One Nation, One Identity, and One Language
The debate continue to rage on the terms coined by right wing Hindu organization for one nation, one identity, and one language. After all the People's Republic of China has been able to execute this philosophy successfully. Then why can't India do it? This assumption is based on incorrect interpretation of history and the terms concerned.
Hindu and Hindustan
Let's engage in this discussion with open mindset. The term - Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion (i.e. Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism or Sikhism). In common use today, it refers to an adherent of Hinduism.
Historically, the word Hindu is derived (through Persian) from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, the native name for the Indus River in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent (modern day Pakistan and Northern India). The term Hindu first occurs as a Persian geographical term for the people who lived east of the river Indus (Sanskrit: Sindhu)".
Interestingly, The ancient Persians did not us the phonetic sound "S" and replaced it with "H". For example, number seven is "Sapta" in sanskrit but "Haphtha" in ancient Persian signifying the seven day week. The Greeks had trouble pronouncing the phonetic sound "H" and chose to remove it. Thus "Sindhu" from sanskrit became "Hindu" in Persian, and "Indus" in ancient Greek.
By about 2nd - 1st century BCE, the term "Hein-tu" was used by Chinese, for referring to North Indian people. The Persian term was loaned into Arabic as al-Hind referring to the land of the people who live across river Indus, and into Greek as Indos, whence ultimately English India.
When Moghul King Babur invaded Punjab in 1519, GURU NANAK expressed pain & anger at the loss of human life and plunder by the invaders as follows: "KHURASAN KHASMANA KIYA HINDUSTAN DARAYA".
In conclusion, The term Hindu was a geographical term and did not refer to a particular religion. The second term Hindustan is derived from two words - "Hindu" and "Sthan" which is Sanskrit term for geographical location. It literally means "The land of Hindus'.
Hindi
Now lets understand the term "Hindi" which is the national language of India. Hindi (हिन्दी) is a standardized and Sanskritized register of the Hindustani language. The Hindustani is the language of natives from Delhi, UP, and surrounded areas. This is the region where invading Moguls settled after plundering India. This dialect acquired linguistic prestige in the Mogul Empire (1600s) and became known as Urdu, "the mixed language".
The Mughal Empire's official language was Persian. With the advent of the British Raj Persian language was replaced by the Hindustani written in the Persian script and this script was used by both Hindus and Muslims. Urdu is Hindustani language written in Persian alphabets.
In the late 19th century, the movement standardizing a written language from Khariboli, for the Hindu elites in North India, started to standardize Hindi as a separate language from Urdu. This movement was supported by many Hindu writers of Urdu language. Among them was famous writer, Munshi Premchand. The pioneers of this movement abandoned writing in Urdu and began writing Hindustani language in Sanskrit script know as Devnagari.
Linguistically, Hindi and Urdu are the same language. Hindi is written in the Devanagari script and uses more Sanskrit words, whereas Urdu is written in the Persian script and uses more Persian words. In fact, Hindi is a modern language from 19th century that uses Devnagari script from the 5th century Gupta period.
The enforcement of Hindi language as national language of India is opposed by many ethnic regions of India. The Tamils, Bengalis, and Punjabis resent the neglect of their native languages and promotion of another regional language with little history as the national language of India.
Comments
Post a Comment