43 Rohit Wanchoo

NMML
OCCASIONAL PAPER
HISTORY AND SOCIETY
New Series
43
Imagining Hindi: The politics of language

before and after partition
Rohit Wanchoo
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library

2014
NMML Occasional Paper

Rohit Wanchoo, 2014
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Imagining Hindi: The politics of language
before and after Partition*
Rohit Wanchoo
The debate on Hindi, Urdu or Hindustani has been one of the

most emotive issues in India for a long time. It is clear that this
controversy has been shaped by several forces the features of the
language or languages in question; the attitude of the colonial state;
the contribution of key players like linguists, creative writers,
journalists, and political leaders; and finally the link established over
time between language and national and religious identity. The
specific impact of these factors has been shaped by the relative
importance of these influences at different points of time. In the
literature on the subject today there are some well defined positions
and lines of argument.
One is an older nationalist account, largely based on a Gandhian

or progressive understanding of the controversy over language.
Gandhi was a supporter of Hindi as a national language but he wanted
it to be Hindustani with the use of both the Devanagri and the Arabic
script. The Congress leadership too broadly supported the idea of
Hindustani a single language with two scripts although there
were many who disagreed strongly with this formulation. The
Progressive Writers' movement during the 1930s also endorsed the
idea of Hindustani, although some supporters felt that the language
had yet to flower and was more an ideal solution to the language
disputes, rather than a living reality. In short, Hindustani could be
a solution to the HindiUrdu divide but it had to be consciously
*This paper is based on research done as a Fellow, NMML (200911).

2 Rohit Wanchoo
created and nurtured by its supporters. Since the HindiUrdu divide

was seen as an outcome of a HinduMuslim divide, widening during
the late colonial period, the choice of Hindustani was also seen as
an attempt to ensure communal harmony.
There were others who felt that the choice of Hindustani as the
national language was not justified. There were those who favoured
Hindi as the language most suited to be India's national language on
merit rather than communal preferences. These proponents of Hindi
believed that it was a language which was most likely to be accepted
by the non-Hindi/Hindustani speakers in India who were far more
closely linked to the Sanskrit tradition than to that of Arabic or
Persian. Non-native speakers would find it easier to accept a national
language which drew upon the rich tradition of Sanskrit which had
also shaped their own regional languages. Others argued that as
languages developed they would need to expand their vocabularies
and would naturally turn to the classical languages they felt close
to. The effort to make Hindi and Urdu fit for modern societies and
suitable for law, administration, education and science and
technology would inevitably widen the gulf between the two forms
of the spoken Hindustani.
There were also spokesmen for Hindi and Urdu who felt that
Hindustani was adequate for purposes of communication as a link
language but not to articulate the cultural and religious
sensibilities of Hindus and Muslims. There was a mild view which
emphasized the need to develop two languages and there was a more
virulent perspective which was intolerant of the other language and
did not support the idea of Hindustani or any compromise with the
other's conception of the national language. Hindu and Muslim
nationalists and communalists were ardent supporters of Hindi and
Urdu and wanted to see their own language in positions of power
and prestige. As Indian freedom approached, the antagonism based
on language intensified. The movement for Pakistan, or the assertion
of Muslim identity, did shape the language debate as it influenced
the cultural politics of both the Hindus and the Muslims. The Partition
of India in 1947 had serious consequences for the evolution of Hindi
and Hindustani in postcolonial India.

Imagining Hindi 3
The debate about the 'evolution' of Hindi was not only about its
relationship with Arabic and Persian or the Muslim perception of a
lingua franca or national language. It was also about the relationship
of Hindi Khari Boli with the 'dialects' or 'bolis' in different
parts of north India which had accepted Hindi as the literary or
national language. There were those who argued that the controversy
between Hindi and Urdu would either greatly diminish or even
disappear if the regional dialects, numbering at least thirty according
to the scholar Rahul Sanskrityayan, were accepted as the medium
of education at the regional level. The support for dialects like Braj,
Bhojpuri, Maithili, Awadhi would greatly facilitate the spread of
education and make the HindiUrdu dispute a minor issue.
The debate during the 1930s was influenced by the awareness

that the country would be able to achieve independence in the
foreseeable future and had to choose the language of administration
and education. It was about the future, about the evolution of a
national language or about the future of Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani. The
disputes regarding the nature of Hindustani were important during
the last two decades of British rule but the real issue was about the
future. The controversies surrounding this issue did accentuate the
differences based on religious affiliations but it was the Partition of
India that decisively shaped the direction that language policies
would take after 1947. The marginalization of Urdu, the decline in
support for Hindustani and the steady rise of 'pure' Hindi were a
consequence of the division of the country on religious lines. If the
country had not been divided the outcomes would have been
different. It is likely that both Hindi and Urdu would have flourished
and Hindustani too would have attracted a sizeable following among
both Hindus and Muslims.
The Nationalist View
There were those who argued that the national language should
be based on the language used by the common people of north India
which included simple words from Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic.
Mahatma Gandhi argued that Hindustani ought to be the national
language and words should be accepted on the basis of popular use

4 Rohit Wanchoo
and not their indigenous or foreign origin. Although he thought that

Devanagari was the script most suitable for Hindustani since it
was closer to the script of regional languages in India which Muslims
in those regions were also comfortable or familiar with he wanted
both Devanagari and the Urdu script to be accepted till such time as
the Muslims wanted the Urdu script1. In the mid-1940s the Mahatma
wanted to bring out the Harijan in Urdu as well. His approach was
based on pragmatically handling Muslim anxieties and maintaining
communal harmony. He thought that the regional or local context
would determine the choice of words: in areas where Urdu words
were more commonly understood as in Punjab they ought to be used,
and in areas where more Sanskrit words were familiar as in Bengal
and South India they would be favoured. Gandhiji felt that Madan
Mohan Malaviya, Babu Bhagwandas and Mohammad Ali were men
who were equally at ease when addressing Urdu and Hindi-speaking
audiences.
The nationalists had different explanations about the reasons for

the growing chasm between Hindi and Urdu, but many felt that
Hindustani had to be promoted. Political leaders, aware of the
implications of mass awakening, felt that as the language of the
common people was Hindustani it would be able to achieve
acceptability eventually. However, in the absence of literary
production in Hindustani it was, to use a familiar term, a language
in the making. The nationalist Muslim Z.A. Ahmad observed that
while everybody thought that Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani was most
suitable as the national language, differences, however, arise when
we begin to consider the question as to how and in what direction
this language of the North is to be developed in order to suit national
purposes.2 Harish Trivedi has argued that the project of Hindustani
was anti-communalist and nationalist but it was linguistically
unviable. A limited vocabulary of Hindustani words could not be
the basis for a national language and that Gandhis support for Hindi
or Hindustani in the meeting at Nagpur of the Bharatiya Sahitya
Parishad in April 1936 doomed the project for Hindustani. Many
Muslims felt thereafter that Gandhi had begun to favour Hindi. The
bluff of Hindustani had been called, on both sides, and there was
nothing left to salvage, comments Trivedi. Perhaps there had never

Imagining Hindi 5
been any real common ground.3 This seems to be too severe an

indictment of the project of Hindustani and in 1936 it would certainly
be premature to call it a dead horse.4
The difference between the Hindi and Urdu versions of an extract

from Premchand's story that Trivedi has highlighted may indicate
the chasm between Hindi and Urdu but the question of national
language is not only about the literary form of such a language. In
many countries the language of the educated elite and the masses is
not similar. The spoken language of the common people, Hindus as
well as Muslims, was not as sharply different as the literary language
favoured by the educated elite. The well-meaning were trying to
minimize the growing differences by trying to agree on a shared
vocabulary of Hindustani to which both Sanskritized Hindi and
Persianised Urdu could contribute. Not only Gandhi and Nehru, but
many nationalists supported the idea of Hindustani. Rajendra Prasad
and Subhas Bose too supported the idea of Hindustani in different
forms.5 Rajendra Prasad declared, "We should deliberately include
in Hindustani all those Persian and Arabic words which are used by
good Hindi writers and all those Sanskrit words which are used by
good Urdu writers. He thought it was not important to figure out
where a word came from but whether it was able to achieve "popular
currency. Words should be borrowed from other languages, without
compromising on the purity of grammar, "if they are likely to be
easily understood and adopted by the people.6 There was a clear
justification for using "apt rustic words and expressions" instead of
drawing on Sanskrit or Persian.
Multilingual 'Nations'
The future of Hindustani was being debated during the 1940s

quite seriously among the nationalists and it depended not only on
the choices made by native speakers but also by speakers of other
Indian languages. The formulation of Benedict Anderson regarding
national language is not particularly relevant to the experience of
those countries which were trying to forge national unity in the
context of many indigenous languages. By adopting his formulation
one would have to accept the importance of one language for the

