Overview

• The Supreme Court dismissed a petition challenging the use of Urdu on municipal signboards in Maharashtra, affirming its legality under the 2022 language law.
• The bench clarified that language belongs to communities and regions, not to any specific religion, countering the misconception that Urdu is exclusively tied to Islam.
• Judges highlighted the colonial roots of dividing Hindi and Urdu along religious lines, calling such divisions a distortion of India's cultural reality.
• Urdu was celebrated as a product of India's Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb and a vital medium for effective communication and cultural exchange.
• The ruling underscored India's linguistic diversity, with over 100 major languages and hundreds of mother tongues recorded in recent census data.