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Originally Posted by RazabQ
I bet these same officials probably have Urdu spouting Imams at their domestic religious functions. I recall once I got into it with an Imam who was obviously young enough to have NOT been schooled during Pakistan years, spouting "aaagar aap na hain jindegime" in the middle of his "ya naabi salaam-walaika".
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Urdu has been the lingua franca for subcontinental Muslims since the Mughal times. The Mughal rulers were ethnically Persians/Afghans and the court language was thus Persian. But for the commoners Urdu became more conventional and remained the dominant Muslim language in the subcontinent.
Thus we have to stop associating Urdu with only Pakistan. Even to this day from the Pathans of Peshawar/NWF to the Indian Muslims of the North to the southern Tamil Telugu belt of India, Urdu is the language for Muslims. They have their own languages such as Pashto, Punjabi, Dari, Kannada, Malaylam but for Muslims Urdu remained as the main spoken language.
An example might be the development of Yiddish for European Ashkenazi Jews. They are ethnically Polish, German, Russian but Yiddish remained as the lingua franca for these people beside their main language Hebrew. Personally I would never speak Urdu with anyone and strongly would object if its used for ANY of our nationaI purposes. But if the imams are using for religious purposes, my objection won't be that strong.