Two Sides Of a Coin: Linguistic & Cultural aspects of a Language
Susham Bedi, Columbia University
I have a firm belief: Hindi and Urdu are basically one language. The division between the two is political and cultural, but linguistically they are one language. There are different scripts— Devnagari or Nastaliq—but that does not make for different languages. In this paper, I shall discuss the historical, political, cultural, and linguistic perspectives of this issue. In addition, I shall describe the model used by us in the U.S.A. to teach Hindi-Urdu.
I will start with a personal anecdote. In my early teens, I was associated with All India Radio in Lucknow and Delhi. I was initially contracted as a Hindi drama voice but would be often asked to give voice to Urdu plays whenever needed. I was delighted that I could make extra money by participating in Urdu plays without actually knowing Urdu language. The producers of Hindi as well as Urdu plays would often correct my pronunciation. I enjoyed learning new words or the correct pronunciation. I was earning as well as enriching and improving my language without making any specific effort to learn a new language.
History
History of language supports my belief that the language developed from Apbhranshas, which in turn, like other North-Indian modern languages, derived from Sanskrit. According to Amrit Rai, “Thus we see that but for a few of its phonetic peculiarities, Apbhransha is so clearly connected to Hindi that no one can doubt it is the immediate precursor of Hindi.”(A House Divided, Oxford, Delhi, 1991, pp. 58) .
Scholars have already established that Hindi or Hindvi was the old name for Urdu. Ghalib, while writing poetry in the 19 th century called his language as Hindi. The term ‘Urdu' for this language was used for the first time in 1780. Shamsur Rahman Faruqi in his book on History of Urdu Language states, “Early names for the language now called Urdu were Hindavi, Hindi, Dihalvi, Gujari, Dakani, and Rekhtah, more or less in that order…”and then he adds, “It was not unknown, in fact, even in the early twentieth century, for the name ‘Hindi' to be used to mean ‘Urdu'…Urdu as a name for the language seems to occur for the first time around 1780.”(Oxford 2000, pp. 22-23). Faruqi adds that the term Urdu stood for the name of the city Shahjahanabad (old name of Delhi) and later for the language of that city (ibid.pp.24). It has been established that ‘khariboli' spoken around Delhi became the basis of modern standard Hindi-Urdu.
Rai's approach differs from that of Faruqi. While Faruqi emphasizes the purity of Khariboli and Persian mix, Rai includes a number of poets whose Khariboli-Persian variety is sometimes mixed with Brajbhasha . This is the reason that Faruqi discusses poets like Shekh Bajan, Wali and avoids saying much about Bhakti poets like Kabir, Raskhan, and Khankhana etc. On the other hand, Rai quotes Kabir and other bhakta poets profusely. While Rai and Faruqi show a tradition of blending Persian-Hindi imagery and vocabulary, they differ in their illustrations. Faruqi shows more usage of Persian than Hindvi while Rai does the opposite. Both of these scholars also show that these poets have been influenced by Persian as well as Sanskrit literary traditions in their work.
Politics
The differences between these two styles were formalized by the British language policy. In 1801, Fort Williams College was established in Calcutta and two distinct styles of Khariboli prose were encouraged to develop. Later in the early 20 th century, this division was accentuated by the Hindu-Muslim strife in the national polity leading to two separate language movements-- Nagari Pracharini Sabha and Anjuman-e-taraqqi-e-Urdu . The political battles between Indian National Congress and Muslim League propelled both of these language movements to cause further alienation of Hindi-Urdu. NPS began Sanskritising while ATU was advocating Persianising of Khariboli. This controversy reached its climax at the time of India's partition. Nevertheless, the tension between the communities and the process of alienation has continued, perhaps, even more forcefully. The separation of Hindi-Urdu became most pronounced at the governmental level and at the All India Radio level. In common man's speech, it was one language as exemplified by the Hindi films, popular songs and the creative literature. However, most of the educated people began to accept the differences willingly or unwillingly. In spite of all the effort to categorize or divide the writers into Urdu or Hindi writers, I strongly believe that Ismat Chughtai, Manto, Rajendra Singh Bedi, Krishan Chander(classified as Urdu) or Mohan Rakesh, Krishna Sobti, Rahi Masum Raza, Abdullah Bismillah, Kamleshwer, Rajendra Yadav, Mrinal Pande(classified as Hindi) and many others, use the same language. Just the choice of Persianized or Sanskritised vocabulary, does not make one a writer in a different language.