6 Rohit Wanchoo
'nation.7 In India the problem was that many regional languages

were negotiating their relationship with Hindi as the lingua franca
and the national language. The experience of other multilingual
nation-states like Indonesia, Philippines and the Soviet Union is more
relevant for analyzing the language problem in India.
The distinguished linguist, Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, was not in

agreement with the language policy advocated by Mahatma Gandhi.
In an essay entitled Rashtrabhasha Ka Prashna reproduced in
Rithambhara, he argued that there was a strong case for the adoption
of Hindi with the Devanagari script because it was closer to the
scripts of most north Indian languages. The influence of Sanskrit
was felt in most Indian languages, even those in south India.
According to Chatterjee there was lopsidedness in the attitude of
Hindi and Urdu speakers: while Hindi had accepted thousands of
Arabic and Persian words, Urdu had not allowed even a few Sanskrit
words into the language.8 In his view it was surprising that in the
name of Hindustani the language used by All India Radio was in
fact Persianised Urdu. Eighty per cent Indians would be in a position
to understand Sanskritized Hindi, but not words drawn mainly from
Arabic and Persian.
Chatterjee was not denying the valuable contribution that Arabic

and Persian had made to the development of Hindi. In fact he
believed that the medieval Muslim rulers had helped to extend the
geographical appeal of the early forms of Hindi.8A Therefore, he was
not rejecting the medieval impact but trying to limit further inputs
from Persian and Arabic as far as Hindi as a national language was
concerned. This was not intended to thwart the development of Urdu,
but to make a more Sanskritized Hindi the national language of India.
He felt that if Hindi and Urdu had to be used to develop a new
national language then it could not be the language of the Muslim
community. He argued for three points: as far as possible new words
be created using pure Hindi dhatu, pratyaya aur shabd; in matters
of religion and culture the words should be drawn from Arabic and
Persian as the Muslims preferred; and if required words should be
drawn sparingly from other languages, although this restriction was
not to apply to Sanskrit.9

Imagining Hindi 7
The acceptability of Hindi as the national language in India was

because of two factors: the use of the Devanagari script and the
presence of Sanskrit words. The popularity of Hindustani in the non-
Hindi speaking regions would diminish without these features. In
the non-Hindi speaking regions people were afraid of the difficult
Urdu script and the even more difficult words derived from Arabic
and Persian. The acceptability of Hindi was being challenged by the
Muslims of India, an attitude they did not always have. Although
Chatterjee may not be regarded as a Hindu nationalist, a nationalist
he certainly was.10 He argued that Muslims had not adopted such
an intolerant attitude towards Hindi words in the past. The Muslims
had used words like Kartar, Sai and Gusain instead of Khuda and
Allah in earlier times. In the villages this was still the case.
With the spread of education Indian Muslims would change their

attitude towards the use of Sanskrit words and the religious ideas of
their Hindu, Jain and Buddhist ancestors. This attitude was
strengthened by Chatterjee's knowledge of the rise of nationalism
among the Turks and the Iranians. Both had started eliminating the
influence of Arabic language on Turkish and Farsi, the Turks trying
to get rid of Persian influence as well.10A The call to prayer in Turkey
could only be made in Turkish by licensed mullahs. In future Indian
Muslims were bound to follow the example of the Iranian and Turkish
nationalists and so in the intervening period there was no need to
oppose or restrict the use of Sanskrit in the national language of
India.11
Suniti Chatterjee believed in the idea of a single nation, not a

confederacy. Therefore, he felt there was a need for a national
language and that Hindi descending from Lokik Sanskrit,
Shaurseni Prakrit, Pali, Shaurseni Apabhransha, Braj and Khari Boli
had a history of serving as a language of inter-regional
communication for over two thousand and five hundred years.12 His
nationalism and concern for the popularization of Hindi in the non-
Hindi speaking states led him to favour one rather than both scripts
for the national language. The conflict between Devanagari and Urdu
script was frightening the people in the non-Hindi-speaking states.
Although Devanagari on patriotic, historical and scientific grounds

8 Rohit Wanchoo
was most suitable as the script for the national language, the Muslims
were unlikely to accept this. The support for using the Roman script
itself arose because of this controversy. Netaji Subhas had advocated
the use of the Roman script for Hindustani at the Haripura Congress
session, but this would be difficult to achieve without the
acquiescence of the educated classes. Therefore, for pragmatic
reasons the use of both scripts, according to circumstances, as
advocated by the Congress, was the best option that was available.13
I
The Importance of Bolis and Janapadas
The question of forging a national language of India was not just

confined to the relative suitability of Hindustani or Hindi or Urdu.
The problem of creating a national language was not only about Hindi
vis--vis non-Hindi languages like Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi or
Tamil, but also vis--vis Hindi dialects like Maithili, Bhojpuri, Braj,
Marwari and Awadhi. The evolution of language in north India was
such that there were many who advocated the use of some, if not all
of the regional dialects, as separate languages. Among those who
lent support to the development of these languages, alongside the
development of Hindi, were scholars like Rahul Sankrityayan, Amar
Nath Jha and S.K. Chatterjee. The most vocal support for the use of
some of, but not all, the regional Bolis or languages came from
Banarsi Das Chaturvedi, who as an editor of Madhukar, promoted
by the ruler of Tikamgarh near Jhansi in Central India, became a
leading figure in this movement for recognising and promoting
regional dialects in the country.
Banarsi Das Chaturvedi was also one of the leading spokesmen

for the idea of 'decentralization' or Vikendriyakaran in the Hindi
speaking world. He argued that the popularization and promotion of
Hindi could not be managed from a single centre, no matter how
committed or diligent the leading figures at such a centre might be.
At its Haridwar session the Akhil Bharatiya Hindi Sahitya Sammelan
passed a resolution stating that Indian sanskriti or culture lives in
its regions or Janapadas. It proposed that there should be a
committee that would study the language, literature, folk songs, flora

Imagining Hindi 9
and fauna, local scientific knowledge and produce of the different

regions or Janapadas of India. The members, appointed to this
committee, were Vasudev Sharan Aggarwal (Lucknow), Banarsidas
Chaturvedi (Tikamgarh), Rahul Sankrityayan (Bihar), Chandrabali
Pandey (Kashi), Amarnath Jha (Prayag), Jainendra Kumar (Delhi),
and Satyendra (Mathura). This committee was empowered to co-
opt members whenever it deemed fit and could also include as
members up to four people from each of the Janapadas in which it
worked.14 The proposal for emphasis on the cultural and linguistic
importance of Janapadas led to some opposition at the Haridwar
session itself. The antipathy to the very word Janapada, based on its
negative consequences for the development of Hindi, became an
important issue thereafter.
The demand for decentralization or the Janapada movement had

philosophical roots and a practical programme. In one account, the
response to this Janapada movement was partly shaped by the fact
that two of the members of the committee had taken up other causes
earlier. The scholar Rahul Sankrityayan had proposed that the
language of the different regions ought to be used as the medium of
instruction. Banarsidas Chaturvedi had started a movement for the
organization of Hindi literary organizations on regional or Mandal
lines. The proposal for the Janapada movement initially came from
Dr. Vasudev Sharan Aggarwal in a letter to B.D. Chaturvedi in
January 1941. He had proposed that such Janapada work should
begin in Bundelkhand and the proposal was published in Madhukar
soon after.
Until such time as decentralization was accepted, the proposal

for the Janapada movement by Dr. V.S. Aggarwal and Kshiti Mohan
Sen, designated the Aggarwal programme, was taken up at the
Haridwar Sammelan. The proposal, roughly along the lines indicated
in the letter of 11 January, 1941, was moved by Bhadant Anand
Kaushalyayayan and supported by Dr. Amarnath Jha and Shrimati
Kamlabai Kibay. In the open session the proposal was opposed by
Avanindra Kumar Vidyalankar and Shrinath Singh. In the opinion
of Vidyalankar Indian culture no longer lived in its regions since
the Janapadas had ceased to exist long ago. Although the villages

