What in God’s name is ‘Riwaaz’? The most recent communal/anti-communal frenzy on social media has this word at its centre. It is featured, twice, in an ad put out by Fabindia, that business enterprise in India which began, as many such things did a long time back, with good and serious intentions, but has now become as chic and hoity-toity as any ‘curated’ birthday party at one of the many New Delhi ‘farms’.The ad does not mention Diwali—but describes the occasion of the ad as a time of ‘festival’ and urges its readers to ‘Discover the collection’. Now if I take the risk of claiming to understand the brainwork behind it, the ad is about a collection of silk and zari clothing that Fabindia, in its wisdom, calls ‘Jashn-e-Riwaaz’. ‘A Celebration of Riwaaz’. We are back where we started. What in God’s or Devil’s name is ‘Riwaaz’?No dictionary that I could consult contains this word. They do contain a very common word, ‘riwaaj’, and also give its more ‘correct’ pronunciation, ‘rawaaj’. It means ‘custom; practice; fashion; prevalent practice or way.’ It ends in a ‘j’, and not a ‘z’. And it is of Arabic origin.A رواج rawāj, vulg. riwāj (inf. n. of روج ‘to have a ready sale,’ &c.), s.m. Being vendible, being in great demand; being current; — currency, prevalence; usage, use, custom, practice, fashion; — vent, sale; — adj. Saleable, vendible; current, customary: — riwāj pānā, v.n. To obtain currency, pass current; to be customary; to become prevalent; to be in force; to be in fashion; to have effect: — riwāj paṛnā, v.n. To become current or customary, to prevail: — riwāj pakaṛnā = riwāj-pānā, q.v.: — riwāj denā (-ko), To give currency (to), to make current, make customary; to introduce; to publish, spread abroad: — riwāj-ě-shud-āmad, s.m. Prescriptive usage.– From John T. Platts’ A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi and English (1884).Arabic has both a ‘j’ and a ‘z’, so the use of ‘j’ is based on its root—it consists of ‘r’, ‘w’, and ‘j’. All Urdu/Hindi speakers commonly use the word and feel no need to change its final sound. So, if Fabindia is indeed using that everyday word but changing its final sound from ‘j’ to ‘z’ it must have some good reason, ‘good’ in the lingo of the ad-makers.The change, according to those savants, suggests something exotic, something ‘Urdu-ish’, something not as simple and ordinary as ‘riwaaj’.Dear Fabindia, Urdu, like Arabic and Persian and English, has both ‘j’ and ‘z’, and so does Hindi if you pay attention to it. Please give up your campaign against ‘j’. Stop exoticising common words. India’s first prime minister was not named Zawahar Lal Nehru.Dear defenders of the faith, ‘z’ is not exclusive to Urdu, or to non-Indian languages. The sound is found in many languages in India, and not because they have anything to do with Islam or Muslims. Language habits have their own rules and quirks. Remember, the people who say ‘fal’ instead of ‘phal’ (fruit), also say ‘teliphon’ and not ‘telifon’ for ‘telephone.’C.M. Naim taught Urdu at the University of Chicago.
