Life & Mortality Quote by Ismail Merchant

Merchant’s claim isn’t really about grammar or etymology; it’s a cultural survival argument dressed up as linguistics. By invoking “very strong roots in Persia,” he’s reaching for the prestige and depth of an older civilizational lineage, a way of saying Urdu isn’t a fragile, recent invention that can be legislated or mocked out of existence. It has a backbone. The phrasing “can not die out” reads like a rebuttal to a familiar anxiety: that modern nation-states, school systems, and majoritarian politics can simply starve a language by changing scripts, curricula, and public life.

The more pointed move comes next: Urdu is “not only just the language of the Muslims,” it’s “also the language of the Hindus.” Merchant is attacking the partition-era habit of turning languages into religious property. In South Asia, Hindi/Urdu became a symbolic border: Devanagari versus Nastaliq, Sanskritized versus Persianized vocabulary, “ours” versus “theirs.” Merchant refuses that neat sorting. He reminds you that Urdu’s greatest flourishes - its poetry, its cinema songs, its street-level expressiveness - have always circulated across communities. The word “also” does heavy political work, insisting on shared ownership without erasing difference.

As a producer, Merchant is especially attuned to how languages live: not in policy papers, but in dialogue, music, romance, jokes. His subtext is clear: if you want Urdu to die, you’d have to amputate a huge part of the region’s composite culture. And that’s a cost most people, quietly, don’t want to pay.