10 Rohit Wanchoo
were still there, they were no longer the repositories of Indian culture.
Any effort to turn to the Janapadas would waste resources and create
divisions. Shrinath Singh feared that since Rahul Sankrityayan was
a member of the Committee and it had accepted Janapadas as cultural
entities he would be in a position to work against the interests of
Hindi and the unity of the country. At a time when there was a
demand for Pakistan, any legitimacy given to the Janapadas would
create a divisive atmosphere.
The proposals were passed by the majority after two amendments

in May 1943. Subsequently Chandrabali Pandey, the Secretary of
the Sammelan, changed his position. From accepting that the
Aggarwal programme would be implemented keeping in mind the
resources of the organization in September 1943 he moved to the
position that this program had no direct relationship with the work
of the Sammelan. The programme was an issue that concerned only
the U.P. and Madhya Bharat organizations.15 He wanted the whole
of India to speak in one voice and Hindi, infused with patriotic
fervour, to spread far and wide.16 In an interview published in
Hindustan Makhan Lal Chaturvedi, the Chairman of the Sammelan,
declared that although the programme had not been chalked out the
Janapada programme could be set aside by the forthcoming
Sammelan at Jaipur. These pronouncements indicated the effort to
dampen the spirits of those who supported this movement.17 On 14
November, 1943, B.D. Chaturvedi resigned from the Janapada
committee in order to remove any apprehensions and to facilitate
the adoption of the programme favoured by V.S. Aggarwal.
In the world of Hindi scholars many fears surfaced, based on

the assumption, that B.D. Chaturvedi's programme for
decentralization or Vikendriyakaran was closely associated with the
Janapada programme. Makhanlal Chaturvedi, Swami Bhawani Dayal
Sanyasi and Satyendra were critical of the Janapada programme
precisely because they perceived them as quite similar. The anxiety
among the scholars also arose because B.D. Chaturvedi had endorsed
the three separate strands in the debate on language at the same point
in time. He had supported the Janapada, decentralization and Rahul
Sankrityayan programmes and thereby contributed to the

Imagining Hindi 11
misunderstanding. According to the scholar and socialist, Dr.

Sampurnanand, this had added to the confusion. Even those who
were opposed to the idea of education in regional dialects, advocated
by Sankrityayan or the idea of decentralization advocated by
Chaturvedi since 1934, were in favour of recording the folk tales
and songs of the various regions of the country in order to enrich
the Hindi language. Among those in favour of the third strand were
Avanindra Kumar Vidyalankar, Dr. Dhirendra Verma, Bhawani Dayal
Sanyasi and Dr. Sampurnanand.
Decentralization and Local Literary Patriotism
In February 1934, B.D. Chaturvedi wrote in Vishal Bharat that

the establishment of regional Sammelans would strengthen the Hindi
Sahitya Sammelan and promote the cause of Hindi. At a time when
there were few people of calibre available for the promotion of Hindi
a central organization could have played a key role. That was not
the case ten years later. Kashi, Prayag, Kanpur and Lucknow were
all capable of serving as vibrant centres of literary production. People
who were not full time workers, based in Prayag, could no longer
play any serious role in promoting or even coping with the diverse
trends in the Hindi-speaking world. The Hindi Sahitya Sammelan,
according to B.D. Chaturvedi, had become a temple without a
priest. The Virendra-Keshav-Sahitya Parishad in Bundelkhand could
be made the nodal centre for the recovery and promotion of the
language and culture of the region. Not only was the language of
Bundelkhand as sweet as that of the Braj region, in the opinion of
the eminent poet Maithili Sharan Gupt, it was even sweeter.18
B.D. Chaturvedi espoused the cause of local literary patriotism

in his March 1934 article in Vishal Bharat. This confidence in local
talent and initiative sprang from his knowledge of the tremendous
work done by the Madhya Bharat Hindi Sahitya Samiti which had
played a key role in the propagation of Hindi in south India and in
Indore itself under the guidance of Sardar Madhavrao Vinayak Kibay
and Dr. Sarju Prasad. In Delhi, the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan accepted
in 1934 the significance of regional dialects for the first time and
proposed the establishment of Mandal Sabhas. Nevertheless, even

12 Rohit Wanchoo
ten years down the line, such regional or mandal sabhas had not been
set up. The reluctance of the central body to back up this proposal
for dialect and region-based literary bodies may have played a role
but the Braj Sahitya Mandal and the Bundelkhand Sahitya Mandal,
based on local initiatives, also did not survive for very long.
It would appear that while the desirability of promoting regional

dialects was felt among literary circles the local talent was either
lacking in resources or organizational skills to sustain initiatives. These
proposals depended for their success on local talent and sponsors and
both were in short supply during the late 1930s for a variety of reasons.
The national, peasant and socialist movements and various other
popular movements competed for local talent. Purely literary figures
could not attract enough people for their own projects about Hindi.
The fact, that there was some anxiety about the divisive consequences
of two of these strands in the literary world, added to the difficulty.
The spokesmen had to declare that they were not trying to break up
the country into small segments, like Mr. Jinnah was trying to do.
B.D. Chaturvedi started the journal Madhukar from Tikamgarh

in October 1940. Shri Satyendra argued that before he went to
Tikamgarh, Chaturvedi's programme was beneficial for Hindi; after
he moved there it was vitiated by the ulterior motive of trying to
carve out a separate state of Bundelkhand by highlighting its
distinctive characteristics. When the movement for decentralization
began in 1940 it had the endorsement of Satyendra who thought it
was in keeping with the democratic spirit of the times. Later, he
argued that the very word Janapada was controversial and divisive:
it was advisable to work at the level of individual villages, rather
than particular dialects or cultural regions.
As late as June 1941, Satyendra had accepted the idea of

decentralization in the journal Sadhana. At this time he also accepted
the use of the regional dialects of Hindi to reach out to the people
in the villages. Although Bundelkhandi stories were being published
in Khari Boli in Madhukar, stories in Braj-Bharti were being printed
in the Braj language itself. The Braj Sahitya Mandal, of which
Satyendra was a leading figure, also proposed the setting up of a

Imagining Hindi 13
Braj-Bhasha University. Satyendra, the mentor of Jagdish Chaturvedi,

had since resiled from his position and had begun to see it as divisive
because it was associated with the demand for education in the
regional dialects. In the specific case of Bundelkhand it was also
associated with the demand for a separate state that had emerged
from Tikamgarh in 1942.19
The support for local patriotism was espoused by Banarsidas

Chaturvedi in Madhukar in June 1941 when he published an
abbreviated version of an article in the Modern Review which had
come out over seventeen years ago. Dr. Sudheendra Bose, an
academic at the University of Iowa for almost three decades, wrote
an article entitled, Let Us Be Provincials. The History Council of
Iowa University was not only producing works for scholars but was
also engaged in the dissemination of knowledge among ordinary
citizens. The Council had published 170 volumes for the general
public. The article cited American scholars in support of the ideal
of constructive provincialism. Dr. Shambough argued that the
knowledge produced by local history councils would produce true
patriotism and a practical approach to serving the nation. A Harvard
philosopher, Joshua Royce, argued that nations in the future would
have to respect the healthy spirit of provincialism.20
Therefore, B.D. Chaturvedi believed that if the histories of

regions like Braj, Awadh, Bundelkhand and Rajasthan were
meticulously explored it would help in writing a comprehensive
history of our motherland. He supported the ideal of local patriotism
or prant-prem but not small-minded provincialism. He was definitely
against the idea of producing books for schools in the regional
dialects: an unbridled provincialism would be a threat to Indian
nationalism. The ideal he upheld was the development of local or
provincial literary resources and talent in order to support the wider
and greater conception of the motherland. The idea of a separate
Bundelkhand could only be supported on the basis of this relationship
between the region and the nation.21
The Janapada programme

14 Rohit Wanchoo
The Janapada programme was interpreted in diverse ways, but

there was a key point of discussion: was it desirable to develop the
Bolis and to impart education through them? There were those who
felt that the Janapada programme was desirable and those who felt
it might hinder the progress of Hindi. Makhanlal Chaturvedi, the
Chairman of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan at Haridwar, wanted to
protect and preserve the rich literature in the dialects but was not
willing to accept the publication of school textbooks in these
languages. The idea of producing several centres for the promotion
of Hindi also did not strike him as a development that could rightfully
be called decentralization. He argued that if we got to a stage when
speakers of Maithili and Marwari failed to understand each other it
would be a tragedy for the conception of a common Hindi language.
The inflammation of provincial pride and support for education in
the dialects would be the surest way of strengthening the position
of English in the Hindi belt.
If education was encouraged in the dialects he felt that it would

enable English to become the language of convenience, of High
School and College education and inter-provincial communication
in the Hindi world. He was all for the fullest recognition to the literary
contributions of writers in the dialects but accessed through the
medium of Hindi. Those who could understand the originals in
Marwari or Maithili were welcome to do so but for the rest the same
work would be available in the standard Hindi in current use. The
fear that English would become the language that would be preferred
by pragmatic people who spoke different dialects was uppermost
on his mind.22 The fear might not be misplaced because even after
the dialects were not made the medium of instruction in the Hindi-
speaking world after independence the sway of English only
increased over time.
There were many who felt that Hindi could be regarded as the
national language but not the mother-tongue. Scholars like Amar
Nath Jha and political figures like Vyohar Singh were supporters of
literary Hindi as the national language but were committed to their
mother-tongues, the dialects. In the opinion of A.N. Jha the speakers

