Patisin Journal of Women’s Studies Alam--Niswan Vol 1: No.2,pp.65-73, 1994 @ ANTI-FEMINISM IN URDU: A STUDY IN LINGUISTICS AND GENDER MUHAMMAD KALEEM RAZA KHAN ‘Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Karachi ABSTRACT: Language reflects the altitudes of its speakers in a subtle manner. The fact that Pakistan soctety treats women as inferior beings is well reflected in Urdu at various levels. The present study at- tempts to discover the subconscious sexism of the speakers through ther use of nouns, proper names and ‘the taboo words. This study reveals that in Urdu the objects and qualities that have ephemeral weak na- ture are feminine. Urdu popular names for gris in Pakistan are meaningless, have no positive meani land are derived forms of masculine names. Whereas, boys" popular names are meaningful, have positive ‘meanings and are not derivative. By the same token, women are the target of mos, if nat all, taboo words in Urdu. These points confirm the subconscious anti-eminism of both male and female speakers of Unda. (Note: I have used examples from standard spoken Urdu as itis used by educated native speakers. Non-native speakers of Urdu may find some of the gender distinctions unaccep- table because of the fact that one word which is considered masculine in Urdu may be regarded feminine in other Indo-Pakistani languages and non-native speakers of Urdu tend to treat the Urdu words according to the gender system of their own first Ian- guages. In the Urdu transliteration, capital letters D, T and R represent retroflex sounds as in Daraana (to frighten), Taalna (to avoid) and kapRa (cloth) in contrast with d, t and r, as in dil (heart), til (mole) and raat (night). Gh as in Gham (sorrow) and na- ‘Ghma (song) is contrasted with gh as in ghis- na (to rub). The double vowel letters represent long vowel sounds asin git (song), bhuut (ghost) and the like. The tilde ~ rep- resents nasalization as in jahaa~ (the world) and x represents the initial sound in xaana (house) in contrast with kh in khaana (mealto eat). The aim of this paper is to take a cursory look at the grammatical gender in Urdu and then examine the relationship between the language and the attitudes of language users towards women in their society because lan- guage represents the thought patterns of speakers, I shall also try to describe gram- matical gender in Urdu nouns, proper names and taboo words. The word "gender" is am- biguous. It can refer to both, the grammatical classification of words in a language into categories such as: masculine, feminine, animate, inanimate and neuter; and the natural gender that refers to the biological sex of objects.The term "gender" here describes both the social categories based on sex and the more traditional grammatical gender whereas the word "sex" refers to the biological distinctions. One of the central tenets of feminism in the contemporary world is that our society hhas been biased in favour of males, This bias in favour of males is referred to as “sexism’, ic. social discrimination between sexes; andMuhammad Kaleem Raza Khan like elsewhere this bias is also manifest in the language of any speech community, Though the word "sexism’ has been very popular among the majority of feminists, some writers use other terms. For example, Ann Bodine (1975) prefers to use another term "androcentric’, The literal meaning of the word is "centred on the male’. This term characterizes a mental tendency and a set of attitudes which are based upon a male perspective in which female experience and interests are totally ignored. For Joan Roberts (1976) the term "masculist” is more appropriate. In the English language grammatical ‘gender does not play a very great role in the treatment of words. A few exceptions exist in nouns and pronouns. The words such as, poetess, airhostess, authoress are now replaced by non-sexist words: poet, flight at- tendant and author. In the following pages 1 ‘would like to discuss whether the same is true for our society and our language. Benjamin L. Whorf (1897-1941), an American anthropologist, believed in the idea that the structure of one’s language in- fluenced his/her view of the world. I think that this hypothesis was not entirely baseless. ‘The fact that Urdu recognizes only two categories of grammatical gender influences the Urdu speakers tremendously. Every thing in the world (even lifeless objects and abstract notions), for them, should be either masculine or feminine. For example, in animate objects such as fire, earth and wind are feminine; and water, stone and sky are masculine. Abstract ideas like honesty, weak- ness and strength arc feminine whercas