let’s have a look: The Arabic ‘dh’ used in the word Ramadan is a uniquely Arabic letter that has no equivalent in any language. It is a bit of a mix between ‘z’ , ‘dh’ and ‘lh’. In Urdu and Farsi, it gets translated as ‘z’, in English as ‘d’ or ‘dh’. In Malayalam and a few South Indian languages such as Beary, it’s usually substituted with ‘lh’ (Pretty much why the Malayalee has no bone in this controversy)
If there’s one factor that commentators have decided to ignore, it’s the fact that the Indian Muslim isn’t immune to the global scene. Social Media seems to have also resulted in the usage of terms that resonate with a global audience. While the month was always referred to as Ramzan in most of the subcontinent, it was not the case in Europe, US South East Asia or the Arab World. Here, the accepted English usage was always ‘Ramadan’, which was supposedly more closer to the original Arabic pronunciation (again, not ‘d’ as in dollar, but ‘dh’ as in dhirham being more appropriate). While Indian Muslims in the Gulf have always been conscious of the pronunciation, many Muslims in India are increasingly using the word that is the global English norm. There would have been no confusion if they had used the Arabic or Urdu script instead of English – they would still have pronounced it the way it has always been. Perhaps the appropriate term to describe the phenomenon is ‘Globalisation’. Not ‘Diabolical Wahhabi Conspiracy’
That said, A puritan streak of Islam has been on the ascendance for sometime in the sub-continent now. Among many, phrases like ‘Khuda Hafiz’ have given way to ‘Allah Hafiz’, a term that is relatively new. Incidentally, ‘Allah Hafiz’ isn’t used anywhere in the Arab world. In fact, it should ideally be Khuda Hafidh as the letter used here isn’t pronounced as ‘z’ in Arabic either. Surely, Conspiratorial Wahhabis should have taken care of that!
To take things to their logical conclusion, Wahhabi Conspirators should have also forced the same Muslims to name their children Riyadh (instead of Riyaz), Adheem (for Azeem), and so on. Obviously, this isn’t happening anytime soon. Is this diabolical, global conspiracy then limited to just ‘Ramadan’? What a waste of time.
Relax and take a deep breath. The Global Indian Muslim has merely arrived. And he’s hardly conspiring against you.
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Hussain tweets at @yehlog
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