Imagining Hindi 15
of Hindi ought to feel proud of the fact that the speakers of the
dialects felt it their duty to accept Hindi as the national language. If
the speakers of these dialects were to feel that their mother-tongues
were being treated with scant respect it would lead to a reaction
against Hindi and weaken its appeal. Jha was emphatic that a bazaar
language like Hindustani could never become a literary language.
Hindi was our mother-tongue, not Hindustani because it was a dogali
or double-faced and unworthy language. As President of the Hindi
Sahitya Sammelan, he toured various places and argued that Hindi
would prosper only if the Janapada dialects prospered.23
In response to the principle of decentralization and the Aggarwal

programme, one scholar, with the Soviet Union as an example before
him, argued that he did not think that the Janapada programme was
desirable. Devendra Satyarthi argued that in Russia, where the
different spoken languages and dialects had been developed into
literary languages, it was Russian that had become the language of
the Soviet Union. The language policy of the Soviets had in fact
promoted centralization by making it the language of the USSR. He
was attracted by this policy and therefore could not accept the ideal
of decentralization endorsed by V.S. Aggarwal. He also quoted with
approval Chandrabali Pandey who stated unequivocally at one point
that he was an opponent of decentralization and favoured
centralization.24
Languages like Maithili, Rajasthani spoken by large numbers of

people, would help to enrich Hindi as the various languages in the
USSR were enriching Russian. This might be a misreading of what
was happening in Russia but it indicated that Satyarthi thought there
was no essential conflict between Hindi and the development of some
dialects into literary languages. He did not think that the development
of literary languages based on dialects of Hindi would undermine
Hindi. Satyarthi believed that the position of Hindi had to be as strong
as that of Russian in the Soviet Union. He was influenced by the
Soviet doctrine on the self-determination of nations as propounded
in 1922 and endorsed by Stalin later. This policy would enable larger
political units to be formed on the basis of popular support and
national unity would be more stable and enduring.

16 Rohit Wanchoo
Language, Dialect and Province
The link between language and province was established by the

Congress in 1920 and the Provincial Congress Committees were
organized on the basis of linguistic principles or regions. The issue
as far as the Hindi-speaking states were concerned was whether the
dialects spoken in the region ought to be the basis for reorganizing
states. The newspaper Jagriti from Calcutta criticized Chaturvedi
for raising his voice in support of organizing provinces on the basis
of dialects. He denied that he had developed a desire to become a
political leader and asserted that his sole concern was the well-being
of the ordinary people of Bundelkhand and not its propertied or
educated elite. Vyohar Rajendrasinghji, a prominent Congress leader
of Madhya Prant, believed that there was a clear need to bring the
Bundelkhandi-speaking people scattered in United Provinces,
Madhya Prant and numerous small princely states into one single
province.
Vyohar Singh, M.L.A., was a prominent member of a Committee

that had steered the movement for the division of the Hindi-speaking
province in 1928. Dwarka Prasad Mishra, a leading Congressman,
had advocated the creation of a Hindi-speaking province in 1927.
Although a movement for a separate state was not new, the demand
for a separate Bundelkhand was now sought, according to
Chaturvedi, only in order to serve a united India more efficiently.
This proposal was the best way to destroy the communal virus and
tackle the demand for Pakistan. The rivers of the region Betwa,
Dhasan, Kane and Jamner were equally the mothers of all the
people of the region and they had nothing to do with the conflicts
arising out of religious differences.25 This was a notion of separate
statehood that placed the interests of the common people above all
others.
As Chairman of the Bundelkhand Parishad, Vyohar Singh wrote

an article in Madhukar clarifying his position on the demand for a
separate state. If all the Hindi-speaking people could be clubbed
together in one large state he would not have any objection to it.
Since such a state would be too large and unwieldy he felt that the

Imagining Hindi 17
division of the region into different provinces should be on the basis

of the dialects or Bolis. The proposed Bundelkhand province would
also include regions where people spoke Braj, Chhatisgarhi, Nimadi
and Gondi. This proposal had been supported by Vishvabandhu in
its issue of 15th December, 1943. From the viewpoint of language,
literature and culture it seemed desirable to create provinces based
on Bolis or dialects in the Hindi-speaking region. Politically, the
opposition of the princely states had to be overcome. Economic
difficulties would arise in the early stages but with some central
government grants Bundelkhand too could become self-reliant like
Orissa and Sindh. If these two provinces could have their way and
Andhra and Karnataka were adamant about getting separate
statehood then the Bundelkhandis also could, and should, resolutely
demand a unified state for the Bundeli-speaking people.26
Justifying the demand for a separate state, Deendayalu

Shrivastava made the case on geographical considerations. There
were three or four districts in the United Provinces that were actually
Bundelkhandi. The U.P. region had flat plains that were fertile and
Bundelkhand was a rocky terrain with large uncultivable tracts. Just
as the states of Rajasthan, which had similar geographical
characteristics, could not be merged with neighbouring states like
Punjab, Bombay or the United Provinces, the districts of
Bundelkhand also could not be justifiably merged with the United
Provinces. The disparities in the level of development of the
Bundelkhand and U.P. regions, in terms of transport facilities and
educational development, meant that the less developed were being
asked to compete with the developed. The students of grade one could
not be asked to compete with those of grade four. Although the
Bundeli language was definitely insufficiently developed,
Shrivastava was not averse to its use in education if the people of
the region so desired.27
The demand for a separate state had repercussions in distant

places as well. Krishna Chandra Aggarwal, the son of the newspaper
owner and journalist Mool Chandra Aggarwal, argued for a sporting
event in Bundelkhand to unite the people of the region. Although he
was based in Calcutta, his father belonged to the region and was

18 Rohit Wanchoo
born there. The annual sporting event to be called Bundelkhand

Olympics would showcase the talent of the region, which had
produced internationally famous hockey players like Dhyan Chand
and Roop Singh. It would also unite all the people and overcome
religious, caste and other differences. The days when provinces were
divided had gone: the objective should be to develop the region rather
than to create a new province. Had the people forgotten the infamous
partition of Bengal?28 The ideal was to unite Thakur and Harijan,
Hindu and Muslim by participation in an annual sporting event and
improve the lot of people of the region. Development and uplift were
posited as alternatives to the creation of a separate state.
In the opinion of one writer there was little evidence to believe

that Bundelkhandi was a language very different from Braj. The Braj
and Bundelkhandi Bolis were both derived from Shaurseni Prakrit
and were governed by the same grammar rules. The two Bolis used
similar verbs, adjectives, common nouns and even their vocabularies
and stories (kathnikayein) were similar. No other dialect or Boli was
as close to Braj as Bundelkhandi was. Madan Lal Chaturvedi went
on to argue that Braj was not only the most important language to
emerge from Shaurseni but that it influenced other Prakrit languages
as well. Some of the early Gujarati literature was in fact in Braj; the
Marwari poets and even Guru Nanak and Guru Govind Singh used
Braj; and the work of Malik Muhammad Jayasi of Awadh was a
mixture of Awadhi and Braj. Vidyapati in Bihar wrote in Braj and
so did the 14th century Bengali poet Chandidas. The language of
these two poets was referred to as Brajbuli in Bengal. After the
decline of Sanskrit it was Braj which became the literary and national
language.28A By denying that Bundelkhandi was a distinct language
from Braj the case for a separate identity and statehood for
Bundelkhand was being rejected.29
Although there was a difference between the Braj and

Bundelkhandi regions, in terms of the martial traditions of the latter
region, the language in use was substantially similar in both. It was
arguable that the difference between Braj and Bundelkhandi was
greater when it came to writing stories. Madan Lal Chaturvedi was
willing to concede this point in his argument with a Bundelkhandi

