Last year, on the occasion of Deepawali, Fab India came up with its ‘Jashn-e-Riwaaz’ campaign that tried to secularize the holy Hindu festival. The rechristening of a holy Hindu festival name may have been a non-issue for the seculars and fence-sitters but those who understood how the urdufication of Hindi was not a recent phenomenon, naturally protested. As a result, Fab India was forced to drop the campaign but not before facing huge quarterly losses.
Mughals and their rule over India have created a legion of wooden sepoys that still adhere to their epoch ideology. Like an amoeba, eating its food, the Urdu fanatics want it to gobble up Hindi. Perhaps, it is the reason why one sees Hindi being a mishmash of crude Urdu words in the current time.
There were many dialects spoken in North India like Awadhi, Braj, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Khadi-Boli etc. However, when the Persian rulers established themselves in the seat of power in Delhi, the local lingo there was called Dehlavi.
How does Urdu – the supposed language come into being?
As the invading rulers named native Indians ‘Hindus’, they named the local language ‘Hindi’, 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 Hindi, 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 Prakriti-Apabhramsa used in the region around Mathura was from where the original Urdu was derived.
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.
Urdu – Not a language, but a dialect
As established earlier, Urdu is not a proper language, but rather a dialect that has been confined to one type of community. The original meaning of Urdu is ‘the language of the camp’, that is, the language which was spoken by most of the Turkish invaders of that time.
In nutshell, Urdu is nothing but a mix-match of Persian, Turkic and Arabic vocabulary woven into the Hindustani grammar structure. But as per seculars, it is a culturally rich language. The reason Urdu should not even be considered as a separate language is that it lacks originality.
Read More: Urdu vs Hindi is a war that Urdu can never win
The huge bulk of Urdu Shayari consists of the poet or protagonist fantasizing about how a woman would look once her veil is off. Shayari came into being from the Muslim settlers as well as converts in the northern part of India.
As in the case of any Sharia ruled society, segregation of sexes was followed strictly, and women were seldom seen. Hence, the biggest fantasy of the poet was to see the face of the object of his desire.
You can’t find such desperation in Sanskrit or any ancient Indian language’s poetry, because women weren’t kept like wads of cash hidden in houses only to be brought outside with a male relative. The attire leading up to the thirteenth century, the women’s attire was much more modern by even today’s standards.
Read More: Next time when You say We have a “Hindi” Film Industry, Think thrice.
Urdu – Imposed on Indians by the aristocracy
As the British imposed their English language, Islamic sympathizers attempted to impose Urdu on our country. The freedom struggle of independent India from the Nizam Shahi of Hyderabad was not only political but also cultural. Hyderabad, back then, use to house major populations of people speaking Kannada, Marathi, Telugu, and Hindi.
If not directly, then indirectly, everyone was associated with the Hindi language somewhere, but Nizam Shahi forcefully imposed Urdu on them, in his quest to eliminate and replace any non-Islamic culture.
Read More: Hindi defeated Urdu in the language wars, but the victory came at a price
Even when the issue of official language was being discussed within the Congress, Jawaharlal Nehru proposed using Urdu as the official language for Delhi and United Provinces (UP). But, Govind Ballabh Pant, P.D. Tandon K.M. Munshi etc. aggressively opposed his proposal and Nehru was forced to retreat, rather reluctantly.
The urdufication of Hindi has been a gradual process. However, with the advent of social media and the increase in awareness, people are reclaiming their language and making sure that the Islamists and British apologists do not dilute the language of Gods.
