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Hindi and Urdu: A language divided, or a shared history destroyed?
Krisha Hirani reflects on the linguistic and sociopolitical histories of Hindi and Urdu after a chance encounter in Tesco. CW: Violence
I
was in Tesco last week, looking at the tomatoes. A man to my right commented on the ripeness of the peppers. I made a good-humoured reply – the tomatoes weren’t pakka hua either. He told me my Urdu was good; I told him I was speaking Hindi. With the regime of Hindutva and the increasing tension between India and Pakistan, it’s now more important than ever to
examine the linguistic history of the two languages that embody one of the largest, bloodiest mass migrations of human history. Hindustani is a Persian term meaning ‘land of the Indus (river)’. The term was used at certain points in history to refer to all of the Northern Indian subcontinent. It is also the name given to the Hindi-Urdu language. This is a pluri-centric language, meaning a single language of two different standard varieties, that arose from the
Hindustani region. A native speaker will likely separate the two and assert whether they speak Hindi or Urdu based on their national identity; in India and Pakistan, language heavily denotes culture. Hindustani, or Hindi, or Urdu, is/are (an) Indo-Aryan language(s), descending from Sanskrit and its evolved Prakrit. Yes, the grammar in that sentence is as confused as I am. Between the 7th and 13th centuries, the subcontinent was ruled heavily by Central Asian Turkish invaders, who brought with them the Persian language, religion, and literary traditions. The Persian language of the elite and the Arabic of religion influenced the lay-person’s Prakrit and Hindustani was born in Delhi. When the Mughal Empire was established in 1526, uniting most of the subcontinent, Hindustani became the lingua franca. The
“It’s now more important than ever to examine the linguistic history of the two languages that embody one of the largest, bloodiest mass migrations of human history.”
