Ramazan’s encounter with westernisation

The debate about the increasing use of ‘Ramadan’ instead of ‘Ramazan’ took an inevitable turn in the holy...

Now that Ramazan is over, we can reflect on a naming issue that generated much passion over the past month. The debate about the increasing use of ‘Ramadan’ instead of ‘Ramazan’ took an inevitable turn, as discussants proudly claimed or loudly blamed a religious impulse for the phonetic shift from ‘z’ to ‘d’.

Those who found themselves in the position of defending a conscious or unconscious adherence to the new spelling were quick to cite their devotion to the ‘correct’, Quranic pronunciation of Arabic words. And among those who opposed the shift and came out in support of traditional or historical usage, many blamed vague, reviled figures like Zia or the Deobandis for promoting the cause of Arab imperialism in Pakistan. Serious reflection reveals that the villain (or hero) of this particular drama is not Arabic, but English.

Since the colonial period, information about diverse civilisations has surged into the English language. Much literature about Muslim culture has consequently emerged and particular spellings for words of Arabic origin have gained currency. Adoption of a certain spelling does not always result from a careful effort of representing classical Arabic pronunciation; it can be due to the most arbitrary of reasons. For instance, Turkish ‘kismet’ has triumphed in English usage over the Perso-Urdu ‘qismat’ or Arabic ‘qismah’, the phonetically inapt ‘purdah’ has driven out ‘pardah’, and ‘madrassah’, with the superfluous ‘s’, is seen at least as often as the sparer ‘madrasah’.

‘Ramadan’ is another such word. The alternative spelling ‘Ramazan’ — representing the actual pronunciation of the global numerical majority — continues to be seen in English, but while discussing Islamic practices, western scholars and journalists tend to privilege a particular Arabic dialect by opting for ‘Ramadan’. With augmented media focus on Islam and Muslims, the latter spelling can be seen more frequently. In the South Asian context, as use of the English language and script intensifies in the public and private spheres, so does the use of English terms for discussing traditional concepts.

It is only in the past decade with increased use of English and romanised Urdu in mobile text messages, print advertising and the internet that ‘Ramadan’ has become popularised, with the practice being most prevalent among English-using Pakistanis, indicating that the switch is more a function of convention or familiarity than of ideology. Interestingly, many people who have taken to writing ‘Ramadan’ still continue to say ‘Ramazan’.

Teaching O-level Islamiat through English has also played its part in changing Urdu ‘ummat’ to English ‘ummah’, ‘namaz’ to ‘salat’, ‘roza’ to ‘saum’ and ‘wuzu’ to ‘wudu’. For the study of Muslim religiosity, English clearly displays a preference for Arabic over Perso-Urdu terms. And this is what we see reflected in the speech patterns of those whose primary language is now English as opposed to Urdu. While Zakir Naik, as a speaker of English, says ‘Ramadan’, popular personalities of the Urdu media, like Javed Ghamidi, Tahirul Qadri, Farhat Hashmi, Aamir Liaquat and even Junaid Jamshed, say ‘Ramazan’.

When people move words like ‘ummah’ and ‘Ramadan’ into Urdu, they are not further Arabicising Urdu, but are employing globally-used English words within Urdu, speaking ‘Urlish’ having become the norm rather than the exception. Although much noise is made about promotion of Arabic in our society and supporters emphasise their devotion to the language of the Holy Prophet (pbuh) and the Holy Quran, said devotion hardly seems to evolve beyond efforts to read the Holy Quran in accordance with rules of tajwid. It is extremely rare to find people conversing in Arabic with friends or family or being able to read an untranslated book, even after years of living in the Middle East. If devotion alone is the cause of people turning the zwad of Urdu into a dwad, why doesn’t this happen across the board? Why stop at Ramadan? Why not also pronounce ‘maraz’ as ‘marad’, ‘fazl’ as ‘fadl’, ‘ghazab’ as ‘ghadab’ and Iqbal’s Zarb-i Kalim as Darb-i Kalim? After all, besides being of Arabic origin, each of these words is also present in the Holy Qur’an and is, by that token, sacred. However, even if on a purely instinctive level, people are largely still aware that even though these words may be Arabic, in Urdu they are consistently pronounced differently.

In Ramazan, we did hear the occasional television personality speaking Urdu with a painstakingly Arabic accent, mixing up dwads with zwads and affecting stronger swads and extremely guttural ains. This would appear to be an affectation at par with hopeful imitations, in a bid for sophistication, of the newly prestigious American accent by compatriots who may never have had cause to venture near that continent. The subcontinent is not quite new to Arabic, however much people may claim that now that we have done more research (read ‘met Arabs in the flesh’), we know that we spoke incorrectly in the past. Scholars, more learned in classical Arabic than those found among us today, lived here in the distant as well as recent past. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad is one example of a scholar whose mother tongue was Arabic, and who spent a significant part of his childhood in Makkah before coming to live in India. Despite his native knowledge of Arabic, audio recordings do not show him changing his zwads to dwads. The same is true for the late Allamah Rasheed Turabi, Maulana Maududi and Dr Israr Ahmad. They could hardly have remained unaware of the rules of classical Arabic elocution, but this did not impact the way they spoke Urdu.

Rather than excessive exposure to Arabic, the rupture caused by a pronounced inclination for English is the source of the changes we see around us today. Those worried by these globalising influences can rest assured on one point — there is little fear of Pakistan moving towards a name change. The imam conducting taraweeh may frequently have concluded with a prayer for Bakistan’s prosperity, but English already has the letter ‘p’ and Arabic is in the process of following suit and developing a special letter.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 9^th,  2011.