It is true that when it comes to literature while Urduwalas look up to Ghazal, Mersia and Masnavis as major literary forms, the proponents of Hindi look up to Bhakti and Shringar poetry for the same. However, there are many common literary forms and poets like Kabir, Jayasi, Raskhan, Abdur Rahim Khankhana who are revered by both traditions. In the modern literature, there are even more commonalities e.g. fiction literature, Nazm, and Geet etc. Combining these traditions and treating them as forms of one language is linguistically more appropriate approach. After all, there are so many varied genres in the English language and yet it has not been divided into two or more languages on that account. Ghalib and Mir can also be part of the same canon that Prasad and Nirala are. I am aware that most Hindi-Urduwalas will find this statement rather shocking. As C.M. Naim in his essay, Urdu in India says, “They may call Urdu a s haili or style in Hindi, but they will never include Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz (or Sarshar Ruswa and Qurratulain Haider) in the Hindi cannon..” and then adds, “The Urduwallas have never included Jaisi and Qutbun, despite the fact that the manuscripts of their Sufi poems in Avadhi are all in the Perso-Arabic script. Just as Kabir is not considered a part of the Urdu cannon, though linguistically he should be included…” (Ambiguities of heritage, City press, Karachi, 1999. pp. 101).
My question here is why not? I think it is the elitism of both Hindiwalas and Urduwalas that is responsible for making such decisions of exclusivity. These are not based in the nature and realities of this language or its literature.
Vocabulary
The initial British language policy and the later political polemic have divided the language to such an extent that modern British scholar Ralph Russell had to say that, “For all practical purposes, therefore, Urdu and Hindi are two separate languages and should be described as such, despite their almost completely common structure and less completely common stock of everyday words” (The Annual of Urdu studies, number 11, 1996, “Some notes on Hindi and Urdu, pp.204).
It is true that Russell's statement is based on the use of vocabulary and as further says, “The most formal level of Hindi, sometimes referred to as ‘high Hindi', uses a vocabulary saturated with Sanskrit, while the corresponding level of Urdu, sometimes called, ‘high Urdu', draws heavily on Persian and Arabic. On this level, the two come close to mutual unintelligibility. Other less formal levels of Hindi and Urdu approach complete mutual intelligibility, the main difference being the script employed.”(pp. 8)
Russell illustrates vocabulary from Snell & Weightman's TEACH YOURSELF HINDI (incidentally that is the book I use for teaching beginners Hindi to my students at Columbia university) and says, “ It is true that the Hindi equivalent of ‘how far is the station from here?' is identical with the Urdu equivalent. And it is also true that the Urdu for “The 18 th century was a period of social, economic and political decline is “ atharvin sadi samaji, iqtisadi aur siyasi zaval ka daur thi , “while the Hindi equivalent is “ atharavin sadi samajik, arthik, aur rajnitik girav ki sadi thi” .”(ibid.pp.204) and he goes on to show the differences in formal Hindi and Urdu to conclude, “This is far from being a “one language, two scripts' situation”(ibid.pp.204).
I must say that when one learns a foreign language it is an effort to learn each different expression for the same thing but a native speaker finds several different ways and words to communicate all kinds of similar or different expressions. A language's richness resides in its ability to be a carrier of multiplicity of expressions and connotations. In addition, there is always a formal and informal code in languages. Whereas the spoken language uses a mixed code, a formal language can be free to pick its vocabulary from whichever source that suits it. Personally I have never had difficulty in learning both kinds of vocabulary and nor do I restrict my students from using either of the options. English has a global language status mainly due to its capability to include words from all over the world. One finds esoteric words like pundit, guru, dacoit, thug which are very much Hindi-Urdu words. Why then should Hindi or Urdu restrict themselves to the usage of Persian or Sanskrit words. Why can't it be inclusive? In Christopher King's words, English “..became a great language by inclusion rather than exclusion ”(pp.190). He is of course saying this to Hindiwalas that, “Let them cultivate an open and accepting attitude towards borrowing words from other sources…..and let them allow and encourage this process-though likely to happen anyway since language change lies mainly beyond the power of a few to control..”(pp190) A language grows on the tongue of its speakers and the process of binding or purifying does not stop this natural growth. Thus, it is the speakers of the language who give any language its organic form. Vested efforts can never stop the natural growth of Hindi-Urdu. Modern Urdu and Hindi are artificial forms of one language.
