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Monday, October 31, 2005

Urdu - Hindi

the effort through fort william (college) to promote indian languages can also be seen and interpreted as an extension of the raj's classic divide and rule dictum

the bazaar language in the cow-belt of India and Pakistan can (now) be described loosely as hindustani

the effort to palm them off as Hindi and Urdu in an organized fashion is a rather recent phenomenon...and should be seen in the context of rising nationalistic trends in the undivided India...(with Hindi relying on Sanskrit and Urdu on Persian, Arabic and Turkic roots)

in the 1850s the term hindi was applied to what Pakistanis now call Urdu as illustrated by this quote:

Mirza Ghalib wrote in a letter to Alauddin Ahmed Khan Alaai, " Wallah mera kalam, Hindi ya Farsi kooch meray paas nahiN hay. Aaagay jou kooch haaf'zay maiN maujood thaa woh likh bhaija. Ab jou kooch yaad aagaya, woh likhtaa hooN."

This is taken from Khatoot-e-Ghalib as compiled by Ghulam Rasool Mehr, published by Shaikh Ghulam Ali & Sons, fourth ed,1968, page 67, lines 5 & 6.

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Very interesting!

October 31, 2005 2:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

t - there you go! how i wish someone would start introducing us to hindustani once more...

November 24, 2005 4:33 PM  

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