Imagining Hindi 19
critic but insisted that only the pure form of the two dialects ought
to be compared. This reflected an attitude of linguistic purism as
well as social and elitist prejudice. Chaturvedi insisted that
Bundelkhandi should not include words used by Kols, Bhils and
Anaryas or non-Aryans. The Sadhu Bhasha used by Keshav,
Chattrasal, Raghuraj, Isuri and Biharilal, author of the Satsai, alone
would be considered as standard Bundelkhandi. The same standards
would apply in the case of Braj and would exclude words that were
used by Jats and Gujars and borrowed from other local dialects or
deshaj bolis.30 The debates during this period were not only about
the standard form of Hindi but also of its various dialects. The
arguments might be framed primarily in terms of language and
literature, but were used to deny political claims. In this case, Madan
Lal Chaturvedi was making a case for the rejection of the
distinctiveness of the language of Bundelkhand and its demand for
a separate state.
There is considerable scope for controversy about the relation

between language and dialect. In classical Greece there was no single
Greek language but written dialects that were used for specific
purposes Ionic for history, Attic for tragedy and Doric for choral
lyric. The post-classical period saw the development of a single
Greek language called Koine which was based on the dialect of
Athens and was the product of convergence of the various Greek
written dialects of different regions. Nevertheless, these written
dialects had their origin in spoken dialects which had diverged from
an old common Greek language. Therefore, an American scholar has
argued that the dialect may be regarded as a set of norms under the
rubric of language which could historically be the product of both
convergence and divergence.31 In France the French revolutionaries
regarded the regional dialects as feudal remnants. The French did
not record the speakers of Breton in the census even after World
War II and were reluctant to acknowledge the claims of those who
spoke Provencal.32 Different standard forms of written language
declined in France after French became the national language.
In Italy too the Piedmontese language declined progressively

after the adoption of Tuscan as the standard form of the Italian

20 Rohit Wanchoo
language. Eric Hobsbawm has argued that at the time of the French
revolution barely 1213 per cent of the French population spoke
French correctly and 50 per cent did not speak it at all. In northern
and southern France hardly anybody talked in French. Only 2 per
cent spoke standard Italian for everyday purposes when the
unification of Italy took place in 1860.33 Therefore, the steady rise
of the national language was a product of state patronage and neglect
of the dialects. Nationalist pressures, the advantages of learning a
dominant language or the weaknesses of the dialects or the dialect
speakers themselves could ensure the ascendancy of the language
chosen as the national language.34 To some extent, these factors have
helped Hindi to gain ascendancy at the expense of its regional
dialects.
II
Education in Hindi Dialects
Not to recognize the vital importance of Hindi as the language

of communication or sammilit bhasha or sammilit sajhay ki bhasha,
according to Rahul Sankrityayan, would be unacceptable. All he
wanted people to accept was that those who did not live in the Meerut
Commissionary, which constituted less than four districts, also had
mother-tongues that deserved attention. Mother-tongue was that
language which the uneducated and even children could speak
without any grammatical mistakes. Even a child of five in the Braj
region, unlettered and untaught, would be able to laugh at incorrect
use of Braj by someone who had picked it up as a second language.
The child acquired the language literally with his mothers milk.
Therefore, it was vital to recognize the importance of Braj
(Saursheni), Panchali (Ruhelakhandi), Bundelkhandi (Dashararni),
Kashika (Banarsi), Mallika (Bhojpuri), Vatsi (Dakshin Awadhi) and
Baghelkhandi (Chedika).
The huge expansion in the knowledge available to mankind made

it vitally important for the masses to acquire education. In order to
promote education, and reduce the labour involved in its acquisition,
it would have to be provided in the mother-tongue. If those who
spoke Awadhi, Kashika or Mallika were compelled to learn Hindi

Imagining Hindi 21
for eight years before they were permitted entry into the temples
of learning, i.e in high schools and colleges, the task of learning
would certainly become more difficult. The scholar, who had visited
the Soviet Union, was advocating the policy on language that had
been adopted by the country he came to admire. Rahul Sankrityayan
lauded the policy of providing education to the people of Central
Asia in their mother-tongues, languages that the Soviet Union
actually helped substantially to develop.35
Unlike the government of the Tsars, which was not interested in

the education of the common man, the Socialist government took
enormous pains to ensure that the common people were educated
and that too in their own mother-tongues. The Turkmen, Uzbek,
Kirghiz and Kazakh languages did not have any script of their own,
or any written literature at the time when the Bolsheviks came to
power in these regions. The enlightened government thought it would
be better to educate the people in their own languages, by translating
from the more developed languages like Russian and Turkish, rather
than to compel them to learn these two developed languages. This
enlightened policy transformed the entire region in a quarter century.
In Uzbekistan where there had not been a single published book in
the Uzbek language there was by the mid-1940s a university at
Tashkent where numerous subjects were taught in the Uzbek
language in different colleges.
It was the solicitude for the common people and the spoken
languages of the common people that led Rahul Sankrityayan to
argue that the different dialects of the broadly Hindi-speaking world
should be developed as the vehicles for the spread of education. If
the policy of a post-independence state was only to maintain the
superior position of the elite, based on the illiteracy and ignorance
of the masses, then there was no need to educate in the mother-
tongue. But such elites ought to keep in mind that those who worked
in factories needed adequate education in order to handle the new
technology and machines. Soldiers required some education too if
they had to use modern weapons. Widespread education was essential
for the smooth functioning of a modern economy and society.

22 Rohit Wanchoo
Rahul Sankrityayan was upset not by the contemporary concern

for the preservation of local literature and songs, but the underlying
assumption that these had to be recorded before they disappeared
forever. It appeared to him as though a death warrant for these
languages had been issued. He was horrified at this attempt to put
languages like Bhojpuri, Bundeli and Bagheli in a museum. The latter
two regions had populations as large as those in Czechoslovakia and
Belgium. The languages spoken by crores of people, the languages
of Surdas, Tulsidas and Vidyapati, could not be swept aside. If these
languages Bolis had not become extinct till now, they were
not going to disappear in the near future. He did not want these
languages to become like crippled cows counting the last few
moments of their lives. He wanted these languages to be used in the
regional assemblies (janpad parliaments), in the courts, in the schools
and colleges and even the universities. He observed, Only when
the language of the people becomes master in its own region will
the people become the master of their own house.36
The objections to the use of regional dialects as a basis for

education could not be set aside on practical grounds that were
typically mentioned. The preparation of textbooks in languages which
could count on innumerable students was a relatively simple task. If
there was no problem in accepting the principle that education should
be provided in the mother-tongue the preparation of suitable texts
was not really a serious problem. Many of the writers in Hindi
actually were speakers of regional dialects and preparation of texts
for education up to the matriculation level would not take more than
a year or two.37 As for paribhashik words the dialects had to confront
the issue in much the same way as Hindi had to; and they had the
same access to Sanskrit as Hindi had. Like German, the dialects
would invent or coin words on their own (like panvgaadi for bicycle
and aganboat for steamer) and accept words current internationally.
The division of regions in the past had been on the basis of the
interests of the rulers; in future the convenience (subhita) of the
people would determine policies. The creation of thirty provinces
would not antagonize the British, if they continued to rule over India,
since it would offer career opportunities for more ICS officers by

Imagining Hindi 23
creating more posts of Governors. The unity of India would not be

undermined by the creation of so many regions based on language.
He wrote, If you cannot prepare Bengali, Oriya, Gujarati and
Marathi to commit suicide or accept self-effacement then what
crime have poor Brajbhasha, Bundeli, Mallika and Maithili
committed to be condemned to extinction? The plan he had outlined
was actually one of centralization rather than of decentralization
because he had proposed that the Bhojpuri speaking people, found
in both the United Provinces and Bihar, should be put in one province
based on language.
In the opinion of Rahul Sankrityayan the Soviet Union had been

able to impart education in the language of the people of the national
republics of the USSR. This development of national languages was
a result of the policies pursued during the quarter century after the
Russian revolution. Although Mahapandit Rahul had become a
Buddhist in his early years he was attracted to the ideology of
Marxism and visited the Soviet Union. He was on good terms with
the Soviets and was even appointed to a professorship in the USSR
for two short spells. His opinion is broadly valid but he does not
consider the suppression of the bourgeois and reactionary elements
in the national republics which somewhat diminishes the claim about
respecting the will of the people. Further, recent scholars have argued
that Soviet policy was neo-traditionalist because it reinforced
traditional national identities rather than vigorously promoting class
consciousness. It is also clear that Russian served as the medium
for higher technical education and positions in the upper echelons
of the republics were controlled by Russians or Russian-speaking
indigenous elites.38
The liberal attitude towards imparting education in most of the

dialects or Bolis is reminiscent of the policies pursued in the period
of the New Economic Policy during the 1920s in the USSR. Every
effort was made to reach linguistic and national minorities through
their own language. Official documents had to be printed in the
languages used by the different linguistic groups in any region. This
policy was later abandoned because it proved too cumbersome and
expensive. The process of collectivization and industrialization