The phenomenon of Sansritization is not restricted to Hindi only. Punjabi, Gujrati, Bengali and Marathi have all gone through this process but that did not sub-divide any of these languages. Same is true for Hindi-Urdu. However, we have been forced to see these as two different languages because Hindu and Muslim communities have allowed their identities to be associated with one or the other.
The process of sanskritization of Hindi-Urdu is not favored by most people. If that were true then most people will call a train “lauh-path-gamini”. However, such words just died in the pages of dictionaries and Hindu-Urdu speakers continued to use common words like “gari or relgari”. I do not want Hindi to be separated from Urdu. It will be loss to both. It is only staunch Hindi and Urduwalas who like to keep an attitude of superiority against one another.
The Hindi, that Gandhi and Nehru advocated to become official language of India, was no different from commonly spoken lingua franca that in Ather Farooqui's article about Future Prospects of Urdu in India, is called Urdu. He says, “the fact is that as a spoken language the popularity and acceptance of Urdu cut across barriers of cultural, religious and status considerations”.(Mainstream , Annual, 1992) This is the language that I call Hindi-Urdu or Urdu-Hindi.
It is wrong to say that Urdu is dying because of Hindi. The truth is that Hindi's life is Urdu's life and vice-versa. It is one language that has enriched itself from various sources. In spite of the fact that English language has grown differently in different countries yet it continues to be one language. Communities adopt a language; enrich it with their life experiences , traditions and social-cultural milieu. Such enrichment is considered strength of the language, not a reason to fight over it or divide it.
Urdu has grown as much as Hindi since partition. It has perhaps gained more geographical territory due to it's highly Persianised form being used in Pakistan. C.M. Naim in his book “Ambiguities of Heritage” says that Urdu in India has neither declined in the number of speakers nor publications. According to him, there are more speakers, more book publications since 1947. “I have noticed no decline in number, in either relative or absolute terms.”(pp. 99) About using Devnagari script, he comments that Urdu will not become Hindi, instead, “If the script is changed, Urdu will have as much , if not more, effect on Hindi. We have the example of the so-called Hindi films; they use a language that is not the cherished variety heard on official bulletins or in the corridors of Hindi institutions.”(pp.100) This seems to be a quite positive picture.
Linguistic base
A language is not determined on the basis of certain borrowed words in its vocabulary. It is based on the basic rules of grammar and syntax. Hindi-Urdu is founded in same grammatical structure and syntax. Its pronouns, verbs, and basic vocabulary are same. However, vocabulary can always be borrowed. English has borrowed words from all over the world and the variety of vocabulary gives it a strong local color. In the same manner, vocabulary can be borrowed from Persian or Sanskrit without changing the nature of our language called Hindvi, Hindi or Urdu.
Script
The other main dividing factor is script-as aptly illustrated by the very title of Christopher King's book, “One language, two scripts”. Can a script be the basis for changing a language? It may be worth mentioning here that Ralph Russell initially learned Urdu with Roman script in the British-Indian army. Russell is a well-known Urdu scholar and he does not cease to be one on account of his having learnt Urdu through roman script. Therefore, one could deduce that it is possible to change the script without changing a language. After all language also resides in its oral form, which is, free of script. Russell actually supports the use of Devnagari or Roman besides Persian for Urdu. According to him, “Confining Urdu to Persian script also works against its spread. There is a large readership for Urdu works written in Devnagari script and also for Urdu works introduced through English.”(Urdu In India Since Independence, Economic and Political weekly, Jan.9, 1999, pp.44). He is in favor of publishing Urdu works in Devnagari script for the benefit of Urdu itself, “It would be extremely helpful to people who know Urdu but who cannot read the Urdu script and to the cause of Urdu generally if Urdu teaching materials and works of Urdu literature were published in Devnagari script.”(ibid.pp.47)
I am aware of the fact that script is important and inherent to a language and that is why certain sounds can be transcribed only in the inherent script. For this reason all the sounds cannot be easily transferred to Devnagari script or all the conjunct Hindi letters cannot be easily transcribed in Urdu script. However, this should not be a major issue because Hindi and Urdu both are equally capable of transcribing Persianised or Sanskritised words and have done so in the past. Actually both scripts are in a way inherited by Hindi-Urdu. It is like Punjabi is written in Gurumukhi as well as Nastaliq but it is still Punjabi.
