The Locations of Hindi

Review article The Locations of Hindi literary recognition in the first half of the apparent disregard for form. Their some- Hindi Nationalism by Alok Rai , eighteenth century. It came to be known what bewildered response shows clearly Tracts for the Times 13, as Zuban-i-Urdu-i-mu‘alla and was culti- that the term ‘Hindi’ had little or no currency Orient Longman, Delhi, 2000; vated, not so much as the language of at least in this part of North India. pp 138, Rs 150. Muslims, but as the language of the elite We do not clearly understand what you of Delhi.1 Varieties of this language, written Europeans mean by the term Hindi, for in the Devanagari script, and after the there are hundreds of dialects all in our VASUDHA DALMIA institution of Fort William College in opinion equally entitled to the name and Calcutta in 1800 by the East India Com- there is here no standard as there is in n tracing the vicissitudes of modern pany, officially regarded as the language of Sanskrit. If the purity of Hindi is to consist Hindi as it was and as it has come to Hindus, were to be increasingly enriched in its exclusion of Musalman words, we Ibe, Alok Rai accomplishes the brilliant with words from Sanskrit and one day be shall require to study Persian and Arabic feat of traversing such densely grown ter- standardised enough to be considered in order to ascertain which of the words rain in the 130 pages of his tract that it worthy, and indeed in need of, separate we are in the habit of using every day, is could as well fill several volumes. Begin- literary production. However, it was the Arabic or Persian and which is Hindi. With ning in the early nineteenth century and common predecessor, the largely oral our present knowledge we can tell that a word is Sanskrit or not Sanskrit, but if not handling dexterously the social, historical, Hindi/Hindui/Hindavi, not excessively political, cultural and literary strands which Sanskrit it may be English or Portuguese Sanskritised or Perso-Arabicized (if I may instead of Hindi for anything we can tell go into making the intricate weave of coin the term), that remained the substrate language, Rai addresses issues as complex … what you call Hindi will eventually middle language. It is to this alone that Rai merge in some future modification of the and as vexed as: what was/is Hindi and refers as Hindi without inverted commas. Urdu: nor do we see any great cause of where/when was Hindi. In the following “Hindi” and ‘Urdu’ within inverted com- regret in this prospect [Nicholls 1907: 99, I shall briefly recount Rai’s theses, blend- mas refer to two identifiable styles or cited by Rai: 65-66]. ing in my own reflections and suggesting registers which, in the service of ulterior Ballantyne was obviously pressing the further areas of investigation. My focus agendas, have been “sought to be hived Sanskrit students to use ‘pure’ Hindi which will be on the role played by literary activity off and infected with, on the one hand excluded ‘Musalman’ words and it was in the evolution of modern Hindi. It is this Sanskritic, and on the other, Perso-Arabic this which caused bewilderment. which has endowed it with political pres- borrowings.” (15) But even in the late nineteenth century, ence and status and made possible its when the cause of Hindi had begun to distancing from Urdu and Brajbhasha, both In Flux acquire nationalist dimensions, Hindi with of which have come to be near relatives. or without inverted comas was considered In a last section, I shall turn to the location Modern print Hindi, as we know it now, to be in flux. It was an idiom in need of of Hindi vis-a-vis English, a positioning came into existence in the course of the both standardisation and wider propaga- Rai highlights throughout his tract. nineteenth century. But even in mid-nine- tion. Bharatendu Harischandra (1850- After a brief introduction into the present teenth century, it was still in flux and there 1885), reverently referred to as the‘father politics of the language, which seek to was little awareness of its existence as the of modern Hindi’, and surely a partisan retrospectively and in all finality distin- common spoken and written language of observer, was clear enough about this need. guish Hindi from Urdu on the basis of the Hindus alone. The awareness of its He made no attempt to disguise the fact script and religio-cultural allegiance, in Hinduness could be said to have been that there could be no question yet of a the second chapter of his tract Rai dis- almost imposed upon the populace by standard language, or of khari boli as the cusses the significance of the name ‘Hindi’. colonial intervention a good few decades one language spoken in