24 Rohit Wanchoo
transformed many regions and the national minorities were

compelled to fall in line. The language of the Kazakhs was
developed, but they lost the bulk of their cattle herds during
collectivization and their opinion was not sought with regard to the
policies of modernization of society or with regard to the script to
be used for their national language. It was a case of enlightened
despotism practised by a modernizing socialist state.38A
Also, the Soviets introduced a system of dual nationalities, where

citizens were formally recognized as both Kazakh and Soviet in
official passports, whereby the Kazakhs were regarded as one of the
nationalities within a multi-national socialist state. The speakers
of Bhojpuri or Awadhi were unlikely to claim the status of
nationalities based on language and the proponents of Hindi were
unlikely to endorse such a move. The Soviet Union was dominated
by the more developed Russians and they had inherited the Central
Asian regions from the imperialist Tsarist state. They were keen not
to be seen as perpetuators of Russian hegemony and Russification
policies of the 19th century. This was not the case in India, where
Hindi's claim as a national language had emerged only in the 19th
century, battling continuously against the influence of the dominant
Urdu language. The Hindiwallahs were demanding the right to use
Hindi as the second official language in the United Provinces, a
demand that was conceded as late as 1900. Therefore, the position
of Hindi in north India vis--vis the Bolis was far from comparable
to that of Russian among the linguistic groups in Central Asia.39
It is also unclear whether the comparison can be made with the

development of languages in Central Asia since the connection
between Russian and these Turkic languages was almost negligible
compared to that between the regional Bolis and Hindi in northern
India. In fact it can be argued that if the broadly Turkic-speaking
groups had been a part of the Turkish rather than the Russian empire
then they would have been modernized along lines determined by
Turkish rather than Russian decision-makers.39A However, the
modernizing Turkish state under Kamal Ataturk and the Soviet Union
under Stalin introduced policies during the 1920s and 1930s which
share certain similarities. The two states tried to develop languages

Imagining Hindi 25
on modern lines and introduced the Roman script to make learning

easier.40
The similarities between Khari Boli and Braj and Awadhi were
greater than between any of the Central Asian languages and Russian.
Dr. Sampurnand said that it was wrong to argue that the connection
between Russian and Kazakh or Uzbek was comparable to the
relation between Hindi and Banarsi or Ghazipuri. The students who
came from Benares, Allahabad or Jabalpur faced no problem in
acquiring education in Khari Boli and their energies were not wasted
by adopting Hindi as the medium of instruction. While the advocates
of Hindi did not want to impose it on the regional languages it was
clear that Russian was the language of education in the entire Russian
Federation. Even in England, a much smaller country, despite the
variations in dialects of different regions and counties, the position
of English as the literary language was unquestioned. The burden
of imposing thirty languages as medium of education in schools and
universities, as recommended by Rahulji, would impose an
intolerable financial burden on this poor country.41
It has recently been argued that the attitude of socialists and

radical politicians often fell far short of the principles of secularism.42
Sampurnanand believed that the future development of Hindi could
not be imagined in terms of its current features. Hindi was being
assailed from all directions and was living through a period of war
or a yudhkaal. Under such conditions centralization was essential.
Once this stage came to an end the centralized institutions would
collapse on their own. To argue for decentralization during the
yudhkaal of Hindi was to diminish the influence of Hindi and to
increase that of Urdu. It was like becoming an enemy, a
shatrunandan, literally the son of the enemy. Sampurnanand was
completely opposed to the ideas of Sankrityayan because, although
he spoke Kashika, he had never come across anyone who wanted to
use it as a medium of instruction. Except for those who spoke
Maithili, Sindhi or Punjabi he did not think that the speakers of
dialects were in favour of using them as a medium of instruction.
He feared that it would be impossible to stop the flood tide if the
dialects were introduced as mediums of instruction at the level of

26 Rohit Wanchoo
primary education. The consequence of such a policy would be to

weaken the country by creating nations or rashtras based on
language which would only create anarchy. Who said that people
who spoke dialects were desperate to get education in their own
dialects? This was an artificially produced demand for mother-
tongues that would wreck the country as once the small and weak
states of India had succumbed to foreign invasion.43
Therefore, the argument for the development of the Bolis would

have to be primarily in order to facilitate education at the lower levels
in north India. Rahul Sankrityayan's main argument was about
learning in the mother-tongue, but Soviet policies depended on
factors that were not relevant in the north Indian case. Even
Sankrityayan did not make a case for Bolis based on the principle
of nationalities or that of a federation of national republics as in
the case of the USSR. The idea of decentralization he endorsed did
not rest on the notion of nationality, based partly on ethnic
and religious differences, that the atheist Russian communists were
faced with in the Muslim Turkic-speaking Central Asian republics.
The 'imperialism' (samrajyavad) of Hindi in the area dominated
by the Bolis was not comparable to that of the Russians in Central
Asia.
Rahul Sankrityayans proposals favouring education in the

dialects of Hindi were unacceptable to supporters of Sanskritized
Hindi and Persianized Urdu. If the proportion of words to be drawn
from Sanskrit was to be very high then Pandit Rahul's scheme would
tend to bring about greater similarities at the level of higher education
in the regional dialects and Hindi than at the elementary levels.
Therefore, the scheme he proposed was likely to facilitate early
learning rather than the development of the regional dialects as
separate languages, like Marathi or Bengali. Even more, if the Bolis
were to be the medium of instruction up to the matriculation level
then the Urdu-speakers would be keen to wean away the Muslims
who spoke the Bolis at the local level. If the communal divide was
not bridged at the political level the chances of Muslim political
leaders calling upon Muslims to switch to Urdu was enormously
high. The use of thirty Bolis as a medium of instruction at the regional

Imagining Hindi 27
level might facilitate education, but it was unlikely to be entirely

effective against the communitarian or communal identification of
Muslims with Urdu. His views were too radical since he made the
acceptance of Hindi as the inter-regional language dependent on the
will of the people of the different regions.44
The proponents of the Bolis were making a case for the

recognition of their language for a variety of reasons. Whether the
development of Bhojpuri led to the resolution of the Hindi versus
Urdu dispute was not very important for many Bhojpuri speakers.
They simply loved their language and wanted to promote it. The
support for early education in the dialects was endorsed by others
who did not share either Mahapandit Rahuls ideological fascination
with Soviet policy or even personally identify with the regional
dialects. Jagdish Chaturvedi supported the use of regional dialects
as a medium of instruction because he felt the slow growth of literacy
in the Hindi-belt was partly because the speakers of the regional
dialects found it difficult to cope with learning in Hindi which was
not their mother-tongue. In the non-Hindi-speaking states, since the
mother-tongue was the medium of instruction, the spread of literacy
was faster.44A Therefore, the use of regional dialects to spread literacy
and education was defensible, even if it tended to weaken the unity
and broad appeal of Hindi.45
The Janapada Programme
There was a clear division between those who were in favour of

developing Hindi as a language that represented the best of the local
traditions in the regional dialects and Bolis and those for whom the
development of these dialects as languages of education and culture
was of central importance. The most extreme proponent of the latter
idea was Rahul Sankrityayan but there were other supporters as well.
There were also scholars like V.S. Aggarwal who were deeply
concerned about the development of knowledge embedded in the
regional dialects and the need to enrich Hindi by drawing upon the
vocabulary and the wisdom, about local life and conditions, built up
in these dialects over the centuries. In his fascination for the
knowledge contained in the dialects and the beauty of their songs

28 Rohit Wanchoo
and local skills, Aggarwal was treading a path familiar to most

nationalists. Typically, studies of local music, the language of the
common people and the distinctive features of local society were
made by intellectuals associated with the rise of nationalism.46 It may
be argued that the concern for the natural beauty of their localities
was also typical of many nations in the making but the concern for
the economic features of a given region or locality and the desire to
emulate the Dictionary of Economic Products that the British
produced does reveal the unmistakable imprint of colonial
knowledge.47 The proposal for studying the Bundelkhand region
seems to be to produce a humungous work that would be the
indigenous variant of the District Gazetteers and Settlement Reports
and Linguistic and Zoological Surveys all rolled into one.
Aggarwal believed that Hindi could never progress without

drawing upon the resources of the dialects. He claimed in 1940 that
he had been trying for the past five years to get the literary men of
the Braj region to accept this position.48 The scholar claimed to
have introduced words like fagunhata, the local name for a strong
breeze that blew in Ahicchetra, into his published articles. The word
panchayatni was used to refer to those four temples for minor deities,
placed at the four corners of the temple for the major deity, in order
to create harmony.49 The attitude was eclectic: Aggarwal believed
that the samarajya or dominance of Hindi was necessary when it
came to scientific and paribhashik words; but for the creative
development of literature there was a need for vairajya. The
dvairajya or the predominance of two forces would remain in so far
as both Hindi and Urdu and Hindi and other provincial languages
would continue to exert their influence in their respective spheres.49A
In mutual interest different literary groups would exercise influence
in diverse ways; bhaujya shasan would also remain.50
From the correspondence between Banarsidas Chaturvedi and

Vasudev Aggarwal it is quite evident that the two men thought they
were engaged in a great task of developing the Hindi language.
Chaturvedi had declared the Principal aim of my life is interpretation
of what is best among other people. In Vedic terms from half of
Brahma was born vishva-bhuvan and from the other half it's

