Urdu’s Origins Revisited: Vali Dakhani’s Reception in Multilingual South Asia

FAIN: RZ-286795-22

University of Washington (Seattle, WA 98195-1016)
Purnima Dhavan (Project Director: November 2021 to present)

Completion of a co-authored manuscript on the origins and development of Urdu, an important language spoken primarily in India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

We are applying to the NEH Collaborative Research Grant (Manuscript Preparation) to complete our co-authored book, Urdu’s Origins Revisited: Vali Dakhani’s Reception in Multilingual South Asia. 100 million Urdu speakers are present in South Asia and a global diaspora today. Many are unable to read it but understand its spoken form. Urdu’s origins, misrepresented by colonial scholars as coming solely from elite Muslim networks, were also miscast in late nationalist histories. Urdu’s publics remain fragmented today. Our research places early Urdu texts in a broader historical and multilingual context. We offer concrete evidence for the circulation of Urdu across diverse communities. The resulting manuscript intervenes in the humanities debate about the relationship between cosmopolitan and vernacular cultures. We argue that cosmopolitanisms are influenced, accessed, and mediated by local networks and constantly change. Our work also seeks to broaden the Urdu canon.