An approximate outline of the size of the market that Urdu represents in South Asia

Urdu is a major language of South Asia, and it has been gaining in popularity since the independence of the Indian sub-continent. It is one of the 18 national languages of the Union of India as well as the declared national language of Pakistan. Although influenced by Arabic and Persian, but quite unlike Arabic and Persian, Urdu is an Indo-Aryan, language akin to Hindi, which originated and developed in the Indian sub�continent. Both Urdu and Hindi belong to the new Indo-Aryan sharing the same Indic base. At the phonological and grammatical level, they are so close that they appear to be one language, but at the lexical level they have borrowed so extensively from different sources (Urdu from Arabic and Persian, and Hindi from Sanskrit) that in actual practice and usage each has developed into an independent language. This distinction is most marked at the orthographical level, where Hindi uses Devanagari, and Urdu uses the Arabo-Persian script indigenously modified to suit the requirements of an Indo-Aryan speech. According to a general estimate, Urdu and Hindi taken together form the third largest speech community in the world today.

The Urdu speakers in India number almost 44 million (Census of India, 1991) with the largest numbers in the state of Uttar Pradesh, followed by Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka, which together account for 85% of the national Urdu-speaking population. Delhi still enjoys to be the major centre of Urdu literature and publishing. Urdu is also spoken in countries surrounding India and Pakistan, such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Practically, Urdu has become the culture language and lingua franca of the South Asian Muslim diaspora outside the sub-continent, especially in the Gulf and the Middle East, Western Europe, Scandinavia, U.S.A. and Canada." (source: The Urdu Council of India /www.urducouncil.nic.in/pers_pp/index.htm ) Very briefly : the no of urdu speakers in India         :  44 million                   the no. of urdu speakers in Pakistan    :  11 million                   A rough approximation of                   :  55 million Plus if you add the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal the estimates could be higher. In the next post , a background of the time and period in which Urdu was flourishing in its culture and maximum number of books and poetry were penned down.