Why have Mumbai authorities sealed the office of an NGO promoting Urdu and Marathi literature?

For the past 16 years, the non-profit Urdu Markaz has been using a small municipal school classroom in Mumbai’s Bhendi Bazaar area to promote languages and literature. The classroom, leased to the NGO by the city’s municipal corporation in 1999, has been used to conduct English classes for the school’s Urdu-medium students, run a public library and host the events that Urdu Markaz is best known for: public mushairas and literary symposiums to promote not just Urdu but also Marathi literature.

So when local municipal officials locked and sealed Urdu Markaz’s centre on July 29, calling their work “non-educational”, Urdu and Marathi writers across the city were stumped.

The lockdown, says the NGO, came barely two days after they were sent a notice by the civic authorities asking them to vacate their room in Bhendi Bazaar’s Imambara Urdu Municipal School. For the past five weeks, Urdu Markaz has been unable to conduct English classes or access its library books, and is working with local municipal representatives to get their office back.

“We don’t understand why we were not even allowed some time to present our case after the notice was issued,” said Zubair Azmi, the director of Urdu Markaz.

For more than two decades, Mumbai’s municipal corporation had been leasing out under-used municipal school classrooms to a variety of non-profit organisations. Around three years ago, after hundreds of rooms had already been let out, the corporation began issuing notices to NGOs involved in “non-educational” activities, taking its classrooms back from them.

Such notices had been issued to Urdu Markaz twice before – once in 2014 after it organised the first edition of the Bhendi Bazaar Literature Festival, and once in 2015. Both times, the organisation was successfully able to convince the municipal corporation that their work is indeed educational in nature. Ironically, in 2014, the corporation had itself chosen to name the crossroads near the NGO’s office as “Urdu Markaz Chowk”.

“Our English classes are useful to primary school children,” said Azmi, who cannot understand why Urdu Markaz has been targeted. “Our library is regularly used by students of the D.Ed. course in this very school complex. And when we renew our lease every year, the corporation acknowledges us as an educational organisation. We have been doing so much to bridge Urdu and Marathi cultures through literature. Is literary appreciation not a part of education?”

The Urdu-Marathi connection

Many poets and writers who have been regulars at Urdu Markaz events are now wondering the same thing.

Every year, the organisation hosts at least six or seven mushairas (poetry readings), literary debates or symposiums at their centre, featuring a variety of themes and an exchange of ideas between established authors, students and other literature lovers. These events initially focused on reviving the Urdu literary culture that was vibrant in the Bhendi Bazaar of 1950s and ’60s, when acclaimed members of the leftist Progressive Writers’ Movement – like Kaifi Azmi, Sahir Ludhianvi and Majrooh Sultanpuri – lived and wrote in the area.

Eventually, however, Urdu Markaz couldn’t help expanding its mandate to include Marathi. “Even in the 1950s, many Marathi writers like Narayan Surve and Shahir Amar Shaikh – the father-in-law of the famous Dalit poet Namdeo Dhasal – were part of the progressive writers’ movement and attended mushairas with Urdu poets,” said Azmi.

Urdu Markaz now has an Urdu-Marathi Sahitya Forum, which has been celebrating Marathi Divas every year on February 27 to commemorate the birthday of Marathi poet VV Shirwadkar.

“So many noted names in Mumbai’s Marathi literary scene have been attending Urdu Markaz events in the past few years, like Marathi ghazal writers Pratibha Saraf and late Manohar Ranpise,” said Manoj Varade, a Marathi poet and the joint convener of Urdu Markaz.

Now many people are aware, says Varade, that the connection between Marathi and Urdu dates back to the time of the Mughal and Maratha empires of the 17th and 18th century. At the time, several Persian and Urdu words were absorbed into the Marathi language and sometimes, it was the other way around too.

“I think Urdu Markaz is the only platform in Mumbai that is working to bring both Marathi and Urdu together in a space that is meant for all,” said Anupama Ujagare, a Marathi poet and published author who has been participating in Urdu Markaz’s events for the past year. “Everyone gets to learn about the cultures of both languages and we discuss themes ranging from Dalit writing to the influences that languages have on each other.”

Defining education

Officials at the ward office that shut down the Urdu Markaz centre on July 29 were not available for comment, but Rais Shaikh, a Samajwadi Party municipal corporator who represents the Govandi area, told Scroll.in he did not approve of the civic authority’s decision to clamp down on Urdu Markaz.

“I know it has been the corporation’s policy to take back school rooms from NGOs that are not educational, because many NGOs have been misusing the space given to them,” said Shaikh, who is clear that Urdu Markaz does not qualify as non-educational because it offers a unique “bridge” . “Today there are so many unions, international schools, commercial offices, all running out of municipal schools – they should be targeted first.”

Sohail Akhtar, an Urdu poet and author who has been attending Urdu Markaz events for seven years, agrees. “I have learnt so much about Marathi literature and culture in the past few years because of attending symposiums at Urdu Markaz,” said Akhtar. “If they have called this work non-educational, then they are using a very narrow, unacademic definition of education.”