Imagining Hindi 29
prateek according to Aggarwal. Our objective is to be concerned

about both other people as well as the traditions of our own
people. All that was best in the world was known to our people.51
The Janapada and paur-kshetras were as valuable as the eternal truths
of the Vedas. Although the collection of folk songs, the programmes
for village uplift and the love of Khadi were seemingly different they
were the product of the same philosophical perspective. Vasudev
Sharan declared that he was a staunch supporter of the man-centred
view of the universe. Without a focus on man, as the sage Vyas had
recommended, the whole project for the study of local culture and
knowledge would not be of any importance.
Vasudev Sharan was not only flexible enough to speak of

different spheres of influence for Hindi and Urdu but he was also
not identifying entirely with the virtues of village life and society.
He was open to influences from abroad but believed that only those
who had developed the capacity to understand their own society and
culture would have the necessary strength to absorb knowledge from
outside. What is noteworthy is that Aggarwal believed that the towns
and the Janapadas both needed each other. He earnestly hoped that
the close contact or gaadh parichay of the towns and Janapadas
would be the hallmark of the future and the harbinger of change for
the betterment of both.52 In the Lakhamandal he met a carpenter who
used the word ukare for nakkashi or carving, a word derived from
the Sanskrit Utkirn. In one hour the carpenter was able to give them
nearly fifty paribhashik words. He admired the villagers for
preserving the literary inheritance of the Gupta period because the
carpenter used the expression surujanrayan ka phool for a variety
of the lotus flower. In so far as Aggarwal recognized some virtues
of the city he cannot be perceived as an uncritical advocate of the
superiority of village society. Nevertheless, his programme did aim
to rejuvenate society and culture using the immense treasures buried
in the Janapadas. He argued that the next fifty years could be devoted
to a study of the Janapadas.
The primary concern of Vasudev Aggarwal was to enrich and

promote Hindi and therefore he was reluctant to identify with
Chaturvedis programme of Vikendriyakaran. He feared that the

30 Rohit Wanchoo
negative perception of the term would weaken the Janapada

programme. Satyarthi and Aggarwal wrote to Chaturvedi urging him
not to use the term for one year. The Janapada Kalyaniya programme
would have become stronger but for the stand taken by Madhukar.
In any case the larger cause of the Janapada would be unaffected
even if the Hardwar proposals were dropped at the Jaipur session.53
In an essay Hindi Sahitya Ke Samagra Roop, Vasudev Sharan had
argued that the approach called Janapada Kalyaniya and Setubandh
were both essential for the progress of Hindi literature. The first
approach entailed the discovery of what was best in indigenous
society; the second meant the acceptance of the best from outside.
Satyendra, Chaturvedi and Vasudev Sharan were merely the humble
instruments to promote the progress of Hindi since the gods had
already determined its path of development. He was willing to accept
the sin of brahmhatya if his views were deemed detrimental to the
cause of Hindi.54
Only after developing a keen eye for the immense beauty of the
forest would scholars be able to develop the capacity to understand
the lok or people. The rising nation would have to pay its tribute to
nature. By turning to nature we would be able to enrich our literature
and turn away from foreign influences. The artificial distinction
between the town and the country or village would have to be
removed. At least the traditions that went back to the Gupta period
of Indian history could be recovered by literary men with a keen
sense of observation.55
Although Aggarwal was drawing on largely Hindu cultural

traditions it is not possible to find negative remarks about the Muslim
period or the Persian and Arabic influences.56 The Vedas had referred
to earth as mahimata or the Great Mother and it was essential that
Hindi literature re-establish its links with nature. Thousands of words
were awaiting discovery by scholars devoted to the progress of Hindi.
This can be partly attributed to the fact that the Janapadas were
perceived as individual democracies of which the literary scholars
studying them were citizens.57 There is little evidence of linguistic
chauvinism either. Hindi had come to the swayamvar for choosing
the national language and it had to have a broad outlook. Hindi had

Imagining Hindi 31
to develop a substantial interest in the rich vocabulary and literature

of languages like Punjabi, Gujarati and Bangla. Hindi had to be
prominent among equals as the sun among the planets.58
III
Laukik or Chalu Hindi
The problem of developing a national language in a country

where there were many developed languages was quite a major issue.
Many speakers of other languages were convinced that the use of
Hindi or Hindustani could serve such a function. The debate was
not only about the choice of the national language but also how it
could be made acceptable to those who were not native speakers of
the language or of any of its numerous dialects. In the non-Hindi
speaking states there were scholars and politicians who felt that a
simplified language was best suited to be the common language for
the common people. C. Rajagopalachari voiced some concerns about
the dispute between Hindi and Urdu, which he felt could impede
the progress of the national language in south India. There were local
rumblings against the use of Hindi or Hindustani and the dispute
about the nature of the national language was not to be left entirely
to the good sense of the native speakers of the language in the opinion
of men like Suniti Chatterjee.
In his writings, particularly in an essay entitled Chalu Hindi,

he argued for a need to simplify the language. Shudh Hindi or Sadhu
Hindi was the literary and pure form of Hindi. On the other hand
laukik or chalu Hindi was spoken by those who did not understand
pure Hindi or Urdu and were speakers of regional languages or
dialects. Even educated people whose mother-tongue was Punjabi,
Lahndi or Hindki, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Garhwali or Chhatisgarhi spoke
in simple laukik Hindi with each other or people from their own
region. This argument was different from that of Rahul Sankrityayan
in two ways. One, Suniti Chatterjee was not stating that education
be provided in regional dialects of Hindi or that all these dialects
had an equal right to be languages used for education. He was only
arguing for a modification of the rules of Hindi grammar in order to
help the non-native speakers in accepting Hindi as a means of

32 Rohit Wanchoo
communication. Secondly, he wanted simplified Hindi to be used

for ordinary speech and even for newspapers.59
Unlike some others, Chatterjee had a definite set of criteria by

which the claims of regional dialects as separate languages were to
be accepted. There had to be first of all substantial differences
between its grammar and that of Hindi. Secondly, the speakers of
the dialect were expected to show great pride and attachment for
their language. Thirdly, they had to show that they faced considerable
difficulty in coping with Hindi. Finally, the dialect claiming the status
of a language had to have a substantial body of literature of high
quality. These principles were to be used to judge the suitability of
a dialect for use as a medium of instruction and to acquire the status
of a language that was distinct from Hindi. Therefore while
Chatterjee did not oppose decentralization he set some stiff standards
for accepting the claims of the dialects as languages.60 In the opinion
of the learned linguist, only Maithili qualified unequivocally.
Although the medieval literature in Marwari was substantial the
speakers of Jaipuri and Malaviya were unlikely to accept it as literary
Rajasthani. If Marwari were to develop into a modern literary
language it would occupy a status similar to that of Punjabi in Punjab.
While in western Punjab the literary language was Urdu, in eastern
Punjab it was Punjabi, in which the Sikh attachment to Punjabi in
the Gurmukhi script had played an important role. Therefore, from
the point of view of the current known as decentralization or
Vikendriyakaran, Chatterjee was willing to accept the claims of
Punjabi together with those of Maithili, Bhojpuri and Marwari/
Rajasthani.
Identifying the problems of people from eastern Bihar and

Bengal, he argued that they found it exceedingly difficult to speak
sadhu Hindi. There was an acute problem that Bengali speakers faced
with regard to gender in Hindi. In this respect Hindi was like French.
There was not only the argument that the common mistakes made
by speakers of other languages should be acceptable in the real world
of commerce and day-to-day life but that it should go beyond that.
The grammar of Hindi ought to be simplified such that the problem

Imagining Hindi 33
of gender was done away with. In the essay on Chalu Hindi the
distinguished scholar, who could write Hindi very well himself,
actually advocated that the chalu Hindi ought to be used for
journalistic writings and broadcasts as well. This he thought would
make the Hindi language more popular among Bengalis. In other
ways too he sought to make the language more scientific and more
acceptable to non-native speakers of Hindi.
The idea of a simple language which involved the systematic

reform of Hindi grammar provoked some strong reactions among
the advocates of Hindi. Dhirendra Varma was so appalled by the
idea that Hindi should give up all grammatical modifications in
adjectives and verbs due to gender that he was in favour of retaining
its purity as the provincial language of ten crores of Indians.
Torturing and disfiguring Hindi in a thousand ways just to make
it acceptable to twenty-five crores of Indians as an inter-provincial
language was too high a price to pay.61 The reaction was strong on
Varma's part because he believed that Hindi-speaking people, who
were not perplexed by gender difficulties, were being asked to speak
hathi jaati hai and Lomdi bola. Even though the French had a
similar grammatical gender as Hindi they were not being
pressurized into modifying their language. Nobody had asked the
English to have a more rational system of spelling or grammar. The
difficulties that the Bengalis faced were different from those faced
by the Punjabis or the Tamils. If Hindi was to be modified according
to the convenience of a dozen languages of India it would be
anything but Hindi.62
Objections were raised by other proponents of Hindi against the

proposal to modify the grammar of Hindi. The Buddhist Bhadant
Anand Kaushalyayan was critical of this proposal in his introduction
to the addresses to the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan published in 1986.
If Dr. Suniti Chatterjee had been alive he would have asked him
how many of the numerous languages that he had studied had
simplified their grammar for his convenience. For the benefit of the
numerous students of Sanskrit in universities in India and abroad
what efforts had been made to make Sanskrit grammar easy to
comprehend? In what way has the grammar of Bengali, the mother-
tongue of Dr. Chatterjee, been modified to facilitate learning by non-

