• About us
  • Careers
  • Brand Partnerships
TFI Official Merchandise
TFI हिन्दी
TFI Global
Friday, February 3, 2023
Tfipost.com
  • Premium
  • Politics
    • All
    • Analysis
    • Opinions
    • Trending
    Dr Jaishankar

    Left’s lobby’s plot to tarnish Jaishankar’s reputation

    The Final Word on Bharat Jodo Yatra: An In-Depth Analysis

    The Final Word on Bharat Jodo Yatra: An In-Depth Analysis

    Artificial Intelligence India

    Unlocking Artificial Intelligence Potential: India’s 2023 Budget and the Future

    new tax regime

    Budget 2023: Income Tax breakthrough for India’s middle class

    • Analysis
    • Opinions
    • Trending
  • Economy
    • All
    • Business
    • Economy1
    • Finance
    Budget 2023’s Delicate Dance: Balancing Fiscal, Populism and the Public Interest

    Budget 2023’s Delicate Dance: Balancing Fiscal, Populism and the Public Interest

    Artificial Intelligence India

    Unlocking Artificial Intelligence Potential: India’s 2023 Budget and the Future

    new tax regime

    Budget 2023: Income Tax breakthrough for India’s middle class

    Union Budget 2023 live updates

    Union Budget 2023 live updates: Modi Govt announces New Tax slab

    • Business
    • Finance
  • Defense
    • All
    • Defence
    • Strategy
    • Weaponry
    Defence budget India

    Modernization of Indian defence: Right trajectory but low velocity

    AK-203 rifles

    Amethi has started producing the dreaded AK 203 for India and the world

    HELINA and VSHROD

    Amidst build up on China and Pakistan border India gets HELINA and VSHROD

    K9-Vajra

    K9 VAJRA: The Made in India weapon that China fears

    • Defence
    • Strategy
    • Weaponry
  • Geopolitics
    • All
    • Africa
    • Americas
    • Asia Pacific
    • Europe
    • South Asia
    • West Asia
    In the Presidential year of G20, they have waged an info war against India

    In the Presidential year of G20, they have waged an info war against India

    Macron-Modi-Biden: France gives India an edge in dealing with the USA

    Macron-Modi-Biden: France gives India an edge in dealing with the USA

    Ajit Doval Jake Sullivan

    The Quiet Revolution: India’s Diplomatic Success in Bringing Tech Transfer

    India UNSC

    UNSC Row: Time for China to choose between Competition and Cooperation with India

    • Africa
    • Americas
    • Asia Pacific
    • Europe
    • South Asia
    • West Asia
  • Knowledge
    • All
    • Culture
    • History
    • Indology
    Ram V. Sutar

    The legacy of Ram V. Sutar: A gift from Bhagwan Vishwakarma

    Dilip Kumar Indira Gandhi

    When Dilip Kumar silenced Indira Gandhi

    Bhagwan Vishnu Bhavishya Badri

    Is Bhagwan Vishnu leaving Badrinath and shifting to Bhavishya Badri?

    Banjara community

    Banjaras are Sanatani and everything else about them is cropped up

    • Culture
    • History
    • Indology
  • Law
  • Lounge
    • All
    • Books
    • Cinema
    • Food
    • Health
    • Lifestyle
    • Satire
    • Sports
    • technology
    • Travel
    Sharad Kelkar: An underrated gem of Indian Cinema

    Sharad Kelkar: An underrated gem of Indian Cinema

    Sayaji Shinde

    Unrecognized in Bollywood, but Celebrated Everywhere Else: The Tale of Sayaji Shinde

    Anurag Kashyap

    Anurag Kashyap’s new facade: Bollywood’s left intelligentsia plans to befool the nationalist audience

    Govinda congress

    When Govinda started literally pleading in front of Sonia Gandhi

    • Books
    • Cinema
    • Food
    • Health
    • Sports
    • technology
    • Travel
    • Satire
No Result
View All Result
Tfipost.com
  • Premium
  • Politics
    • All
    • Analysis
    • Opinions
    • Trending
    Dr Jaishankar

    Left’s lobby’s plot to tarnish Jaishankar’s reputation

    The Final Word on Bharat Jodo Yatra: An In-Depth Analysis

    The Final Word on Bharat Jodo Yatra: An In-Depth Analysis

    Artificial Intelligence India

    Unlocking Artificial Intelligence Potential: India’s 2023 Budget and the Future

    new tax regime

    Budget 2023: Income Tax breakthrough for India’s middle class

    • Analysis
    • Opinions
    • Trending
  • Economy
    • All
    • Business
    • Economy1
    • Finance
    Budget 2023’s Delicate Dance: Balancing Fiscal, Populism and the Public Interest

