140185 SE The Hindi Language Movement in India (2013W)

The demise of Mughal supremacy and the inconsistency in colonial language policy created a favourable situation for Hindi to become regarded as the national language of India during the Independence Movement. It is today one of the official languages of the Government of India.

Persian was the official language during the time of Mughal Empire (1526 -1858) in South Asia. A distinct language, Urdu, emerged and became the language of the courts of Muslim rulers, who had invaded India from the eighth century onwards. Urdu developed from Khari Boli of the Delhi area with the integration of words from Arabic, Persian and Turkish. As the Muslims spread in northern India, Urdu interacted with various vernaculars, absorbed local vocabulary, and over a period of time, developed into a distinct spoken language. Hindi also developed from Khari Boli, although with the adaptation of words from local languages and Sanskrit. The development of Hindi as a standard spoken language of the north cannot be separated from the development of Urdu. Both were essentially derived from the Khari Boli of the Delhi area. A division developed only gradually between Hindus who preferred to write Hindi-Urdu in Devanagari script and Muslims who rather wrote the same in Persian script. This division was initially not entirely a communal one. Only Hindus used Devanagari, but both Hindus and Muslims used the Persian script. The development of the Hindi language movement as part of the national movement in the late nineteenth century further contributed to this division.

The Competition between Hindi and Urdu and the tensions between Hindus-Muslims reached a peak in India during the 1920s and 1930s. The fight for Hindi/Urdu was not only limited to the language but language issues became the symbol of a kind of cultural, political and social clash. Backing for Hindi came from various quarters, broadly to be categorized as literary and reformist. This seminar will be based on a brief introduction to the history of the Hindi and Urdu languages and will be focused on the development of the Hindi language movement and the role of its leaders. The most important ones among them are Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, Bharatendu Harishchandra and Swami Dayananda, but there are also others.