However, script is one of the major issues in the Hindi-Urdu strife. One can see its origin in the establishment of the Fort William College in Calcutta where the demand for vernacular language textbooks started this controversy. Since major scholars in the field right from the early times of Gilchrist, Grierson to the current ones like Faruqi, King and Rai have already written profusely about this, I will not repeat the history. Interestingly, Rai claims that most of the old Hindi was written in Devnagari script while on the other hand Urdu scholars like Faruqi claim that most old Hindi/Hindvi or Urdu was written in Urdu/Persian script. This clearly shows that any of the two scripts is equally good for this language called Hindi or Urdu. King has even gone to the extent of suggesting different names that could be acceptable to both Hindiwalas as well as Urduwalas like Hirdu or Urdi. But this may sound ridiculous to some of us.
My own feeling is that there is nothing wrong in adopting a hyphenated name like Hindi-Urdu or Urdu-Hindi whichever is acceptable. Living with diversity and plurality is the norm, it is unfortunate that we have been fighting over it and feeling sorry about it when differences that exist can be used positively for the benefit of the growth of the language.
It is interesting to note that Hindu-Urdu (together as one language) can claim to be the world's second most spoken language. If we divide these into two, they move much lower in such ranking.
Cultural Implications
Here I should mention that script in a way symbolizes a culture. A language is not just for communication but also is a vehicle of culture . Therefore, even though Hindi-Urdu is one language, there is a different story when we deal with the question of culture..
A language has two sides to it—cultural and linguistic. But here not only the linguistic features of Hindi-Urdu are the same, but they share many aspects of culture. In fact eminent scholar Abul Haq, a leader of the Urdu movement in India, had called Urdu a common language of Hindu-Muslims, born of their cultural synthesis. Even the religious poets who used this language from 11-17 th century sang of spiritual synthesis. “The center of the field is occupied by Hindi/Hindavi , with almost as many Muslim poets—quite a few of the high-born Syeds, well versed in Arabic and Persian—writing in it as Hindus and achieving great distinction as Hindi poets.”(Amrit Rai “A House Divided, pp.231-232). It is the 19 th and 20th century's political events that caused tensions and furor between Hindus and Muslims who began to separate the language on the basis of their religion. For example all Islamic texts are written in Arabic and Hindu scripture are written in Sanskrit. This seems to become a major issue in the divisions of the language. This caused further divisions. High caste pundits treated Persian words as untouchables. It was Pandit Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi's Hindi purification movement in the early 20 th century that began to replace all Persian words with Sanskrit words. This process tore apart the inherent cultural synthesis. On the other hand because of the Islamic connection, Nastaliq held on to its bond to Persian culture more strongly. Over time the cultural divide of two communities divided the language as well. But why should a language suffer if its speakers are divided on cultural account? The vast body of literature created in other countries expressing their indigenous dreams and fears has given English language the capability of expressing a variety of local colors; it has also raised it to the level of a global language.
Language is not limited by religion. Various religious communities may choose to express themselves and their religious feeling in a certain language and begin to identify with it but that does not limit a language especially if it has traditionally been a vehicle of communication for a variety of communities. Each community can give language its own color but that would not change the nature of the language. It can only grow in as many directions as it is made to. I will again give example of English here, which has expressed Christian, Hindu or Muslim thoughts in the modern world but is not restricted to or restrained by any one.
