Geographical distribution of Urdu speakers

Geographical distribution of Urdu speakers
اہلِ زبانِ اردو
The phrase Zuban-e-Urdu-e-Mualla or "Language of the Exalted Camp"
Total population
68.62 million[1] (2019)
Regions with significant populations
India (diasporic Urdu Belt, a regional belt that consists of Hindi-Urdu belt states, many speakers live in various cities in Deccan Plateau)
Pakistan (Muhajirs in Karachi, Hyderabad & mainly across large cities in Sindh and other large Pakistani cities)
Nepal (Terai region)
Bangladesh (diasporic Urdu-speaking Bihari communities, also known as Stranded Pakistanis, live throughout Bangladesh, particularly in Saidpur, Nilphamari, Mohammadpur and Old Dhaka)
India50,772,631 (2011)[2]
Pakistan22,249,307 (2023)[3]
  Nepal413,785 (2021)[4]
United States397,502 (2013)[5]
Bangladesh300,000 (2011)[6][7]
United Kingdom270,000 (2011)[8]
Canada210,815 (2016)[9]
Australia69,131 (2016)[10]
Languages
Urdu
Religion
Islam, Hinduism, small minority Christianity and Judaism
  • ^a The figure for Pakistan includes only first language Urdu-speakers, known as Muhajirs, and not other ethnic groups of Pakistan who may fluently speak Urdu as a first or second language, numbering up to an additional 94 million.[11]

Native speakers of Urdu are spread across South Asia.[note 1][12][13] The vast majority of them are Muslims of the Hindi–Urdu Belt of northern India,[note 2][14][15][16] followed by the Deccani people of the Deccan plateau in south-central India (who speak Deccani Urdu), and most of the Muhajir people of Pakistan and some stranded Pakistani communities in Bangladesh.[17][18][19] The historical centres of Urdu speakers include Delhi and Lucknow.[20][21] Another defunct variety of the language was historically spoken in Lahore for centuries before the name "Urdu" first began to appear. However, little is known about this defunct Lahori variety as it has not been spoken for centuries.[22][11]

History

From the early Muslim kingdoms developed Indian Muslim clan-groups who were well-rooted social groups that acted as warrior lineages providing court officers and military soldiers. These evolving communities or tribes played a key role in providing a local Muslim leadership.[23] The language developed at the time of Sultans of Dehli due to the mixture of people, likely to be soldiers, from Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Afghan and Indian background.

Mughal Empire

As early as 1689, Europeans used the label "Moors dialect", which simply meant "Muslim",[24] to describe Urdu, the language associated with the Muslims in North India,[25] such as John Ovington, who visited India during the reign of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb:[26]

The language of the Moors is different from that of the ancient original inhabitants of India, but is oblig'd to these Gentiles for its characters. For though the Moors dialect is peculiar to themselves, yet it is destitute of Letters to express it; and therefore in all their Writings in their Mother Tongue, they borrow their letters from the Heathens, or from the Persians, or other Nations.

Fall of the Mughal Empire

The Upper Doab and Rohilkhand was dominated by a literate and homogenous elite, who embraced a distinctive Indo-Persian style of culture. This service gentry, performing both clerical and military service for the Mughal empire and its successor states, provided cultural and literary patronage that continued, even after the political decline, to act as preservers of Indo-Persian traditions and values.[27]

  • Cavalry in the Durbar Procession of Mughal Emperor Akbar II (r. 1806–1837) under British rule
  • Regiment of Skinner's Horse returning from a General Review, 1828
  • Officer of Col Gardiner’s irregular Cavalry, "drawn mainly from Muslism from Hindoostan"[28]
  • Sowar of the Rohilla Horse, 1815

The end of Muslim rule saw a large number of unemployed Indian Muslim horsemen, who were employed in the army of the East India Company.[29] Thus 75% of the cavalry branch of the British army was composed of a social group referred to as the "Hindustani Mahomedans". This included Indian Muslim Baradaris of the Urdu-Hindustani Belt such as the Ranghar (Rajput Muslims), Sheikhs, Sayyids, Mughals, and Indianized Pathans.[30][31] British officers such as Skinner, Gardner and Hearsay had become leaders of irregular cavalry that preserved the traditions of Mughal cavalry, which had a political purpose because it absorbed pockets of cavalrymen who might otherwise become disaffected plunderers.[32] The Governor-general insisted that it was incumbent upon the British to "give military employment" to various north Indian Muslim soldiers, particularly those "formerly engaged in military service of the Native powers".[33] The lingua franca spoken in the army was a form of Urdu referred to in colonial usage as "military Hindustani".[34]

