MILLIA DASGUPTA
The mother tongue of many Middle Eastern countries, Arabic has deep roots in Indian art and culture. These roots extend to India's most significant soft power, Bollywood. This link exists as a silver lining in the clouds of strife. The article will explore how Arabic language transcended geographic and political boundaries to make its home in our Netflix queues and our Spotify playlists.
The story of Arabic integration with Indian languages starts with the Arabic sailors who arrived at India's ports looking for a business. Due to continuous trade relationships, Indians and Arabian traders were well acquainted with each other's language and even started to use a few phrases. A century later, Muhammad bin Qasim al-Thaqafi, an Arab-Muslim commander, conquered the Indian province of Sindh. When he established his empire, Arab Muslims started to settle, and Indians in his province began to convert to Islam. Indians who practised Islam developed a very personal relationship with Arabic through Islamic faith and scripture. However, even after capturing the western province of Sindh, Arab Muslims were unable to spread their political influence anywhere else[1]. Arabic was limited to the western province, but the locals continued to use variations of their languages with Arabic influence.
Arabic continued its journey of gaining an Islamic identity through centuries of Mughal, Hindu, and British rule. Various Muslim rulers such as the Sultans in Gujarat and the Bahmani and Adil-Shahis in the Deccan would preserve and sustain this language through the patronage of Arabic Islamic scholars [2]. After Partition and Independence, Pakistan and Bangladesh developed the Arabic language in their ways. In India, the Arabic language continued to persist through various dialects and was preserved through Islamic faith and scriptures. The language which was influenced the most was Urdu. Languages such as Hindi, Gujarati and Marathi also have Arabic influence. Words such as waqt (time), khabar (news) and dunya (world) with Arabic origin are still used to this day. Urdu would soon become one of the foundational languages of Bollywood.
Bollywood was born in multilingual Bombay during the 1930s by its founding father Dadasaheb Phalke. Before examining Arabic influence in Bollywood, we foremost need to track the influence of Urdu. While Urdu is not solely made up of Arabic origin words, the latter's impact on it is significant. When sound technology became more advanced in Bollywood cinema, the language chosen to be used was Hindustani, a refined mix of Hindi and Urdu. Other languages also played an essential role in the evolution of Bollywood [3] going back to its long-held legacy of giving a platform to people from multiple ethnic backgrounds. As a result of the diverse ethnic background of the people of Bollywood, writers fluent in Urdu were also in high demand. Urdu was seen as the language of lyrics and poetry, while Hindi was seen as the language of dialogue. This ideology can be seen in Ram Aur Shyam (1967), where Ram, who was middle class and educated, pronounced Hindi using Urdu phonetics while Shyam, who was the rustic character, would deliver dialogues using Hindi phonetics[4]. Urdu was a very finessed language, its vocabulary matching poetic rhythm and meter very well. It had a rich history of music and poetry that spanned back to the Mughal empire.
The first Bollywood Talkie, 'Alam Ara' (1931), was in Urdu, and its success brought many Urdu scriptwriters and lyricists to Mumbai. In films such as Mr X in Bombay (1964), words such as Qurbani (sacrifice) and jaan (life) were used, which are Urdu words of Arabic origin. Court scenes in Bollywood shows would use variations of Urdu with high Arabic influence [5]. Many Urdu poets and playwrights found their place in Hindi cinema, and many admitted that after partition, the only part of India which has kept Urdu alive is Indian cinema. Poets like Kaifi Azmi, Javed Akhtar and Gulzar have conserved Urdu poetry. Additionally, composers such as R.D Burman and A.R Rahman were influenced by Arabian music and have maintained Arabic influence in Bollywood.
There has been a significant decline of Arabian influence and Urdu being used in mainstream Bollywood movies in recent times. However, putting aside the western or global cultural shift in Bollywood, Urdu can still be seen being used in lyrics and historical films. Examples are music from Rockstar (2011), Bajirao Mastani (2015) and A Suitable Boy (2020). Instances of Arabic words abound too, most notably in the famous song "Mayya Mayya" by A. R. Rahman. Mayya is a play on the Saudi Arabian word 'moya', which means water. It is said that A.R Rahman learned this word from an Arabic person while he was performing Haj in the Makkah [6].
In today's day and age, when politics has polarized every aspect of one's life, it is interesting and to some extent comforting to know that when people re-watch Pakeezah (1972) or sing along to 'Kun Faya Kun' from Rockstar, they are speaking in the same language of not only our brothers and sisters from beyond our borders but also of those starry-eyed sailors who docked at our ports all those centuries ago.
The views expressed and suggestions made in the articles are solely of the authors in their personal capacity and the Center for Middle East Studies and O.P. Jindal Global University do not endorse the same.
[1] Qutbuddin, Tahera. “Arabic in India: A Survey and Classification of Its Uses, Compared with Persian.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 127, no. 3, 2007, pp. 315–338. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20297278. Accessed 14 Feb. 2021.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ganti, Tejaswini. ‘No One Thinks in Hindi Here’: Language Hierarchies in Bollywood.” Precarious Creativity, 2019, pp. 118–131., doi:10.1525/9780520964808-011.
[4] Ahmad, Rizwan. (2018). Urdu in Bollywood.
[5] Ahmad, Rizwan. “My Name Is Khan… from the Epiglottis: Changing Linguistic Norms in Bollywood Songs.” South Asian Popular Culture, vol. 16, no. 1, 2018, pp. 51–69., doi:10.1080/14746689.2018.1497600.
[6] Ahmad, Rizwan, et al. “Waqt, Chaawal and Bollywood - the Deep Relationship between Indians and Arabs.” ThePrint, 2 Dec. 2018, theprint.in/opinion/waqt-chaawal-and-bollywood-the-deep-relationship-between-indians-and-arabs/157481/.