BBC presenter Aliya Nazki mispronounces 'Brahmaputra' as 'Bhramaputra' at 10:02 min. in this BBC Urdu newscast called ‘Sairbeen’.
This woman had part of her education in Delhi and has lived elsewhere in India!!
The mispronunciation may be inadvertent, but it seems that the controllers of Urdu language in the Indian subcontinent not only continue their chauvinistic eschewal of Hindi teaching and learning (i.e. in Pakistan), but continue with the practice of colloquializing the pronunciation of almost all Sanskrit-origin Hindi words that are used in Urdu.
That is despite the fact the majority of 'Urdu speakers' in the region, especially in India, are now better socialized and educated in Hindi than in Urdu.
For example, they continue, like silly poseurs, to pronounce 'prachaar' as 'parchaar', 'bhram' as 'bharam', 'var' as 'bar', 'graahak' as 'gaahak', 'vyaapaari' as byopaari', and 'grahasti' as 'garhasti'.
This cultivated avoidance of Hindi has pushed the institutionalized use of Urdu on to the path of hopeless Arabization and Persianization.
This institutionalized usage is already alienated from the soul of a language born in India.
Mispronunciation of Sanskrit-origin words is just one aspect of a larger picture; there is also deliberate misunderstanding of the meanings of those words.
The controllers of Urdu language thus knowingly continue with a pretense -- of misrepresentation and misunderstanding of an entire culture.
It's a cultivated misrepresentation and misunderstanding.
The fact is that Urdu has long come to be the tool of Islamic correctitude and imperialism in the Indian subcontinent.
It's the subtle and unsubtle means of acculturation to 'ideal Muslimhood' in the subcontinent, which is why a huge number of Muslims from not just northern parts of India but also eastern, western and southern parts tend to claim, quite counterfactually and unreasonably, that they are Urdu speakers, even if they can't manage even a smattering of idiomatic Hindustani.
For example, I have long heard the so called "Bihari Muslims" -- a number of whom continue to be stuck in Bangladesh and allegedly being discriminated against -- being described as "Urdu speakers", which is a laughable claim.
These so called "Bihari Muslims" hardly speak any Urdu that will satisfy even a primary teacher in a Madrasa.
The fact is that they speak the languages of the cultural areas (or anchals) they hail from, such as Bhojpuri, Maithili, etc.
Only a very small fraction of the "educated" Bihari Muslims can be said to have some knowledge of Urdu.
And the Bihari Muslims stuck in Bangladesh seem to have long forgotten whatever little Urdu they allegedly possessed once.
In a BBC report I checked on YouTube, even a young Muslim in Bangladesh whose family hailed from Odisha described himself as a "Urdu speaker" while he could hardly manage a sentence.
Why on earth?
The answer lies in Urdu's role as a language of Islamic imperialism and ethnocide, which resulted -- in the first place -- in the suppression of Banglahood, perceived by Islamic imperialists of the subcontinent as hardly 'Islamic' because of being too deeply rooted in Sanskritic culture.
The same mentality of Islamic imperialism works elsewhere in the subcontinent, especially in Pakistan (i.e. Punjab, Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan) which was never an Urdu-speaking area beyond the limited sphere of some 'educated' people in Lahore and a few other places.
The use of Urdu as an imperialist tool is a manifestation of an Islamism that India has bred and nurtured for a very long time.
The story of this Islamism in all its lurid detail has never been allowed to be told in India in a language that people will understand.
I believe India had become the number one Islamist country in the world in the 19th century, thanks to Deoband, Barelvi, and a host of other Islamic madrasas in the area that's part of present-day Uttar Pradesh.
India-bred Islamism later influenced - and continues to influence - the foreign lands through organizations like the Tablighi Jamaat.
Taliban, for instance, who established the most medieval form of Islamic state in recent memory, were brought up as jihadis by Deobandi mullahs in Pakistan.
Needless to say home-grown Islamism created the conditions that culminated in the demand for a separate state for Muslims in India.
Based on whatever little I know about Islam, I don't understand what merit people find in attributing Islamic "radicalisation" to one form of Islam or another, such as Wahhabi, Deobandi and Barelvi.
Such hairsplitting is unneeded. Islam by the book – i.e. Islam by Quran and Sunnah (Mohammad’s utterances and deeds as borne out by collections of oral reports or Hadith) -- is lethal and ethnocidal, whatever label is given to it.
It's as simple as that.
I have not so far been able to gather anything that will explain to me as to how Deobandi is different from Wahhabi and how that difference, if any, affects Islam's baleful impact on human societies.
Mumtaz Qadri, who murdered Punjab governor Salman Taseer in January 2011 for an idiotic reason, was a Barelvi, which is supposedly a milder form of Islam.
So Islam is Islam. Its fundamentals are guaranteed to unbalance people who delve into them.
It's also a lie to claim that the so called 'Sufism' (whatever wishy-washy things it means to various people) flows from Islam.
I don't think Islam by the book allows any freethinking, free seeking and syncretism.
Whatever freethinking, free seeking and syncretism happens, it happens as a cultural phenomenon; it happens despite Islam, not because of Islam.
Syncretism, by the way, is a crucial concept.
Islam - like Christianity - rejects and execrates syncretism by rejecting and execrating 'Shirk' which means including others in the unique status of one and only Allah who is comprehensible only and only through a long dead person called Muhammad.