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was initiated by the 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry in Meerut, which was composed mainly of Indian Muslims.[35] The mutineers made for Delhi, where its garrison revolted, massacring its British population, and installed Bahadur Shah Zafar as its nominal leader. The spread of the word that the British had been expelled from Delhi, interpreted as the breakdown of British authority, acted as a catalyst for mutiny as well as revolt. Regiments in other parts of northern India only revolted after Delhi had fallen.[36] British characterisations of Muslims as fanatics took the fore during and after the Great Rebellion, as well as produced the Indian Muslims as a unified, cogent group, who were easily agitated, aggressive, and inherently disloyal.[37]

Urdu nationalism

See also: Urdu movement

Even in later days, the same clans were dominant groups in the associations in the defence of Urdu and district Muslim Leagues which were among the first forays of Muslims into electoral and pressure-group politics.[38] In the 19th century, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and his followers such as Mohsin-ul-Mulk further advocated for the adoption of Urdu as the language of Indian Muslims, and led organisations such as the Anjuman-i Taraqqi-i Urdu and Urdu Defence Association, which won popular support in the Aligarh Movement and the Deoband Movement.[39] It was made the official language of British India in 1825 and got large opposition from the Hindus and thus sparking the Hindi-Urdu controversy in 1867. This resulted in Sir Syed's Two Nation Theory in 1868. The Urdu language was used in the emergence of a political Muslim self-consciousness.[40] Syed Ahmed Khan converted the existing cultural and religious entity among Indian Muslims into a separatist political force, throwing a Western cloak of nationalism over the Islamic concept of culture. Furthermore, in 2008 Syed Nadeem Ahmed brought forward the idea of Urdu Nationalism by presenting his idea of an "Urdu Qaum" based on Urdu language and culture. The distinct sense of value, culture and tradition among Indian Muslims originated from the nature of Islamification of the Indian populace during the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent.[41]

Demographics

Although the majority of Urdu-speakers reside in Pakistan (including 30 million native speakers,[19] and up to 94 million second-language speakers),[11] where Urdu is the national and official language, most speakers who use Urdu as their native tongue live in northern India, where it is one of 22 official languages.[42]

The Urdu-speaking community is also present in other parts of the subcontinent with a historical Muslim presence, such as the Deccanis, the Biharis[18] and Dhakaiyas (who speak Dhakaiya Urdu) in Bangladesh,[43] the Urdu-speaking members of the Madheshi community in Nepal,[44] some Muslims in Sri Lanka[45] and a section of Burmese Indians.[46]

In addition, there are Urdu-speakers present among the South Asian diaspora, most notably in the Middle East,[47] North America (notably the United States and Canada),[47][48] Europe (notably the United Kingdom),[49] the Caribbean region,[49] Africa (notably South Africa and Mauritius),[49] Southeast Asia (notably Singapore)[50] and Oceania (notably Australia[10] and Fiji).[49]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Urdu" does not broadly refer to the Hindustani language, but merely the literary-register (or style) of the macrolanguage self-identified as a spoken language predominantly by Muslims in South Asia, hence accounting Modern Standard Hindi as a separate entity statistically.
  2. ^ During early days of British India, North Indian people of many faiths, including Hindus, self-identified as Urdu-speakers prior to the mid-19th century, after which they self-identified as Hindi-speakers.