Traditionally Hindi/Hindavi (old name of Urdu) has been written in Nastaliq as well as Devnagari. Most of the literature created by the Muslim community had used Nastaliq script. Consequently, it has been associated with Muslim community in India. But its usage is not restricted to Muslims. Nastaliq script has also been used by Hindus. Both scripts have been used for a huge body of secular as well as religious literature. Muslim community in India has associated itself with Urdu script, literature, and Islamic religious texts, and thus seeks its separateness as a language, culture and people . Ather Farouqui in this respect says, “Urdu is seen by average Muslims in India as the language for their cultural identity and for this reason evokes a deep attachment.” He himself agrees that, “This was not always the case. Historically, Urdu was the language of the ruling Muslim elites and Hindus who came in touch with Muslim leaders.”(The Emerging Dilemma of the Urdu Press in India: A Viewpoint, South Asia, vol. Xviii, no.2, 1995,pp.91). Of course, Ather Farouqui is limiting Urdu to elites and not realizing the fact that this language also lived and flourished among the common people. ( This is why scholars like Farouqui will not include Kabir in this cannon.)
Because of the connection between religious and linguistic identity of Muslims, Hindus see Urdu as part of Muslim fundamentalist agenda and Muslims see its denial as an attack on their cultural and religious identity. Actually this is where the crux of this problem lies. The issues of Hindu-Muslim identity have been played out as language issues and both communities keep going back and forth to the less important or irrelevant features, like script and vocabulary, of this language and try to either divide the language or disown a part of it. But it will be linguistically and historically wrong to judge Urdu as a language of Muslims or Hindi as a language of Hindus. It is a shared language
One should note here that not all Muslims of India speak Urdu. Kerala Muslims' mother tongue is Malyalam, and Bengali Muslims' language is Bengali. Paradoxically, while Urdu is the official language of Kashmir, most of the Muslims in that state speak Kashmiri instead of Urdu.
Solution
I have repeatedly said and would still say that the main difference between Urdu and Hindi is not of language but is that of the script. Therefore, contrary to what Amrit Rai suggested in “A house Divided” and I will quote, “… Urdu ..has no geographical region of its own. The ‘region' it has is a metaphorical region or, to put it differently, a psychological or emotional region,..”(A House Divided, pp. 288) , I would like to reiterate here that Urdu has the same region that Hindi has. Whichever areas are considered to be Khariboli Hindi regions, they belong to Urdu too.
Now how should one reclaim those regions?
I guess the major concern of Urdu (Persianised Hindi) speaking community seems to be about its teaching, growth and its status as a language of communication like other major Indian national languages. Only Hindi has been given the status of official language while Urdu does not enjoy that status . Since Urdu, like Hindi, has been a major language in the Hindi belt, it is justified in feeling denied its deserved place. In other words, Urduwallas would like Urdu to have the status of recognition as a medium of instruction in all Hindi-Urdu speaking states and be part of the three-language formula in all other states. Since independence, even in Uttar Pradesh where Hindi-Urdu was the main language, only Sanskritized Hindi has flourished while Urdu has been ignored. As a result, the synthesized form of Hindi-Urdu has been neglected which is naturally a cause of concern for all Urdu lovers.
But if Devnagari script along with Sanskritized vocabulary remains the Sarkari Hindi and the medium of school instruction, an alternative of Nastaliq with Persianized vocabulary will have to be provided to those who want it. Neither of the forms will be the language I call Hindi-Urdu or the original Hindavi.
India is a democracy and all communities have equal rights to promote their culture.
But the way things work in a democracy is that communities also help themselves. As Ralph Russell has said, “ it was, and it is, primarily the responsibility of people who love Urdu and Urdu literature to arrange for the teaching of Urdu and Urdu literature themselves. They could and they should do that; and if I am not mistaken they are not doing it.”(Urdu in India since Independence, Economic and Political weekly, Jan.9, 1999, pp.45).
The first and foremost step is to teach Urdu at community institutions. Actually it is a good idea that language should be taught at home especially if the community feels that there are not ample opportunities outside. In the US, there are a number of South Asian Sunday schools fashioned after the Christian Sunday schools. These schools give religious education as well as teach Hindi-Urdu to children. Hindi-Urdu is not offered at US schools but most children, whose parents are interested in their children learning the language either teach them at home or send their children there for learning from other volunteers. Sometime it comes as a surprise that children of American Indians end up speaking better Hindi-Urdu than middle and upper-middle class children in India. In the United States, wherever there is a large South Asian community, parents have been able to prod local school to offer South Asian languages at school level. This is how things move in a democratic setup. Every community must be willing to volunteer to support its interest instead of just complaining. That is the only way to settle matters in a peaceful and cooperative manner.