--------
The following Web-links have been used in this post in the order of occurrence.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g96KkpwV7h8
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0MGSZQlKhA&pbjreload=10
3. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/29/pakistan-hangs-mumtaz-qadri-who-killed-blasphemy-law-governor
This woman had part of her education in Delhi and has lived elsewhere in India!!
The mispronunciation may be inadvertent, but it seems that the controllers of Urdu language in the Indian subcontinent not only continue their chauvinistic eschewal of Hindi teaching and learning (i.e. in Pakistan), but continue with the practice of colloquializing the pronunciation of almost all Sanskrit-origin Hindi words that are used in Urdu.
That is despite the fact the majority of 'Urdu speakers' in the region, especially in India, are now better socialized and educated in Hindi than in Urdu.
For example, they continue, like silly poseurs, to pronounce 'prachaar' as 'parchaar', 'bhram' as 'bharam', 'var' as 'bar', 'graahak' as 'gaahak', 'vyaapaari' as byopaari', and 'grahasti' as 'garhasti'.
This cultivated avoidance of Hindi has pushed the institutionalized use of Urdu on to the path of hopeless Arabization and Persianization.
This institutionalized usage is already alienated from the soul of a language born in India.
Mispronunciation of Sanskrit-origin words is just one aspect of a larger picture; there is also deliberate misunderstanding of the meanings of those words.
The controllers of Urdu language thus knowingly continue with a pretense -- of misrepresentation and misunderstanding of an entire culture.
It's a cultivated misrepresentation and misunderstanding.
The fact is that Urdu has long come to be the tool of Islamic correctitude and imperialism in the Indian subcontinent.
It's the subtle and unsubtle means of acculturation to 'ideal Muslimhood' in the subcontinent, which is why a huge number of Muslims from not just northern parts of India but also eastern, western and southern parts tend to claim, quite counterfactually and unreasonably, that they are Urdu speakers, even if they can't manage even a smattering of idiomatic Hindustani.
For example, I have long heard the so called "Bihari Muslims" -- a number of whom continue to be stuck in Bangladesh and allegedly being discriminated against -- being described as "Urdu speakers", which is a laughable claim.
These so called "Bihari Muslims" hardly speak any Urdu that will satisfy even a primary teacher in a Madrasa.
The fact is that they speak the languages of the cultural areas (or anchals) they hail from, such as Bhojpuri, Maithili, etc.
Only a very small fraction of the "educated" Bihari Muslims can be said to have some knowledge of Urdu.
And the Bihari Muslims stuck in Bangladesh seem to have long forgotten whatever little Urdu they allegedly possessed once.
In a BBC report I checked on YouTube, even a young Muslim in Bangladesh whose family hailed from Odisha described himself as a "Urdu speaker" while he could hardly manage a sentence.
Why on earth?
The answer lies in Urdu's role as a language of Islamic imperialism and ethnocide, which resulted -- in the first place -- in the suppression of Banglahood, perceived by Islamic imperialists of the subcontinent as hardly 'Islamic' because of being too deeply rooted in Sanskritic culture.
The same mentality of Islamic imperialism works elsewhere in the subcontinent, especially in Pakistan (i.e. Punjab, Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan) which was never an Urdu-speaking area beyond the limited sphere of some 'educated' people in Lahore and a few other places.
The use of Urdu as an imperialist tool is a manifestation of an Islamism that India has bred and nurtured for a very long time.
The story of this Islamism in all its lurid detail has never been allowed to be told in India in a language that people will understand.
I believe India had become the number one Islamist country in the world in the 19th century, thanks to Deoband, Barelvi, and a host of other Islamic madrasas in the area that's part of present-day Uttar Pradesh.
India-bred Islamism later influenced - and continues to influence - the foreign lands through organizations like the Tablighi Jamaat.
Taliban, for instance, who established the most medieval form of Islamic state in recent memory, were brought up as jihadis by Deobandi mullahs in Pakistan.
Needless to say home-grown Islamism created the conditions that culminated in the demand for a separate state for Muslims in India.
Based on whatever little I know about Islam, I don't understand what merit people find in attributing Islamic "radicalisation" to one form of Islam or another, such as Wahhabi, Deobandi and Barelvi.
Such hairsplitting is unneeded. Islam by the book – i.e. Islam by Quran and Sunnah (Mohammad’s utterances and deeds as borne out by collections of oral reports or Hadith) -- is lethal and ethnocidal, whatever label is given to it.
It's as simple as that.
I have not so far been able to gather anything that will explain to me as to how Deobandi is different from Wahhabi and how that difference, if any, affects Islam's baleful impact on human societies.
Mumtaz Qadri, who murdered Punjab governor Salman Taseer in January 2011 for an idiotic reason, was a Barelvi, which is supposedly a milder form of Islam.
So Islam is Islam. Its fundamentals are guaranteed to unbalance people who delve into them.
It's also a lie to claim that the so called 'Sufism' (whatever wishy-washy things it means to various people) flows from Islam.
I don't think Islam by the book allows any freethinking, free seeking and syncretism.
Whatever freethinking, free seeking and syncretism happens, it happens as a cultural phenomenon; it happens despite Islam, not because of Islam.
Syncretism, by the way, is a crucial concept.
Islam - like Christianity - rejects and execrates syncretism by rejecting and execrating 'Shirk' which means including others in the unique status of one and only Allah who is comprehensible only and only through a long dead person called Muhammad.
--------
The following Web-links have been used in this post in the order of occurrence.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g96KkpwV7h8
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0MGSZQlKhA&pbjreload=10
3. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/29/pakistan-hangs-mumtaz-qadri-who-killed-blasphemy-law-governor