Who Owns Urdu? Javed Akhtar, Religion, and the Fight for a Shared Language

The decision by the West Bengal Urdu Academy to postpone Javed Akhtar’s program under religious pressure is yet another blow that deserves lamentation. It undermines the Academy’s credibility and its stated purpose: to promote and preserve the Urdu language. This surrender to the religious bodies represents a failure of institutional responsibility, which is the norm […]