It is true that most community-run institutions teach language using religious texts. Community institutions like Madrasas only limit themselves to religious education and as Ralph Russell says (ibid) they never get education in Urdu literature, which is such an important part of that learning. It will be a great service by Madrasas's if they included Urdu literature in their curriculum. Alternatively, there could be secular community institutions for the purpose of teaching language and literature.
Government has its responsibilities too. It should facilitate education in Nastaliq. Like other language communities in various Indian states, Urdu-speaking people should get government support to propagate their language and culture.
State governments should help recognize and institute Urdu script in the curriculum. India is a secular democracy and every community naturally protects its culture and language.
Hindi-Urdu share the same territory. It is important to identify areas where a substantive number of people want their children to learn Urdu. There are two ways of doing it—(1) make it compulsory for all children to learn both scripts initially as part of the three-language-formula, or (2) make it available only to those who ask for it.
These are just broad categories and details could be worked out on basis of need.
I think they should also look into Gujral Committees recommendations in this respect.
Urdu has been declared as Official language of Bihar and UP, at least on paper. But it will only depend on political will to introduce both scripts for learning. Besides scripts it will also be a question of which texts to choose on the basis of particular localities. There are already some Urdu medium schools in U.P., Andhra Pradesh and Bihar
One may ask whether teaching two scripts is a waste of time and money. I would support the idea of two scripts for two reasons—by learning two scripts students will have access to more variety of texts and secondly it will protect the heritage of a community
Since Devnagari is easier to learn, we should make Nastaliq texts available in Devnagari and vice-versa. Talking from my own experience, students generally learn Devnagari in a couple of days and begin to read well in about two weeks whereas learning Nastaliq takes almost two semesters and still struggle with different variety of texts. Our program introduces them to Devnagari in the first year. They are introduced to Nastaliq only in the second year after they are able to communicate in basic Hindi-Urdu.
Whatever script we choose to use, they are all going to learn the same language. We might like to go back to the name Hindvi if that makes everyone comfortable. From my own experience, I would reiterate that I read all Urdu literature in Devnagari without being conscious of reading a different language.
In the process of alienation of two communities differentiation in the language is generally sought and achieved by tilting the vocabulary towards the use of more esoteric words from one or the other language of origin. While Amrit Rai accuses Muslims of alienating Urdu by overstuffing it with Persian vocabulary and literary genres, King accuses Nagari Pracharini Sabha of being equally responsible for Sanskritizing Hindi.
We have to walk the middle path and let the language bloom even if it has to borrow necessary words from different sources. We should freely borrow and use words from one another and stop this purer than thou attitude. This is the best way in which Hindi-Urdu will not only survive but flourish . Hindi-Urdu is like a coin with two sides. No matter what side you look at, it remains the same currency.
Now I come to the second part of my presentation where I shall describe the model that we use to teach Hindi-Urdu in the U.S.A.
Hindi-Urdu in the U.S.
It is interesting to note that since people abroad are somewhat free of communal baggage, it was possible to start teaching programs that saw Hindi-Urdu as one language with two scripts. When I started teaching in the US in 1985, I fortunately landed in and became part of such a Hindi-Urdu program at Columbia, which was then run by Prof. Frances Pritchett, a well-known Urdu scholar. I run this program with the help of Hindu and Muslims teachers who teach both Hindi and Urdu scripts to the same group of students irrespective of their religion and nationality. This is how we do it:
We call our program Hindi/Urdu. At beginning level, the students learn Devnagari. But we make sure they learn Hindi/Urdu vocabulary. For example, Dost/mitra, kitab/pustak. Most of it is common vocabulary anyway. We do not teach very Sanskritized Hindi. Urdu script is introduced in Intermediate Hindi and all students must learn it. When some student finds it too difficult, I would try to inspire him or her to learn without making it an imperative. Only in rare cases, we may allow a student extra work in Hindi or Urdu if he or his parents have a major problem with our approach. I might add here that such incidents have not happened more than three times in my last 15 years of teaching at Columbia University. Whenever a particular student lags behind, we provide them extra tutorial help to catch up with rest of the class.
From 5 th semester onwards, we provide separate classes in Hindi and Urdu to enable them read and comprehend literary and other texts comprising technical vocabulary.