    Budget 2023’s Delicate Dance: Balancing Fiscal, Populism and the Public Interest

    Artificial Intelligence India

    Unlocking Artificial Intelligence Potential: India’s 2023 Budget and the Future

    new tax regime

    Budget 2023: Income Tax breakthrough for India’s middle class

    Union Budget 2023 live updates

    Union Budget 2023 live updates: Modi Govt announces New Tax slab

    • Business
    • Finance
  • Defense
    • All
    • Defence
    • Strategy
    • Weaponry
    Defence budget India

    Modernization of Indian defence: Right trajectory but low velocity

    AK-203 rifles

    Amethi has started producing the dreaded AK 203 for India and the world

    HELINA and VSHROD

    Amidst build up on China and Pakistan border India gets HELINA and VSHROD

    K9-Vajra

    K9 VAJRA: The Made in India weapon that China fears

    • Defence
    • Strategy
    • Weaponry
  • Geopolitics
    • All
    • Africa
    • Americas
    • Asia Pacific
    • Europe
    • South Asia
    • West Asia
    In the Presidential year of G20, they have waged an info war against India

    In the Presidential year of G20, they have waged an info war against India

    Macron-Modi-Biden: France gives India an edge in dealing with the USA

    Macron-Modi-Biden: France gives India an edge in dealing with the USA

    Ajit Doval Jake Sullivan

    The Quiet Revolution: India’s Diplomatic Success in Bringing Tech Transfer

    India UNSC

    UNSC Row: Time for China to choose between Competition and Cooperation with India

    • Africa
    • Americas
    • Asia Pacific
    • Europe
    • South Asia
    • West Asia
  • Knowledge
    • All
    • Culture
    • History
    • Indology
    Ram V. Sutar

    The legacy of Ram V. Sutar: A gift from Bhagwan Vishwakarma

    Dilip Kumar Indira Gandhi

    When Dilip Kumar silenced Indira Gandhi

    Bhagwan Vishnu Bhavishya Badri

    Is Bhagwan Vishnu leaving Badrinath and shifting to Bhavishya Badri?

    Banjara community

    Banjaras are Sanatani and everything else about them is cropped up

    • Culture
    • History
    • Indology
  • Law
  • Lounge
    • All
    • Books
    • Cinema
    • Food
    • Health
    • Lifestyle
    • Satire
    • Sports
    • technology
    • Travel
    Sharad Kelkar: An underrated gem of Indian Cinema

    Sharad Kelkar: An underrated gem of Indian Cinema

    Sayaji Shinde

    Unrecognized in Bollywood, but Celebrated Everywhere Else: The Tale of Sayaji Shinde

    Anurag Kashyap

    Anurag Kashyap’s new facade: Bollywood’s left intelligentsia plans to befool the nationalist audience

    Govinda congress

    When Govinda started literally pleading in front of Sonia Gandhi

    • Books
    • Cinema
    • Food
    • Health
    • Sports
    • technology
    • Travel
    • Satire
No Result
View All Result
Tfipost.com
No Result
View All Result

HOME » Knowledge » History » Hindi defeated Urdu in the language wars, but the victory came at a price

Hindi defeated Urdu in the language wars, but the victory came at a price

Kannan
by Kannan
13 May 2017
in History
0
Hindi Urdu
3.6k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Long before Ankur discussed how Bollywood is essentially an Urdu medium for films, one Khalid Amir Khan was wondering whether Hindi had become the national language – in Pakistan. Such is the irony of languages in the subcontinent. The emotional attachments to one’s mother tongue are akin only to one’s love for the mother herself.

Coming back to India, was there Urdu earlier? No. Was there Hindi before Mughals came? Again the answer is no.

There were many dialects spoken in North India like Awadhi, Braj, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Khadi-Boli etc. When the Persian rulers established themselves firmly in the seat of power in Delhi, the local lingo there was called Dehlavi.

As the invading rulers named native Indians ‘Hindus’, they named the local language ‘Hindvi’, the original name that was given to the language that is spoken with many variations in the North. And when the Persian scholars used the word Hindvi, it was used to denote all and any language of the Hind, including Gujri, Dakhani and even Pashto.