References

  1. ^ Urdu at Ethnologue (22nd ed., 2019)
  2. ^ "Census of India 2011: Language" (PDF). Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India. 2011. Retrieved 28 May 2020.
  3. ^ "Population by mother tongue, sex and rural/urban, Census-2023" (PDF). pbs.gov.pk.
  4. ^ National Statistics Office (2021). National Population and Housing Census 2021, Caste/Ethnicity Report. Government of Nepal (Report).
  5. ^ "Detailed Languages Spoken at Home and Ability to Speak English for the Population 5 Years and Over for United States: 2009-2013".
  6. ^ "Bangladesh: Urdu-Speaking "Biharis" Seek Recognition, Respect and Rights". International Republican Institute. 4 February 2021. Archived from the original on 26 September 2022. Retrieved 26 September 2022.
  7. ^ "Urdu-speaking people in Bangladesh seek land ownership for rehabilitation". New Age. 20 June 2025. Retrieved 21 June 2025.
  8. ^ "2011 Census: Quick Statistics". Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 11 April 2015.
  9. ^ "Census Profile, 2016 Census, Canada". Government of Canada, Statistics Canada. 8 February 2017. Retrieved 6 October 2020.
  10. ^ a b Ali, Waqar (23 November 2018). "Find out how many people speak Urdu in your suburb". SBS News. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  11. ^ a b c Čedomir Nestorović (28 May 2016). Islamic Marketing: Understanding the Socio-Economic, Cultural, and Politico-Legal Environment. Springer. pp. 142–. ISBN 978-3-319-32754-9.
  12. ^ Joseph, Ammu (2004). Just Between Us: Women Speak about Their Writing. Women's World, India. ISBN 978-81-88965-15-1.
  13. ^ Mir, Raza (15 June 2014). The Taste of Words: An Introduction to Urdu Poetry. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-93-5118-725-7.
  14. ^ Roy, Arundhati (1 September 2020). Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction. Haymarket Books. ISBN 978-1-64259-380-8. The language known variously as Urdu/Hindi/Hindustani, and in an earlier era, Hindavi, was born on the streets and in the bazaars of North India. Khari Boli, spoken in and around Delhi and what is now western Uttar Pradesh, is the base language of which the Persian lexicon came to be added. Urdu, written in the Persian-Arabic script, was spoken by Hindus and Muslims across North India and the Deccan Plateau. ... The partitioning orf Urdu began in earnest in the second half of the nineteenth century, after the failed 1857 Ware of Independence (known to the British as the Mutiny), when India ceased to be merely an asset of the East India Company.
  15. ^ Ginsburgh, V.; Weber, S. (8 April 2016). The Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language. Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-32505-1. Urdu is a stylized version of the colloquial language spoken by both Muslims and Hindus in what is now central north India.
  16. ^ Farooqi, M. (2012). Urdu Literary Culture: Vernacular Modernity in the Writing of Muhammad Hasan Askari. Springer. ISBN 978-1-137-02692-7. Historically speaking, Urdu grew out of interaction between Hindus and Muslims. He noted that Urdu is not the language of Muslims alone, although Muslims may have played a larger role in making it a literary language. Hindu poets and writers could and did bring specifically Hindu cultural elements into Urdu and these were accepted.
  17. ^ "New Bangladesh Report Reveals Priorities of the Bihari Minority". International Republican Institute. 11 February 2020. Archived from the original on 26 September 2022. Retrieved 23 June 2025.
  18. ^ a b Claire Alexander; Joya Chatterji; Annu Jalais (6 November 2015). The Bengal Diaspora: Rethinking Muslim migration. Routledge. pp. 96–. ISBN 978-1-317-33593-1.
  19. ^ a b Carl Skutsch (7 November 2013). Encyclopedia of the World's Minorities. Taylor & Francis. pp. 2234–. ISBN 978-1-135-19395-9.
  20. ^ Schmidt, Ruth Laila (8 December 2005). Urdu: An Essential Grammar. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-71319-6. Historically, Urdu developed from the sub-regional language of the Delhi area, which became a literary language in the eighteenth century. Two quite similar standard forms of the language developed in Delhi, and in Lucknow in modern Uttar Pradesh. Since 1947, a third form, Karachi standard Urdu, has evolved.
