MANUU launched a slew of digital initiatives to focus on Urdu's culture and heritage. Here's a closer look

Apart from celebrating the birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad across several days, Maulana Azad National Urdu University's (MANUU) Instructional Media Centre (IMC) launched a few digital initiatives that hope to remind the general populace about the importance of this language, especially in the Indian sub-continent.

"According to UNESCO, 196 Indian languages are already endangered. We don't want Urdu to fall under the same category. If you don't connect languages to the youth, they die. And if they die, the culture dies along with it," rues Rizwan Ahmad, Director, IMC. So, in order to establish this connection, a slew of these initiatives came about — the first one being IMCMANUU E-Content Platform. The official YouTube channel of MANUU, started in the year 2013, already has a plethora of content, including free-of-cost higher education lessons from its various schools, like School of Sciences, School of Languages, Linguistics & Indology and beyond. Now, this Urdu content not only has a new address imcmanuu.com/e-content, it has been upgraded to include text, video and references as well. "These are lectures packaged in all together different formats," says the director of IMC, which was established in 2007. 

The initiative Urdu Nama is all over the social media pages of MANUU and IMC. Word of the day introduces one beautiful Urdu word every day (today's word is 'tifl' meaning child) as a social media post and then, there is poet/writer of the day (today's writer of the day is Akhtar Ul Iman). All this is done in a bid to introduce Urdu and those who mastered the language in bite-sized posts on a daily basis. "We tend to forget what Urdu has done for the freedom movement and for the rich and cultural heritage of India, where the language was born. Through Urdu Nama, we hope to introduce the grandeur of the language word by word and also acquaint youngsters with great writers of the language," says Ahmad. In the near future, expect them to dramatise and present morsels of ghazals, nazams or more through mini performances and putting up those videos on their social media channels. 

MANUU's alumni network is widespread and successful, thriving in many sectors around the world. Shaheen-e-Urdu hopes to bring these achievers into the limelight. The first webcast episode featured Dr Sharafat Hussain who rose from his humble background and now has a successful company based in the UAE. There is also the Educational News Bulletin where the education news of the world, including information about scholarships, research opportunities, policy decisions and beyond, are shared. Check it out here imcmanuu.com/enb.