Urdu and Hindi: Joined by the umbilical cord

Dr Tariq Rehman’s new book analyses the history and development of the two languages.

ISLAMABAD:

Some might regard Urdu as a language unique from Hindi, but, as implied by noted linguist and academic Tariq Rehman, those people have little ground to stand on.

Rehman was speaking about his new book “From Hindi to Urdu: A Social and Political History”, launched at the Islamabad Literature Festival.

Professor Rehman started off light, explaining that he wrote the book simply because “writing is my hobby”.

Moving on to the book, Rehman provided a short history of the development of Urdu and Hindi into separate languages from their common roots, adding that over 1 billion people speak Hindi or Urdu as a first or second language.

He then gave an anecdote from a meeting between former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, former Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, and General Ayub Khan. Shastri and Khan were speaking without an interpreter.

Khrushchev asked both men what language they were speaking in. Shastri said Hindi, while Khan said Urdu. A baffled Khrushchev asked them how they understood each other, but received no reply.

While explaining that 1780 was the first time Urdu was called ‘Urdu’, moderator Harris Khalique, a noted poet in his own right, asked a question on how the language changed over time. Professor Rehman quoted a few verses from 14th century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer using the original old English to show how languages evolve.

He then used Sufi scripts from the 1300s which have quite a bit of ‘modern’ Urdu interspersed with Persian to illustrate Urdu’s evolution.

On the significance given to Urdu during the era of the British Raj, he said the rulers had made Urdu the language of the lower courts rather than Hindi, and explained that Urdu served as an identity marker because jobs were attached to it.

This led to the Hindi-speaking community developing pressure groups because Hindi-literate people felt alienated as they needed to learn Urdu for government jobs.

This led to a divide, which, when coupled with the loss of Muslim power in the centre, led to the ‘Islamisation’ of Urdu, and the ‘Sanskritisation’ of Hindi. Sanskrit and local dialect words were purged from Urdu, replaced by Persian and Arabic ones, Literary and cultural allusions moved to Islamic ones instead of those from local culture. Meanwhile references to Indian landscapes disappeared, replaced by Persian ones, while Indian romantic poetry, which focuses mostly on a man’s love of a woman, was replaced by Persian-style poetry, where a man loves a figure of indeterminate gender.

At the same time, there was also the enforcement of speaking Urdu with a Persian accent, possibly because after the loss of the empire — during which time it was the language of the elite — it was the only thing Muslims controlled.

Hindi adherents did the same, replacing common words with rarely-used Sanskrit terms. However, some influences from Hindi were not broken from, such as hard-ending sounds.

He said the language of Bollywood is actually closer to Urdu, illustrating that many directors keep munshis (clerks) or moulvis on set for Urdu dialogue pronunciation assistance.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 1^st, 2013.