Hindi–Urdu controversy
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The Hindi–Urdu controversy arose in 19th century
Hindi and Urdu are mutually intelligible as spoken languages, to the extent that they are sometimes considered to be dialects or registers of a single spoken language together referred to as Hindi–Urdu, or the Hindustani language. The respective writing systems used to write the language, however, are different: Hindi is written using Devanagari, whereas Urdu is written using a modified version of the Arabic script, each of which is completely unintelligible to readers literate only in the other.[1] Both Modern Standard Hindi and Urdu are literary forms of the Dehlavi dialect of Hindustani.[2] A Persianized variant of Hindustani began to take shape during the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526 AD) and Mughal Empire (1526–1858 AD) in South Asia.[2] Known as Deccani in southern India, and by names such as Hindi, Hindavi, and Hindustani in northern India and elsewhere, it emerged as a lingua franca across much of India and was written in several scripts including Perso-Arabic, Devanagari, Kaithi, and Gurmukhi.[3]
The Perso-Arabic script form of this language underwent a standardization process and further Persianization in the late Mughal period (18th century) and came to be known as Urdu, a name derived from the
The last few decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the eruption of the Hindi–Urdu controversy in the
Background
Hindustani in Perso-Arabic script and English made official languages in northern parts of British India, replacing Persian | 1837[9] [10] |
Hindustani in Kaithi and Devanagari scripts replaced Perso-Arabic script in Bihar by British Raj | 1881[11][8] |
Hindi in Devanagari granted equal status to Urdu in the United Provinces | 1900[12] |
Urdu declared sole national language in Pakistan | 1948[9] |
Hindi granted separate status and official precedence over Urdu and other languages in the Republic of India | 1950[13] |
Hindustani was the native language spoken in northern India (what is historically known as the region of
Urdu, like Hindi, is a form of the same language,
The conflict over language reflected the larger politicization of culture and religion in nineteenth century colonial India, when religious identities were utilized in administration in unprecedented ways.[22] In time, Hindustani written in Perso-Arabic script also became a literary language with an increasing body of literature written in the 18th and 19th century. A division developed gradually between Hindus, who chose to write Hindustani in Devanagari script, and Muslims and some Hindus who chose to write the same in Urdu script. The development of Hindi movements in the late nineteenth century further contributed to this divergence.[8] Sumit Sarkar notes that in the 18th and the bulk of the 19th century, "Urdu had been the language of polite culture over a big part of north India, for Hindus quite as much as Muslims". For the decade of 1881-90, Sarkar gives figures which showed that the circulation of Urdu newspapers was twice that of Hindi newspapers and there were 55% more Urdu books as Hindi books. He gives the example of the author Premchand who wrote mainly in Urdu till 1915, until he found it difficult to publish in the language.[23]
Professor
The Hindi-Urdu controversy by its very bitterness demonstrates how little the objective similarities between language groups matter when people attach subjective significance to their languages. Willingness to communicate through the same language is quite a different thing from the mere ability to communicate.[8]
Controversy
British language policy
In 1837, the British East India company replaced Persian with local vernacular in various provinces as the official language of government offices and of the lower courts. However, in the northern regions of the Indian subcontinent, Urdu in Nastaliq was chosen as the replacement for Persian, rather than Hindi in the Devanagari script.[8][24] The most immediate reason for the controversy is believed to be the contradictory language policy in North India in the 1860s. Although the then government encouraged both Hindi and Urdu as a medium of education in school, it discouraged Hindi or Nagari script for official purposes. This policy gave rise to conflict between students educated in Hindi or Urdu for the competition of government jobs, which eventually took on a communal form.[12]
Hindi and Urdu movements
In 1867, some Hindus in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh during the British Raj in India began to demand that Hindi be made an official language in place of Urdu.[25] Babu Shiva Prasad of Banares was one of the early proponents of the Nagari script. In a Memorandum on court characters written in 1868, he accused the early Muslim rulers of India for forcing them to learn Persian. In 1897, Madan Mohan Malaviya published a collection of documents and statements titled Court character and primary education in North Western Provinces and Oudh, in which he made a compelling case for Hindi.[12][26]
Several Hindi movements were formed in the late 19th and early 20th century; notable among them were
Organisations such as
Communal violence broke out as the issue was taken up by firebrands.
In the last three decades of the 19th century the controversy flared up several times in
Gandhi's idea of Hindustani
Hindi and Urdu continued to diverge both linguistically and culturally. Linguistically, Hindi continued drawing words from Sanskrit, and Urdu from Persian, Arabic and
Muslim nationalism
It has been argued that the Hindi–Urdu controversy sowed the seeds for
Linguistic purism
Because of linguistic purism and its orientation towards the pre-Islamic past, advocates for pure Hindi have sought to remove many Persian, Arabic, and Turkic loanwords and replaced them with borrowings from Sanskrit. Conversely, formal Urdu employs far more Perso-Arabic words than does vernacular Hindustani.
Urdu to Hindi
In April 1900, the colonial Government of the North-Western Provinces issued an order granting equal official status to both Nagari and Perso-Arabic scripts.
See also
- Urdu movement
- Hindi in Pakistan
- Linguistic purism
- History of Hindustani
- Persian and Urdu
- Sanskritisation (language)
- Hindutva boycott of Bollywood films
References
- ^ "Hindustani language | Origins & Vocabulary | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Archived from the original on 1 April 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2022.
- ^ The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Archived from the originalon 19 April 2010. Retrieved 30 June 2019.
- ^ "Rekhta: Poetry in Mixed Language, The Emergence of Khari Boli Literature in North India" (PDF). Columbia University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 March 2016. Retrieved 23 April 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-521-51931-1.