Mixed with Persian grammar and desi nouns, a new language Urdu was born nearly two years after the first invasion. In some theories, the prakritik-apabhramsa used in the region around Mathura was from where the original Urdu was derived.

Even the word Hindustani was used rarely until the time of British. By the time the Brits came, there were two languages in the north that had some sort of official sanction. One was the Hindustani written in Devanagari script and Urdu which used Persian script.

First, it was Dehlavi that was used by the Muslim elite,the rulers of Delhi and Lucknow. With an inkling to Persian, if one needs the patronage of the royalty, one shall communicate in the language the elite speak. First, it started with replacing obsolete, unfashionable and rough words like nayan, prem etc., with Persian words like nigah, pyar (ishq). It was a way of sophistication of Urdu by eliminating the local dehati words.

Yet both Hindi (including all its dialects) and Urdu, both were spoken by the people and didn’t have any religious affinity. It was when the Islamic religious texts started getting translated into Urdu using the Persian script, slowly but steadily Urdu became persianised.

Not only Muslims, but those Hindus who work in the courts of Nawabs need to know and use Urdu in all official transactions. The need to have a separate language for the Persians ruling class in India is imperative, as Iranians make fun of Indo-Persians.

The rulers cannot adopt the local language as it amounts to accepting the superiority of native languages, but at the same time they can’t retain their Persian heritage and be the target of original Persians. This thrust by ruling class propelled the new language to new heights.

However, after the British assumed control (who cared about neither Urdu nor Hindi), slowly Hindus (by that time they too accepted they are Hindus. Sigh!) started including Sanskrit words in Hindustani thus increasing the difference between Hindustani and Urdu.

Though the British called Urdu-Hindustani and made it an official medium for jobs, post sepoy mutinee, Hindu and Muslim communities have slowly moved away from one another and in the year 1900, there was a petition to replace Urdu as the official language and use Hindi instead.

Lt Governor AP Macdonell (of today’s UP) has received this petition and was worried about Mohammadean hostility to the British if the demand to replace Urdu with Hindi was accepted. He sat on the petition for a good three years before concluding both would be used in the offices and only those who can read and write both languages and scripts would be qualified to get a job in government.

Thus, the Brits retained Urdu as court language but also gave a lift to Hindi by recognising it too. Even after this rule, the intermingling of Hindi and Urdu did not cease to exist, but only increased as the same set of people use both languages and scripts.

Before this incident in 1835, FJ Shore, officiating commissioner had replaced Persian by Hindustani in the hills of Kumaon, but when part of these areas was clubbed with lower plane provinces, again Urdu ruled the masses. Only in Bihar, twice Persian Urdu was removed and Hindi with Devanagari script was enforced. Even Hindi written using Kaithi script was removed when the Hindus resisted. Yet, apart from these stray incidents British firmly established Urdu as an official language.

So, the movement that started to ‘sophisticate’ the rustic Hindvi had taken religious turn to endear itself to the followers of Islam, before it became the official language of pre-independence India. During its evolution, it affected local dialects so much so that they lost their individual charm and got branded commonly into Hindi.

After independence, the consolidation of Hindi with government patronage further eroded the literal sanctity of these north Indian dialects. The domination of Urdu in poetic circles has ensured the existence of Urdu words in Hindi.

In fact, the socialist and secularist leanings of the leaders too encouraged the increasing usage of Urdu, while the original dialects of North India, perhaps with the exception of Bhojpuri, Braj and Maithili reduced in stature.

After independence, the Constituent Assembly pondered over the option of Hindustani as an official language, with either Devanagari or Urdu script. This was proposed by none other than Gandhi. But the members overwhelmingly voted for Hindi in the Devanagari script.

Hindi ultimately became an official language of India, defeating Urdu but there were some side effects along with it. As the government started promoting Hindi, all old literature of regional dialects were labelled Hindi literature. Even otherwise the conflict between Muslim Urdu and Hindu Sanskrit made people accept Hindi as their own language.

While the number of people speaking these dialects have increased since independence, the quality and purity of language they use have deteriorated with time by the continuous encroachment of either Urdu or other words into their vocabulary.

As films have grown as the latest mass medium of art and communication, after long there established one Bhojpuri industry, which is only a shade of what it could have been.

Meanwhile, the government wants us to believe everyone north of Nagpur speaks Hindi, while the Hindi itself is contaminated with Persian and still not released itself from the linguistic clutches of invaders.

