Urdu: Ministry, Mohalla and Market |
While outrage over removing Urdu knowledge as a mandatory requirement for revenue administrators is completely justified, it appears misplaced -- the change has not been notified. However, the issuance of a stakeholder consultation notice is enough to raise suspicions and spark insecurity. Especially after the Jammu and Kashmir Official Languages Bill, 2020, ended Urdu’s status as the sole official language by adding Kashmiri, Dogri, Hindi, and English alongside it. Also, the Central Administrative Tribunal’s directive to the Service Selection Board allowing candidates proficient in any of the five official languages has further accelerated this shift.
The issue is not only about a job. It is making the lingua franca of administration redundant in one of the most important areas of governance: land ownership. The issue becomes emotive when framed as an assault on identity, though there are strong administrative reasons to retain Urdu as a mandatory qualification for revenue administration jobs. Across J&K, be it Jammu, Pir Panchjal, Chenab, or the Valley, all land records remain in Urdu Nastaliq script. The entire revenue system, including the Record of Rights (Jamabandi), crop inspection (Girdawari), and mutations (Intiqal), operates in Urdu.
However, over the years, there have been technological advances and efficiency-driven reforms, that carry deeper structural consequences for the Urdu language. The systemic change that has already marginalised Urdu is the digitalisation of land records. While the benefits of digitisation are undeniable -- improves transparency, reduces corruption, speeds up mutations, and enables online access — it effectively eliminates Urdu from day-to-day administrative use.
Launched nationally in 1996, digitisation gained momentum in J&K only after the abrogation of Article 370. By early 2025, Jamabandi records had been digitised in 6,838 of 6,850 revenue villages. The new system and software are primarily in English (with some Hindi elements), offering minimal or no support for Nastaliq script. Old handwritten Urdu records have been scanned as images, but new entries, searches, mutations, and extracts are generated in........