This article appeared on himalayantimes.com last week and intrigued us at the Urduwallahs. Read the article below, of plans to translate Ramayana, the great Indian epic, to finally make it available to Urdu speaking audiences as well.
Ramayana being translated into Urdu‚ to hit market in six months
Long ago, the famous Nepali poet, Bhanubhakta Acharya, rendered the Sanskrit version of the Ramayana into Nepali. Ever since the introduction of the epic in Nepali, tens of thousands of people have read it and many have learnt its verses by heart. This Hindu epic has hardly appealed anyone other than the Hindus, so far.
However, the great Nepali epic inspired a Muslim man so much that he is rendering the famous tome into Urdu. Hanif, the eldest son of the late folk poet Ali Miyan, has taken up the mission as a tribute to his late father. The resident of Miyanpatan, Pokhara, has already translated two kandas of the Ramayana. Ali Miyan Bangmaya Pratisthan, an institution working for the preservation and promotion of Nepali language, will publish the Urdu Ramayana, it is learnt. According to Hanif, who is the chair of the pratisthan, the book will be ready and hit the market in six months.
“Bhanubhakta obliged us by translating the otherwise esoteric tome into the local tongue. Now, I want to translate it into Urdu to enable the Muslims to relish it,” said Hanif, expressing hope that the project will help promote religious harmony in a big way.
“Though a Muslim, my father used to read out the beautiful verses of the tome to me every day. He devoted his life for the promotion of Nepali language. I am honoured to translate the famous Nepali literary work into Urdu,” remarked Hanif, who has memorised the verses of the tome.
Ali Miyan, the folk poet, had passed away on August 3, 2006 at the age of 88. Commenting on the initiative to translate Ramayana into Urdu, culture expert and poet Tirth Shrestha hailed the project. “Through the language and literature, Bhanubhakta united the nation that King Prithvi Narayan Shah the Great had created with the use of weapons. It is great to hear that the popular epic will also be available in Urdu,” said Shrestha.
Pokhara-based litterateur Saru Bhakta praised the Prathisthan’s initiatives. “At the time of the great poet’s birth anniversary, it is good to hear this news,” he remarked.
Link to the article – http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Ramayana+being+translated+into+Urdu&sbquo%3B+to+hit+market+in+six+months&NewsID=383539
urduwallahs 
So pleased to read this article, thank you for the post, any good work which can unite people & bring peace in the world is welcome …We all need to work towards creating a better world for our coming generation
There are almost a dozen versions of the Ramayan in urdu and prof. Gopichand Narang even held a seminar on this subject some years ago.
Soaking in tehzeeb: Learning Urdu and of its poetic charm
MUMBAI: Pratima Parai (66) is in a spacious classroom, its walls pasted with pictures ofMahatma Gandhi at different stages of thefreedom struggle. Parai opens an Urdu book and reads a paragraph. She pronounces words likechashma (stream), qahqaha (laughter) andpagdandi (narrow pass) perfectly and moves on to another chapter. “It is the beauty of the words, their sonorous sounds, that attracted me to Urdu. I would have always felt a vacuum had I not learnt this language,” says Parai, a retired school teacher who also knows Telugu, Marathi, Hindi and English.
Parai is part of a class of 100 non-Muslim students learning Urdu at the Hindustani Prachar Sabha at the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial building at Charni Road. These and many other non-Muslim learners of Urdu at other classes in the city, including one at Akbar Peerbhoy College near Grant Road, explode the myth that Urdu is the language of Muslims alone.
Police officers learning Urdu for cracking ‘terror codes’ and understanding ‘jihadi literature’ is an old story. These retired teachers, wannabe ghazal singers, scriptwriters, theatre actors, bank employees and IT professionals have joined Urdu classes for different purposes. A majority of them admit the eagerness to understand ghazals, the sublime form of Urdu poetry, brought them to Urdu. “I am fond of Shamsad Begum’s songs, especially the ghazals she sang, and it always disturbed me when I couldn’t follow certain words in her songs .When I saw an ad for this class in a newspaper, I resolved to remove my lacunae,” says octogenarian Chandrakant Mohanlal, a retired mathematics teacher, at Hindustani Prachar Sabha’s class.
Dr Sriram Joshi, an ex-officer with the ministry of health, is a ghazal connoisseur. “I have a huge collection of ghazals. Now that I am retired, I want to know the language which will help me understand the meaning in Urdu couplets,” he says.
It is always an advantage to learn an additional language which can also help build bridges. Precisely the reason Marathi scholar Ram Pandit turned to Urdu. “I would not have enjoyed the fiction of Manto, Bedi, Premchand and Krishen Chandar if I had not read them in Urdu. I feel different bhashas can come closer if we shed prejudice and learn as many languages as we can,” says Pandit, who has translated Urdu works into Marathi and vice versa.
Teaching a new language to adult pupils could be exasperating, but Mohammed Husain Parkar, research officer at Hindustani Prachar Sabha, knows the art well. “I teach it using a method where initially Hindi and English alphabets are used to make learning simpler,” says Parkar. So, if he has to teach his students about the word kaam (work), he pronounces the Hindi alphabets ka and ma, not Urdu’s kaaf and meem. “If I start with the traditional way of teaching Urdu with alphabets like alif, be and te, most students will run away. I begin with what is familiar,” he explains. Ibrahim Darvesh who, in the last five decades, has taught Urdu to over 1,000 actors and singers, including actor Amir Khan, his wife Kiran Rao and young ghazal singer Pooja Gaitonde, claims anybody can learn it from him in 12 sessions of two hours each. “My method focuses on phonetics and has excellent results,” he says.
Many learn Urdu to know their neighbours well. Manoj Varade, BEST PRO, grew up in Kamathipura and was fascinated by the sound of Urdu spoken in his locality. He says he strongly felt the urge to read Urdu poets and writers, not in translation, but in the original. He joined the one-year Urdu diploma course of the National Council of Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL) at Akbar Peerbhoy College. “The advantage of learning Urdu is that now I know what is happening in the Muslim world as Urdu dailies extensively cover it. I read the leading Urdu daily, Inquilab, religiously, and feel empowered and more confident when I am speaking to Urdu-knowing friends,” says Varade. His teacher and course co-ordinator at Akbar Peerbhoy College, Feroze Shaikh, adds: “The aim is to expose our students to a language which symbolises our Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (composite culture). Urdu will get ghettoised if non-Muslims abandon it and India’s composite culture will be at stake.” Thankfully, non-Muslims at Urdu classes are a ray of hope.
________________________________
I need one ramayana in urdu. …..will u plztell Me how to get it ?
Dear Pankaj I am doing my research of Urdu translations of Ramayana, If you are really interested to find Ramayana in Urdu so you have to go any big old and famous library.