When I teach modern Hindi literature, I generally include so called Urdu writers like Manto and Ismat. Similarly, our course in modern Urdu literature includes so called Hindi writers like.Premchand. Many students enjoy doing comparative work on such writers using both scripts. For example, they would study similarities and differences resulting from the usage of two scripts in a story written by Premchand. Students at New York University did undertake comparative work using my novel Lautna in Hindi and Vaapsi in Urdu. I should point out that my Hindi novel Lautna was published in Pakistan as Vaapsi
Most of the universities in the U.S.A. follow the same pattern. It is only recently that few universities have started to offer separate Hindi and Urdu courses at the beginning level. Separation of teachers has been mostly forced by the fact that the western-educated teachers do not have adequate range of vocabulary.
I give below some of the most frequently asked questions and our responses:
Q: Why is the basic two-year sequence called "Hindi/Urdu"?
A: "Hindi" and "Urdu" share an entirely common grammar, so from a linguistic
point of view they are one language. Our program teaches the Hindi
(Devanagari) script at the beginning of the elementary class, and the Urdu
script during the intermediate class, so everybody ends up having two
"languages" for almost the price of one. In vocabulary terms, we try to
emphasize common core vocabulary rather than extremely Sanskritized or
Persianized words.
Q: What if I am fluent in spoken Hindi, but cannot read or write?
A: You probably belong in the intermediate class. You should add an extra period of
auditing the script-learning sessions in the elementary class. The Devanagari (Hindi)script is very easy and even beginners learn it quickly
Q: What if I only want to learn Urdu, not Hindi?
A: If you don't know the Hindi/Urdu language, you need to enroll in the elementary class.Learning the Hindi script (which is easy and helpful to the learner) will help you with the Urdu script (which is a bit harder). You can learn Urdu script in the intermediate class, or else you can audit the Urdu script part of the intermediate class even when you are in the elementary class, if you want to learn Urdu script very fast.
Q-- What if I am somewhat competent and literate, in Hindi or Urdu?
A-- Then you probably belong in either "Readings in Hindi Literature" or "Readings in UrduLiterature." Both are taught every semester, and are repeatable since the content changes every semester. To be eligible for these courses, you must either successfully complete the intermediate class, or obtain the consent of the instructor.
As we move into the realm of literature, we pick appropriate script—the script of teacher and student's choice. If they are studying Ghalib they would prefer Nastaliq, on the other hand for Vatsyayan, Devnagari is the natural choice. But they might study Manto and Premchand in both scripts. It is also a question of availability of a writer in certain script. We make it a point to always call our program Hindi-Urdu.
Conclusion
Hindi and Urdu are two names of one language that originated from Apbhransha and was called Hindavi or Hindi until the end of 18 th century. The language uses two different scripts—Devnagari and Nastaliq. It reflects synthesis of Indic and Muslim traditions in its choice of vocabulary, images and literary genres. The division between the two is political but linguistically they are one language. They share same geographical region and cultural heritage.
It is the confused British language policy and religious tensions between Hindu and Muslim communities that caused split in the language. Nagari Pracharini sabha and Anjumen-e-taraqqi-e-Urdu are equally responsible for alienating it further by oversanskritising and overpersianising the respective languages. Partition only worsened it.
The sad situation is that the increasing differentiation between the two communities has affected the status of language as well.
In a pluralistic society all communities must develop their cultural aspirations and protect their valuable heritage. Therefore, it is important to let Hindi-Urdu language grow through using both scripts. But instead of blaming others or expecting government to do everything, Urdu lovers must help themselves and make sure that their children learn Nastaliq. Government should also make provisions for educating and fulfilling promises made in the Indian constitution.
Finally, we must ensure that Hindi-Urdu language blooms even if it has to borrow words from different sources. We should freely borrow and use words and stop ‘purer than thou attitude'. This is the best way in which Hindi-Urdu will not only survive but flourish . Hindi-Urdu is like a coin with two sides. No matter what side you look at, it remains the same currency.
Refrences:
Ather Farooqui, “ Future Prospects of Urdu in India”, Mainstream , Annual, 1992
.Ather Farouqi, “The Emerging Dilemma of the Urdu Press in India: A Viewpoint”, South Asia, vol. xviii, no.2, 1995,pp.91
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, History of Urdu Language, Oxford 2000, pp. 22-23
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