The Teaching of Urdu to the British: quote The formal teaching of Urdu had begun long before the age of Ghalib. And, ironically enough, the British had started it. One of the reasons for establishing the Fort William College with professorships of Indian classical and vernacular languages was that the students destined to exercise high and important functions in India, should be able to speak the oriental languages with fluency and propriety. Teaching in Urdu, or Hindustani as the British called it, was considered politically significant because it was considered the "literary language of the Musalmans and of Hindus educated on Musalman lines." Thus the British officers were formally taught Urdu, both in the Persian and the Devanagari scripts, at Fort William College in Calcutta. The college was not only a training academy for future rulers but also a symbol of the Raj itself. It was actually established on 10 July 1800 but the date of 4 July was put on the order because it was "the first anniversary of the glorious and decisive victory obtained by the British arms at Seringapatam the capital of the kingdom of Maysoor." unquote snipped from http://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/1793/18141/2/06rahmant.pdf ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India