“Where did this Urdu-speaking white guy come from?” (or, in most Indian contexts, Hindi-speaking) is a question I hear pretty frequently. It’s a legitimate one, and arguably better for everyone ...

KARACHI: The 17th Hamza Wahid Memorial Lecture organised by Irtiqa Institute of Social Sciences at PMA House on Wednesday had scholar and award-winning author Dr Fahmida Hussain Memon looking at the ...

Urdu is a misfortunate language but it is also one of the most flexible languages, said scholar Arfa Sayeda Zehra, who explained how the language has whole heartedly merged words from different ...

KARACHI: Apple implemented the Urdu language keyboard across mobile devices in its iOS 8 update in mid-September. But persistence of a few Urdu speakers has now forced the IT giant to consider ...

Gopi Chand Narang, the Urdu literary critic, thinker, and linguist, died in the United States on June 15 at the age of 91. He was a versatile scholar whose research work dominated the Urdu literary ...

This month, Pakistani author Musharraf Ali Farooqi launched a new publishing house, Kitab, to promote Urdu literature among children in Pakistan. He tells Kareena N Gianani about why Urdu writing for ...

Urdu, of late, considered as a redundant language, almost on oxygen, has been revived and rejuvenated by the soft spoken and self-effacing Sanjiv Saraf through Rekhta, a foundation for the uplift of ...

The world’s largest repository of Urdu books is the brainchild of Sanjiv Saraf, the man behind India’s first and largest Urdu festival Jashn-e-Rekhta, who took it upon himself to collect and digitise ...

It’s on a Tuesday evening in January, under a canopy of incandescent bulbs, that I receive my first lesson in Urdu: the difference between alcohol and mirages.I am part of a small mehfil gathered in ...

Dressed in a spotless white kurta-pyjama, Nizamuddin, 57, is a picture of despair as he dusts a few books and arranges them neatly on the iron shelves. “Urdu Bazar has become Hotel Bazar. The market ...