cruelty, justice and pride are masculine. In the following pages, I have tried to elucidate the point that in our society the in- ferior status of women is reflected in our lan- guage. Spender (1985: 10) convincingly ‘comments, "In a society where women are devalued it is not surprising that their lan- guage should be devalued.” But in the case of Urdu women's variety of language is not devalued. It is the language itself that exposes the sex discrimination against women prac- tised by the speakers in the society 1, URDU NOUNS. T have made no distinctions between ‘human and nonhuman referents in the treat- ment of Urdu nouns because the way they behave reflects the attitude of the society towards the issue of gender. Moreover, since all the examples are taken from the spoken variety of Urdu, it is the sounds not alphabet which are discussed throughout the paper. ‘With exception to certain nouns such as saath companion - companion/partner sipaahi policeman foji soldier shikaari hunter naanbal baker raat barber ete. ‘most ofthe masculine nouns end in “i sound; and apart from a number of female proper names and other feminine nouns which end in "a" sound, most of the feminine nouns end in ‘a", For example, Abida is the feminine form of Abid (This will be discussed later). ‘Now let us look at some of the examples: ua. Masculine Feminine ustaad ustaani teacher fagiir fagiirni beggar nokar nokraani servant ragja raani king. etc. It is interesting to note that masculine nouns have no marked endings whereas feminine nouns have “-ni" as a marked feminine ending. The same observation holds true for the following (1.1.2.), where *-an" is the feminine ending and (1.1:3,), where itis =Anti-Femninisn in Urdu a 112, dhobi washerman paRosi neighbour bhangi sweeper baavarchi cook dara tailor chapraasi peon/orderly duutha bridegroom maali gardener bhikaari beggar 113. mulaazim molaazima gaatil gaatila mulzim molzima mujeim mujrima mariiz mariiza mu'allim ‘mu’allima 14. laRka boy beTa son bhatijja nephew shohar husband chacha uncle daadaa grandfather 1.1.5. lot of nouns have no feminine equivalents at all. They refer to professions which are traditionally considered ‘ap- propriate” for only males. On the other hand I do not remember any feminine nouns refer- dhoban paRosan Dhangan baavarchan darzan chapraasan dulhan maalan bhikaaran (washerwoman) (seamstress) (bride) servant killer accused criminal sick person teacher laRKi beTi Dbhatiiji bivi chachi daadi girl daughter niece wile aunt grandmother ring to professions that do not have any mas- cculine counterpart except: daat (midwife), ‘aya (governess) and tavaaif (prostitute) and all its synonyms. vakiil advocate Daaku bandit chor thief chokidaar guard fojt soldier sipaahi policeman halvaai cone who makes sweet cookies naanbaai baker Daaki postman saa” insdaan scientistsiaasatdaan poli maliaal sailor baRhai carpenter hajjaam barber ete, These words have no feminine forms al- though there are women advocates, scien- tists, and shopkeepers now. There are female barbers too but they are called "hair dressers" or "beauticians’. A female advocate is referred to in the following Urdu sentences: ‘Yo achehhi vakiil he (he is a good advocate.) Yo vakaalat karti he (She advocates.) or the word xaatuun/aurat (lady/woman) is used as a pre modifier: xaatuun vakiil aurat Daaku xaatuun vaziir xaatuun vaziir- eaazam woman advocate woman bandit ‘woman minister woman prime-minister ete, nother tendency is to give the noun a feminine form; but I have observed that only uneducated or less educated people do this. For example, they use dukaandaarni or dukaandaaran for a woman shopkeeper and choldidarni for a woman guard (in schools for girls). In the armed forces, police force and other government agencies, English terms are used (lady constable, lady inspec- tor, etc). Another important thing to note here is that wives of the people attached to some professions are also given the same tit- les and these titles have feminine forms. For example, butcher in Urdu, is qusaal/qassaab and a butcher's wife is known as gasaayan/qassaabni. 