- ISBN 9780521761062. Archivedfrom the original on 18 August 2017. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
- ^ Tariq Rahman (2011). "Urdu as the Language of Education in British India" (PDF). Pakistan Journal of History and Culture. 32 (2). NIHCR: 1–42. Archived (PDF) from the original on 23 March 2014. Retrieved 1 July 2016.
- ISBN 978-1-4008-5610-7. Archivedfrom the original on 22 September 2023. Retrieved 15 April 2021.
The basis of that shift was the decision made by the government in 1837 to replace Persian as court language by the various vernaculars of the country. Urdu was identified as the regional vernacular in Bihar, Oudh, the North-Western Provinces, and Punjab, and hence was made the language of government across upper India.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-595-34394-2
- ^ a b Maria Isabel Maldonado Garcia (2015). Urdu Evolution and Reforms. Punjab University Department of Press and Publications, Lahore, Pakistan. p. 223.
- ^ Ahuja, Sparsh (7 January 2020). "Yes, Hindi and Urdu are the same language". archive.ph. Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 2 October 2022.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ^ "Kaithi: This 200-year-old script is fading into oblivion". archive.ph. 1 May 2022. Archived from the original on 1 May 2022. Retrieved 1 May 2022.
- ^ ISBN 0-7914-0827-2 Google book
- ^ JAVAID, ARFA (1 April 2022). "What is the national language of India?". Archived from the original on 31 March 2022.
- ^ a b Taj, Afroz (1997). "About Hindi-Urdu". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Archived from the original on 7 November 2017. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
- ISBN 9789004097964.
Whilst the Muhammadan rulers of India spoke Persian, which enjoyed the prestige of being their court language, the common language of the country continued to be Hindi, derived through Prakrit from Sanskrit. On this dialect of the common people was grafted the Persian language, which brought a new language, Urdu, into existence. Sir George Grierson, in the Linguistic Survey of India, assigns no distinct place to Urdu but treats it as an offshoot of Western Hindi.
- ^ "Urdu language | History, Origin, Script, Words, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Archived from the original on 4 April 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2022.
- ^ Maria Isabel Maldonado Garcia (2015). Urdu Evolution and Reforms. Punjab University Department of Press and Publications, Lahore, Pakistan. p. 223.
- ^ ISBN 9781859843581., Turkish, and Tajik. Most of the little it takes from Arabic has not come directly but through Persian.
On this there are far more reliable statistics than those on population. Farhang-e-Asafiya is by general agreement the most reliable Urdu dictionary. It was compiled in the late nineteenth century by an Indian scholar little exposed to British or Orientalist scholarship. The lexicographer in question, Syed Ahmed Dehlavi, had no desire to sunder Urdu's relationship with Persian, as is evident even from the title of his dictionary. He estimates that roughly 75 per cent of the total stock of 55,000 Urdu words that he compiled in his dictionary are derived from Sanskrit and Prakrit and that the entire stock of the base words of the language, without exception, are derived from these sources. What distinguishes Urdu from a great many other Indian languages ... is that is draws almost a quarter of its vocabulary from language communities to the west of India, such as Persian
- ISBN 9781438468075., as is evident from the title of his dictionary. He estimates that roughly 75 per cent of the total stock of 55.000 Urdu words that he compiled in his dictionary are derived from Sanskrit and Prakrit and that the entire stock of the base words of the language, without exception, are from these sources' (2000: 112-13). As Ahmad points out, Syed Ahmad, as a member of Delhi's aristocratic elite, had a clear bias towards Persian and Arabic. His estimate of the percentage of Prakitic words in Urdu should therefore be considered more conservative than not. The actual proportion of Prakitic words in everyday language would clearly be much higher.
On the issue of vocabulary, Ahmad goes on to cite Syed Ahmad Dehlavi as he set about to compile the Farhang-e-Asafiya, an Urdu dictionary, in the late nineteenth century. Syed Ahmad 'had no desire to sunder Urdu's relationship with Persian
- ^ a b India Perspectives, Volume 8. PTI for the Ministry of External Affairs. 1995. p. 23.
All verbs in Urdu are of Sanskrit origin. According to lexicographers, only about 25 percent words in Urdu diction have Persian or Arabic origin.
- ^ "Urdu's origin: it's not a "camp language"". dawn.com. 17 December 2011. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 5 July 2015.
Urdu nouns and adjective can have a variety of origins, such as Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Pushtu and even Portuguese, but ninety-nine per cent of Urdu verbs have their roots in Sanskrit/Prakrit. So it is an Indo-Aryan language which is a branch of Indo-Iranian family, which in turn is a branch of Indo-European family of languages. According to Dr Gian Chand Jain, Indo-Aryan languages had three phases of evolution beginning around 1,500 BC and passing through the stages of Vedic Sanskrit, classical Sanskrit and Pali. They developed into Prakrit and Apbhransh, which served as the basis for the formation of later local dialects.
- ^ Jones, Kenneth (1981). "Religious Identity and the Indian Census," in The Census in British India: New Perspectives, ed. by N.G. Barrier. New Delhi: Manohar. pp. 73–101.
- ISBN 978-0-333-90425-1. Archivedfrom the original on 1 August 2023. Retrieved 13 February 2016.
- ^ John R. McLane (1970). The political awakening in India. Prentice-Hall. Inc, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. p. 105.
- ^ Urdu-Hindi Controversy Archived 27 April 2006 at the Wayback Machine, from Story of Pakistan Archived 19 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ a b c d e Status Change of Languages by Ulrich Ammon, Marlis Hellinger
- ISBN 0-19-563565-5. Archived(PDF) from the original on 27 June 2010. Retrieved 28 February 2015.
- ^ Venkatachalapathy, A. R. (20 December 2007). "Tongue tied". India Today. Archived from the original on 6 February 2016. Retrieved 1 January 2016.