the majority of the I share Alok Rai’s belief that there was before the Hindu elite themselves took up homes in the north-west provinces. As he (though Rai says ‘is’) one common lan- the cause of Hindu-Hindi. In 1846, James specified in a short treatise entitled Hindi guage of North India, a conglomerate of Ballantyne, the newly appointed principal bhasha written in 1883/4 at the tail end of dialects and sub-dialects, originally going of the Benares Sanskrit College, asked the an intensely busy career of writing in Hindi: by the denomination Hindi and its variants students of the college to use Hindi in their 2 Languages have three sections (vibhag), – Hindui, Hindugi, Hinduhi, Hinduki, written exercises. The students showed no that is, the language spoken at home, the Hindavi – to mean the language of the enthusiasm when asked to expend more language of poetry, and written language. people of Hind as against that of Turkistan effort in using the language of their own It cannot be ascertained what the language and Faras. This language written in the daily intercourse more correctly. Ballantyne spoken in the homes of the north-west Perso-Arabic script and enriched with pressed the most intelligent of the students provinces is, since in the province of Delhi words from Persian and Arabic, was given into formulating the reasons for this as well as in other cities, no one speaks Economic and Political Weekly April 5, 2003 1377 Hindi at home besides the Khatris and the the split was brought about by these means jected to a standardising process much Panchahi [western] Agravals, so much so is likely to remain a matter of debate: there earlier.4 that after every kos the language changes. is evidence that there was a distinct aware- A second high point was reached in (1890: 1) ness of ‘Muslim’ languages amongst the 1900, almost exactly a century after the The Khatris and Agarwals had also elite in Mughal India. According to institution of Fort William College, when brought Hindi to the east with them, that Muzaffar Alam, Jamal-ud-Din, author of Sir Anthony MacDonnell, Lt Governor of is, it was also spoken in Banaras, but here the Farhang-I-Jahangiri, the first compre- the north west provinces and Oudh, offi- it was an entirely alien idiom, for in most hensive Persian lexicon, compiled during cially promulgated that Hindi (written in homes of Banaras and on the streets, a the reign of Akbar, dwelt at length on the the Nagari script) be recognised alongside variety of dialects prevailed. As for the point that Persian and Arabic were the Urdu as official court language. He did not language of poetry, Harishchandra was languages of Islam (1998: 329). That there speak of different scripts thereby, rather quite definitive in his verdict, it was clearly had existed an awareness of difference of two different languages. The Kanpur Brajbhasha. Though even this monopoly cannot be denied. But it was not a distinc- plague epidemic measures lately under- was not recognised by all, as he ruefully tion which was carried into the language taken by government had inspired a resis- admitted, Tulsidas had used Avadhi. When of everyday use. And it certainly does not tance which had brought the two com- it came to the language of prose, that is, follow that this was a distinction which munities together. MacDonnell’s order written or ‘print’ language, he confessed need have had any bearing in modern deliberately emphasised their difference. that there was much disagreement. Some secular spoken and literary language. But Rai suggests that MacDonell was making wanted a generous mixture of Urdu words, once the notion of Hindi and Urdu as two an explicitly political move; I would go others insisted on Sanskrit words, but autonomous linguistic entities was set into farther and see it as express collusion with finally all ended up by writing according motion, there was practically no looking the high caste Hindu elite of the north west to their own taste and this was the reason back. Elsewhere I have written at length provinces, which once again officially why no language could be fixed upon as about the standardisation of the language cemented the difference. And there was standard. In short, he seemed to be saying we know as Hindi today, by means of no question that there were differences that Hindi did not yet exist as a standardised dictionaries and grammars. Produced in in the meantime: ‘Hindi’ was rapidly language, in either spoken or written form, great profusion through the nineteenth Sanskritising. or rather, that it existed in a variety of century, they sought to encode the lan- Rai contributes important new insights forms.

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