2. BORROWINGS FROM ENGLISH Urdu has borrowed a great number of English words which do not have gender. Only a few of them are mentioned belo artist, camera-operator, checker, cletk collector, commissioner, conductor, dean dentist, director, doctor, driver, editor, ex aminer, foreman, governor, guard, instructor, vigilator, journalist, judge, leader, lecturer, magistrate, member, minister, novelist, of ficer, operator, painter, photographer, pilot, Postmaster, principal. producer, professor, Provost, receptionist, registrar, reporter, senator, signal-man, speaker, station-master, supervisor, surgeon, typist, vice-chancellor, warden, and hundreds more. When these words are used in Urdu, col- locating verbs, adjectives, or honorific forms determine their gender in the utterances, Here are some examples: (The underlined words are feminine), ‘meri beti lecturer he (My daughter is a lecturer.) me™ is risaale ki editor (I'm the editor hu~ of this magazine.) bohot achchhi surgeon (very good surgeon) Doctor saahibal (Doctor!) Judge saahiba! Gudge!) (saahib is a common honorific form of ad- dress it Urdu and saahiba is its feminine form). bohot bura typist he (He is a bad typist) bohot buri typist he (She is a bad typist.) Nurse is a feminine word and the male nurse is referred to as a ward boy! The English word "doctor", generally pronounced in Urdu as DaakTar, has its own feminine form: DaakTarni. Like some other languages Urdu also has an androcentric attitude. The Urdu word aadmi (man) is a generic term and sometimes it can be used to refer toa ‘woman too. For instance,‘Anti-Feminism in Urda ° Yo bohot achchhi aadmi he~ (Literally: She is a good man.) is perfectly possible in Urdu. For a number of male teachers laRka/laRke (boy/boys) is synonymous with student/s. In informal speech (by males only) laRke (boys) is used to refer to both male and female students. 2.1, It would not be without interest to men- tion that words that refer to inanimate ob- jects borrowed from those languages which do not have gender distinction for them are immediately and arbitrarily assigned gender in Urdu, Without going into details I would like to say that the Urdu speakers (Ot course, like speakers of other languages which recog- nize gender distinctions in inanimate objects) subeonsciously use the following for the assignment of gender to the borrowed words, These criteria overlap with each other. 2.1.1. The physical shape or appearance of the object: Feminine Masculine car) truck (m) pencil (f) bulldozer (m) tubelight (f) helicopter (m) 2.1.2. The sound "image" or written shape (in ‘Urdu) of the word itself: machine (f) calculator (m) bus (0 recorder (m) tube () television (m) computer (m) kangghi small comb hiv Ti small ant makRi small spider patti tiny leaf ‘Tehni thin branch of atree There is another word for a branch shaax, which has no masculine form but the 2.1.3. If the borrowed words have equivalents in Urdu but those words have given way to the new words in the language, the borrow- ings will inherit their gender: Urdu equivalent English) angrezi (9) car (f) gaaRi (f) chair() kurt (D) pen(m) qalam (m) ink () roshnaai (f) building () imaarat (f) light ( rostint (0) shock (m) dhachka (m) etc. 2.1.4, If the borrowed words end in "i" they will generally be regarded as feminine regardless of the gender of their equivalent: English words Urdu translation factory (f) _knarxaana (m) diary(f) __roznaamcha (m) dispensary (f) shafaxaana (m) artillery (Q)topxaana (m) library ()—_kutubxaana (m) 2.2. It appears to me that Urdu grammatical gender reflects the traditional stereotypical male attitude towards women. Fallibility, feebleness, frailty, infirmity and weakness are the characteristics that are generally ascribed to women in many societies. Every thing that is small, weak, flimsy, exquisite, beautiful or ‘ephemeral is feminine in Urdu. Consider the following nouns: kanggha normal or large comb chiu~ Ta large ant makRa big spider pata normal or large leaf Tehna thick branch of a tee masculine noun Daal (a big branch) has its, feminine form Daali (a small branch). Mostn ‘Muharnmad Kaleem Raza Khan feminine nouns, in fact, are diminutive and derived forms of masculine nouns. 3. PROPER NAMES In this brief section I will attempt to dis- cuss the nature of proper names in Urdu and tty to study the subconscious sexism in naming, The Urdu naming system shows this hypothetical sexism in various ways. Accord- ing to a British linguist and semanticist Lyons (1977:218) "the name of a person is some- thing that is held to be an essential part of him." True. Most names in various cultures are meaningful and they have a religious sig- nificance as well. In some cultures the name of a person also includes the name of his or her family, clan or tribe. Some people also like to include the name of their place of birth, In Muslim societies, traditionally, boys’ names are derived from the attributes of Alllah, the names of the Prophets and the ‘most prominent Muslims in the history of Islam. Similarly, Muslim girls traditionally are named after famous Muslim women. Quite often girls’ names are suffixed by words such as Bano, Begum, Khanum, and -nisa. At one time -nisa was a very popular feminine