Till independence, even Punjabi was written in Urdu (Persian) script only. The Gurbani script was confined to Gurudwaras only. Newspapers were published only in Urdu, despite the language being Punjabi. Even today, while Indian Punjab uses Gurbani for writing Punjabi, Pakistani Punjab uses Urdu to write the same language.

Tags: hindiUrdu
ShareTweetSend
Previous Post

The Good Kashmiri & The Bad Kashmiri: The Bad is a media darling, the Good an ignored hero

Next Post

Alright! So, Justin Bieber fans have been fooled, conned and robbed

Kannan

Kannan

Author of 'Fizz'. A normal guy in this abnormal world. The God !

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms of use and Privacy Policy.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

  • Most Read
  • Comments
  • Latest
Xi Jinping, coronavirus, Shinzo Abe, china, Japan, coornavirus, COVID-19, Wuhan Virus

‘Pack up and get out of there,’ Japan to spend $2.2 billion to get Japanese companies to exit China

9 April 2020
ajay devgn karan johar

The man who bullied the Bully – How Ajay Devgn made Karan Johar’s monopoly a joke and forced him to apologize

22 June 2020
Huawei, China, Trump, USA, Xi Jinping

‘Our survival is at stake now,’ Chinese Telecom giant Huawei crumbles after US ban on Semiconductor exports

19 May 2020
T-Series Sonu Nigam Divya Khosla Kumar Bhushan Kumar

T-Series forced to take down Atif Aslam’s video, Divya Khosla trolled. T-Series has a bad day in office

25 June 2020
Meat Ban

A Jain responds to Meat Ban in Mumbai

Public Sector Bank, Government, Bill

Dear bank employees, continue your stride but PSBs will be privatized

anti-Hindi

Anti-Hindi Forever?- In search of a National Language!

Dear Liberals – your Beef Parties are not protests, they just intend to displease the Majority

Dear Liberals – your Beef Parties are not protests, they just intend to displease the Majority

Sharad Kelkar: An underrated gem of Indian Cinema

Sharad Kelkar: An underrated gem of Indian Cinema

2 February 2023
In the Presidential year of G20, they have waged an info war against India

In the Presidential year of G20, they have waged an info war against India

2 February 2023
Macron-Modi-Biden: France gives India an edge in dealing with the USA

Macron-Modi-Biden: France gives India an edge in dealing with the USA

2 February 2023
Budget 2023’s Delicate Dance: Balancing Fiscal, Populism and the Public Interest

Budget 2023’s Delicate Dance: Balancing Fiscal, Populism and the Public Interest

2 February 2023

Popular This Week

Preity Zinta
Cinema

Preity Zinta – The woman who stood up to the underworld, but paid a heavy price for it

by Paurush Gupta
30 January 2023
Adani-Hindenburg row: Decoding the hidden agendas
Premium

Adani-Hindenburg row: Decoding the hidden agendas

by Abhishek Kumar Singh
29 January 2023
Jacinda Ardern ccp chinese donations
Asia Pacific

Jacinda Ardern is under probe for alleged links with CCP. That makes Kiwi politics completely Sinophilic

by Abhinav Singh
20 July 2020
Govinda congress
Cinema

When Govinda started literally pleading in front of Sonia Gandhi

by TFIPOST News Desk
31 January 2023
Reality of Bageshwar Dham
Analysis

The Bageshwar Dham: The Reality of Dhirendra Krishna Shastri

by Tejasvi Malhotra
31 October 2022

©2023 TFI Media Private Limited

  • Terms of use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Sitemap
No Result
View All Result
  • Premium
  • Politics
    • Analysis
    • Opinions
    • Trending
  • Economy
    • Business
    • Finance
  • Defense
    • Defence
    • Strategy
    • Weaponry
  • Geopolitics
    • Africa
    • Americas
    • Asia Pacific
    • Europe
    • South Asia
    • West Asia
  • Knowledge
    • Culture
    • History
    • Indology
  • Law
  • Lounge
    • Books
    • Cinema
    • Food
    • Health
    • Sports
    • technology
    • Travel
    • Satire
TFI Official Merchandise
TFI हिन्दी
TFI Global
  • About us
  • Careers
  • Brand Partnerships

©2023 TFI Media Private Limited

Follow us on Twitter

and never miss an insightful take by the TFIPOST team

Follow @tfipost