Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Economic Aspect of the Urdu Literature

The Urdu is a centuries old language. It is a language which was developed by the poetry. Later when the language was fully developed and established, the Urdu literature started to build and form shape.
Moulvi Nazir Ahmed was the first novel writer of the Urdu language. His novels, especially the initial ones, proved to be the bestsellers. It is not known that in those times, what was the unit of price Moulvi Nazir Ahmed and the publishers fixed for his novels. But the volume of the novels sold was too much to make considerable money.
However writing the Urdu literature in these times or the older times is not and has not been lucrative when compared to the literature of the other languages. The Urdu language is spoken and read mostly in India and Pakistan. Unfortunately these two countries have considerably low literacy rate.
The government of Pakistan always lies about its literacy rate. According to independent entities, the literacy rate of Pakistan is only around 30 percent. Most of these are not the people who can read or write Urdu without difficulty. Most of these are just the people who can scribble their name on a paper with a pen. 
So, it is obvious that in such a country the economic aspect of the Urdu literature is too bad. The Urdu writing cannot be made a profession to make money. Another factor is that the working class which is educated and wants to read do not make enough money to buy books.