name-ending. Names such 2s Rafi- quanisa (a friend of women), Zebunnisa (uitable for women), Mehrunnisa (the moon of women/kindness of women), ete. are now out of favour. Since all naming fashions in the South Asian society are known, I would not like to dwell upon this. The point I wish to make here is clear: the way boys and girls are named reflects sexism -a discrimin tion against women. Thave recently conducted a brief survey in some of the Colleges in Karachi about students’ favourite male and female names: ‘The study discovered that boys and girls both dislike traditional female names, especially those that end in Khatoon, Begum, Nisa, and Bano. They like brief but beautiful names, even if they have no meaning or are bor- rowed from non-Muslim cultures. 3,1. Derivation Most of the girls’ names are derived from boys’ names; whereas the names for boys are rarely derived from girls’ names. For example, consider the following names. Only a few names are mentioned here. All the names in the tight hand column are feminine and they are derived from the ones given in the left hand column: boys Sagib Saqiba Humair Humaira Faiq Faiga Shakeel Shakeela Rahil Rahila Rehan Rehana Adeel Adecla Shahid Shahida Amir Amra The boys’ names are grammatically un- marked whercas the girls’ names are marked: they have feminine endings. Now let us take a look at the following names which are girls’ names: Rubina Shagufta ‘Samina Shebla Reema Aza Ghazala Lubna Rakhshanda Afshan Zareena = Huma Not only the masculinization of these names is impossible in Urdu, it is un- desirable, Rubin, Reem, and Rakhshand do not exist in the language. Ghazal is possible but it is not used and cannot be used as a proper name for a boy, as a matter of fact it is a poetic word for deer. Besides, it is another popular name for a girl. Samin and Zareen are also popular girls’ names. |32. In addition to the fact that most of the girls’ names are derivatives and diminutives, brief study of the meaning of those feminine proper names which are grammati- boys Asad lion Dilawar courageous Shuja brave Akbar the greatest Jehangir ruler of the world Hakim ruler wise interlocutor lionhearted While girls in our society arc flowers, altering, golden, moon-like and so on and so forth, boys are brave, courageous, rulers, wise, lions, lion-hearted and so on. The names given in the left column do not lend themselves to be transformed into girls’ names. It is grammatically possible to derive Hakeema and Hakima but these names are rot popular, and extremely rare among gitls. ‘And names like Asad, Dilawar, Shuja, etc. have no feminine forms at all. Most of the popular names of girls are those that are beautiful but their meaning suggests ephemeral nature or weakness, for example, Ambar (a kind of perfume), Aneela (naive), Arzu (wish), Deeba (a kind of flimsy silk), Meena (a glass cnamel/a decanter), Naghma (song), Naghmana (song like), Narmeen (derived from narm), Rakhshi (diminutive of Rakhshanda (glittering), Rida (cloak or mantle) Sehr (dawn), Shabana (derived from shab (night), Shabnam (dew), Sheerin (sweet), Shehla (a woman with eyes like a shcep, a flower) Tarana (song), Tarannum (melody), ete. 33. It is commonly believed that names affect the personality of the bearer. Lyons (1977) says about English personal names that they have reference but no sense, no meaning. But ‘Anti-Feminism in Urdu n cally unmarked or which are not derived from masculine names brings us to another discovery. Look at the following names: girls Nargis Nilofer names of flowers Yasmeen Saba breeze Tabassum smile Rakhshanda glittering Afshan plitterdust Zareen golden Nida voice in our society it is a tendency now that number of girls’ names have either no mean- ing or they are partially meaningful. For in- stance Maha and Maheen are derived from the word Maah (moon) but they are not meaningful in Urdu. Consider the following names: Aani, Ashi, Farnaz, Haani, Maha, Maheen, Mehreen, Mishi, Nisha, Nishsho, Noshi, Roha, Roshana, Rosheen, Rosheena, Roshi, Roshila, Shehnila, Shobia, Tamy, ‘Teemi, Tina, Zara, Zobia, Zoya, etc. The proper names for boys are always meaningful, and they must carry positive ‘meaning. Bablu, Pappu, Guglu are only a few nicknames which are used in addition to a regular name. Whereas the girls’ names men- tioned above are their first names, they are not nicknames. They are beautiful but mean- ingless. 