  21. ^ Mahapatra, B. P. (1989). Constitutional languages. Presses Université Laval. p. 553. ISBN 978-2-7637-7186-1. Modern Urdu is a fairly homogenous language. An older southern form, Deccani Urdu, is now obsolete. Two varieties however, must be mentioned viz. The Urdu of Delhi, and the Urdu of Lucknow. Both are almost identical, differing only in some minor points. Both of these varieties are considered 'Standard Urdu' with some minor divergences.
  22. ^ Brian Spooner; William L. Hanaway, eds. (19 March 2012). Literacy in the Persian World: Writing and Social Order. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. p. 296. ISBN 978-1934536568.
  23. ^ C.A. Bayly (2012). Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars:North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion: 1770–1870. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-908873-7.
  24. ^ sir Richard Francis Burton, Luis Vaz de Camoens (1881). Camoens: his life and his Lusiads, a commentary: Volume 2. Oxford University. p. 573.
  25. ^ Henk W. Wagenaar; S. S. Parikh; D. F. Plukker; R. Veldhuijzen van Zanten (1993). Allied Chambers transliterated Hindi-Hindi-English dictionary. Allied Publishers. ISBN 9788186062104.
  26. ^ John Ovington (1994). A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689. Asian Educational Services. p. 147.
  27. ^ Sandria B. Freitag (1989). Collective Action and Community Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India. University of California Press. p. 104. ISBN 9780520064393.
  28. ^ Narindar Saroop (1983). Gardner of Gardner's Horse, 2nd Lancers, Indian Army. Abhinav Publications. p. 67.
  29. ^ Kim A. Wagner (2009). Stranglers and Bandits: A Historical Anthology of Thuggee. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-569815-2.
  30. ^ Sumit Walia (2021). Unbattled Fears: Reckoning the National Security. Lancer Publishers. p. 125. ISBN 9788170623311.
  31. ^ Calcutta Review 1956. University of Calcutta. 1956. p. 38.
  32. ^ Christopher Alan Bayly, C. A. Bayly (1996). Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521663601.
  33. ^ Joseph Sramek (2011). Gender, Morality, and Race in Company India, 1765-1858. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230337626.
  34. ^ Nile Green (2009). Islam and the Army in Colonial India. Cambridge University Press. p. 143. ISBN 9780521898454.
  35. ^ Ikram ul-Majeed Sehgal (2002). Defence Journal:Volume 5, Issues 9-12. University of Michigan. p. 37.
  36. ^ Rudrangshu Mukherjee (2002). Awadh in Revolt, 1857-1858:A Study of Popular Resistance. Permanent Black. p. 65. ISBN 9788178240275.
  37. ^ Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst (2017). Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 46. ISBN 9781786732378.
  38. ^ C.A. Bayly (2012). Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion: 1770–1870.
  39. ^ R. Upadhyay. "Urdu Controversy – is dividing the nation further". South Asia Analysis Group. Archived from the original on 11 March 2007.
  40. ^ Richard V. Weekes (1984). Muslim Peoples: Maba. Greenwood Press. p. 826. ISBN 9780313246401.
  41. ^ Viśva Mohana Pāṇḍeya (2003). Historiography of India's Partition: An Analysis of Imperialist Writings. Atlantic Publishers & Distributors. p. 26. ISBN 9788126903146.
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  43. ^ Redclift, Victoria (26 June 2013). Statelessness and Citizenship: Camps and the Creation of Political Space. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-22032-6.
  44. ^ "Madhesh". Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. 2020. Retrieved 16 July 2020.
  45. ^ Mahroof, M.M.M. (1992). "Urdu in Sri Lanka: Socio-Linguistics of a Minority Language". Islamic Studies. 31 (2): 185–201. JSTOR 20840072.
  46. ^ Jayati Bhattacharya; Coonoor Kripalani (1 March 2015). Indian and Chinese Immigrant Communities: Comparative Perspectives. Anthem Press. pp. 9, 121–. ISBN 978-1-78308-447-0.
  47. ^ a b Ruth Laila Schmidt (8 December 2005). Urdu: An Essential Grammar. Routledge. pp. 23–. ISBN 1-134-71320-7.
  48. ^ Karen Isaksen Leonard (2007). Locating Home: India's Hyderabadis Abroad. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-5442-2.
  49. ^ a b c d Tej K Bhatia; Ashok Koul (10 November 2005). Colloquial Urdu: The Complete Course for Beginners. Routledge. pp. 1–. ISBN 978-1-134-77970-3.
  50. ^ Torsten Tschacher (10 November 2017). Race, Religion, and the 'Indian Muslim' Predicament in Singapore. Taylor & Francis. pp. 235–. ISBN 978-1-315-30337-6.
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