3.4. The last point in proper names to suggest a kind of sex discrimination is the fact that when boys are named, Christian or Hindu names are not used, however, for girls can be named as such. For example, Neelma, Ramna, Komal, and Punam are Hindu names, but they have become very popular in Pakistan. According to Jotinson and Sleigh (2973) the following names, which are in‘Muhammed Kaleem Raza Khan vogue these days, have European origins: Anita, Barbara, Bella, Dolly, Julie, Maria, Mona, Natasha, Raphacla, Rebecca, Robina, Rosina, Rosy, Rubeena, Sabina, Sabrina, Salina, Serina, Shiela (with a dif- ferent spelling), Sonia, Sophia (Sofia), Tania, Tina, Ursula, Vicky, and Zenobia. 35. A few words about names which are commonly used by both boys and girls. There are only a few such names and the trend is that if a name becomes popular as a girl's name it gradually gets out of favour as a boy's name. For example, Rafat, Talat, Sham- shaad, Dilshad, Shameem, Naseem, Firdaus, ‘Tanveer, Tasneem, Rahat, Farhat, Kausar, Najmi, and Anjum. 4, URDU TABOO WORDS 1am too inhibited to quote the actual ex- amples, therefore I shall only comment on the general trends in this area. I have ob- served that women are main target of almost all verbal abuses in Urdu. If a woman is the ct target of a verbal abuse, she is normal- ly referred to as a whore; and Urdu has no shortage of synonyms for this word. The worst possible abuse for a man is to ascribe feminine qualities to him, the culmination of which is to refer to him as a passive homosexual, When a male is referred to as a ‘woman/girl or even womanishigirlish, the in tention of the speaker is to insult him. Whereas this process does not operate in reverse. On the contrary, a woman is “honoured” with the use of masculine gender for her. Parents, sometimes, ask their daughter: kia kar rahe ho beTa? (Literally: "What are you doing, son? The commonest Urdu verbal abusive terms addressed to a male have references to the imaginary act of fornication with his mother, his sister or his daughter. These taboo words signify (false) accusations, such as: calling somebody a bastard, involving somebody's mother, sister or daughter. But male relatives or other female relatives are not abused, A very common and the most frequent term of abuse is the word saala (wife's brother) and its feminine form saali (wife's sister). It is an indirect accusation levelled against a person. So women are the ultimate victims of these abuses even though the immediate recipient of them is a man. ‘Women normally do not use taboo words and educated men do not utter them in the presence of women. 5. CONCLUSION A great deal of work is being done and has been done in the relations between lan- guage and gender in the west, especially in the English speaking countries. Urdu has never been studied on these lines, and T believe that it should be studied in detail in the areas I have only touched upon briefly. Nevertheless, the examples cited in this paper are sufficient to prove that the treat~ ‘ment of grammatical gender in Urdu, naming fashions currently in vogue these days and the taboo words, all reflect the subconscious sexism of the speakers, Interestingly enough, the majority of women in Pakistan do not seem to be aware of these trends in the language. Their train- ing as children may have rendered them oblivious of their linguistic status as well. In the society they are supressed or regarded as a piece of decoration. As Sir Muhammad Iqbal has sai Yujuud-e-zan se he tasviir-e-kaaenaat me™~ rang (The presence of women gives colour to the picture of the universe) She is not accepted as a person - as a human being having the same status as a man, Language as a social fact also shows this attitude,Ati-Feminism in Urdu B REFERENCES Baron, Dennis. 1986. Grammar and Gender. ‘New Haven: Yale University Press. Coates, Jennifer. 1986. Women, Men and Lan- ‘guage. Longman: London. Crystal, David. 1987. The Cambridge En- qyolopedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dehelvi, S. Muhammad Ahmad. 1918, 1977, Farhang-e-Asifia. Lahore: Markazi Urdu Board. (In Urdu) Feeroz-ul-Lughat (Jadeed). 1971. Lahore: Feeroz Sons. (In Urdu) Johnson, Charles and Sleigh, Linwood, 1973. Names for Boys and Girls. London: Pan Books. Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. Vol. I and Il. ‘Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spender, Dale. 1985. Man Made Lan- ‘guage (Second edition). London: Rout- ledge & Kegan Paul. ‘Muhammad Kaleem Raza Khan is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, University of Karachi. He holds three ‘masters degrees: one in English literature (Karachi), one in Linguistics (Karachi) and fone in Linguistics for English Language Teaching (Lancaster). He has been teaching since 1981 and has conducted research in Phonology and English language teaching. He is also interested in the relations between language and gender.