34 Rohit Wanchoo
Bengalis? Commented Kaushalyayan, To cut off the ears and nose

of a language, in order to make it easier to learn, was like cutting
off the nose and ears of Surpnakha, the sister of Ravana, which led
to dire consequences.63
Why was Suniti babu, who favoured the Roman script because
the votaries of Urdu refused to accept Devanagari, not recommending
the virtues of the Roman script to speakers of Bengali? Was
defenceless Hindi alone to be subjected to projects of improvement?64
It is interesting that Humayun Kabir was advocating the adoption of
the Roman script for all the Indian languages. This would not only
solve the problem of Urdu versus Nagari scripts but also encourage
people from the north and the south to learn the languages of their
regions. Kabir observed, The task of the pupils would be rendered
easier by the tendency of the largely common vocabulary of today
to become even more markedly so and the adoption of the mother-
tongue would not in consequence endanger the chances of developing
an all India speech. He also argued that the difference between the
vocabulary used by the Muslims and Hindus in Bengal did not lead
to the creation of two distinct languages because of a common script.
Hindustani would develop more substantially as a common language
if the Roman script was adopted to make the language more
acceptable to both Hindus and Muslims.65
What is Hindustani?
There was considerable confusion about what was signified by

the word Hindustani. There were those who argued that Hindi had
developed as a reaction to the predominance of Urdu. The unity of
the Urdu-speaking elite was broken by the Hindu revivalist effort to
promote a more Sanskritized form of Hindi in the 19th century.66 In
the second account Urdu was the language of a microscopic minority
of urban literate groups since the unity of the Urdu-speaking elite
was confined to the urban and muffasil elites who were concerned
with civil, judicial and revenue matters. Its literary treasures, although
considerable, were restricted to a few themes and a small circle of
elite Muslims together with Kayasthas, Kashmiris and Khattris.67
Amar Nath Jha blamed Sir Sayyed Ahmad Khan for insisting that

Imagining Hindi 35
the language of the elite Muslims was the language of the province
and that Hindi was trying to undermine it. There were others who
argued that only 5 per cent of the population in the United Provinces
spoke and understood Urdu. The majority of people spoke the dialects
like Braj, Awadhi and Bhojpuri, even if they were Muslims. Urdu
was not a language of the Muslims alone, but the majority of Muslims
did not speak it even in the United Provinces.
There are a few positions that have emerged in the literature:

those who thought that Urdu was being challenged by protagonists
of Hindi and Hindu communalists; those who believed that Urdu
represented an alien or elitist trend in India; those who thought it
did not matter when the divide between Hindi and Urdu developed
as long as there was broad agreement about the language policy for
the region. Of those who sought a solution for the problem of Hindi
versus Urdu there were those who favoured Hindustani and those
who thought that a simplified or modified Hindi would be suitable
for the Hindus. The Muslims favoured Urdu or a Hindustani with
large inputs from Arabic and Persian. The nationalist minded
Muslims and the Congressmen favoured Hindustani but the precise
nature of the Hindustani was indeterminate because the pull of the
Sanskrit and Perso-Arabic traditions respectively was felt by the
Hindus and Muslims within this broad group.
There was one scholar who argued that Khari Boli had three
separate forms High Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani. Barannnikov
was able to argue that Hindustani was a variant of Khari Boli.68 The
spoken form of Khari Boli had been around much before the
emergence of Urdu. He disputed the tendency, of those whom he
called Hindu scholars, to deny that Urdu had contributed to the
development of Hindi. In his view a spoken language cannot achieve
lexical and grammatical stability until it develops a literary language
or is related to it. It was the development of Urdu as a literary
language that allowed Khari Boli, which was a spoken language, to
get the stability required to develop subsequently into a separate
language. The inability to develop prose in Khari Boli and Braj was
related to the upper caste background of the literary figures, men
who could use Sanskrit as the language of prose. It was this option

36 Rohit Wanchoo
of using Sanskrit, a developed and stable language for prose

composition in fairly widespread use, which prevented the
development of Hindi.69
The English brought to India the idea of a spoken language that

was close to the literary language and Hindustani, which emerged
partly after British intervention, became the literary language most
suited to unite both Hindus and Muslims. Baburam Saksena was one
of the scholars who supported the use of Hindustani for this very
reason. The British role in the setting up of Fort William College is
well known. What Barannikov was arguing was that with the
emergence of a bourgeois class in India there was a need felt to
develop a literary language close to the spoken language. Further,
the British provided the means for the propagation of such a language
through the press. It was Hindustani which could bring the Hindus
and Muslims together. In the opinion of this scholar the use of Arabic
and Persian by Muslims was as legitimate as the use of Sanskrit was
for the Hindus. Therefore, Hindustani was the best choice as the
literary language for the two communities. Many protagonists of
Hindi had argued that the introduction of Sanskrit words was
essential to make Hindi acceptable to people of other regions of India.
They did not consider the fact that Hindustani, before their
intervention, had flourished without the profusion of Sanskrit tatsama
words.70
The historian Dr. Tarachand argued that although Khari Boli had
developed after the tenth century A.D. and had begun to absorb loan
words introduced by the Muslim rulers, it faced competition from
Rajasthani as the literary language in northern India in the 13th
century. Later the Bhakti movement popularized Braj and Awadhi
and only Kabir and Nanak popularized Khari Boli or Hindustani.
The literary language was Persianized Hindustani up to the 18th
century for both Hindus and Muslims. Modern Sanskritized Hindi
did not develop as a result of the British support for Indian scholars
at Fort William but as a result of the literary efforts of Bharatendu
Harish Chandra and Raja Shiv Prasad after the revolt of 1857.71
According to Dr. Tarachand, Khadi boli or Hindustani has two
literary forms. The earlier form called Hindi by its users, and now

Imagining Hindi 37
known as Urdu, has a continuous history from the 14th century to

the present day. The second form, known as Modern Hindi, came
into literary use at the beginning of the 19th century and has made
rapid progress since the Mutiny.72
Dr. Tarachand was the author of an influential work entitled

Influence of Islam on Indian Culture and was a strong believer in
the confluence of cultures and the elements of synthesis that could
be found in Indian culture.73 He believed that Hindus had learnt to
express their religious and cultural interests in the Urdu language
and there was no reason to fear the inclusion of Arabic and Persian
loan words. In a dictionary, the Farhang-i-Asafia, compiled by
Sayyid Ahmad Dehlavi there were 7,584 words from Arabic, 6,041
from Persian, 554 from Sanskrit and 500 from English out of a total
of about 50,000 words. In the Hindi Sabda Sagar put together by
the Nagari Pracharini Sabha we find that almost every one of these
7,584 Arabic and 6,041 Persian words is included in it.74 This was
for Dr. Tarachand evidence of a shared vocabulary and for many
advocates of Hindi, proof of the domination by an alien culture. The
objections to the use of such loan words were cultural, aesthetic or
religious, but the net result was the rejection of any synthesis.
Tarachand believed that Hindustani was no artificial creation and
had existed as a separate language for a thousand years. Obviously,
this depended on what one chooses to call Hindustani, but Hindustani
was not just another British invention.
Tarachand firmly believed that the only way to consolidate the

nation was by the fusion of communities. Bazaar Hindustani could
not serve as the language for administration and education and so
Hindustani would have to be an elevated and dignified speech, rich
in words and phrases and flexible to a degree. The elevated
Hindustani would have to borrow from many languages but the
borrowing must be in conformity with the phonetic system and
grammatical rules of Hindustani.75 He argued, Although Hindi and
Urdu are mainly borrowing languages, there is no reason why
Hindustani should not develop the capacity to form words and
derivatives from its original words or from borrowed words. The
development of Hindustani must be based on the phonetic genius

38 Rohit Wanchoo
of the dialect and ought to be a composite speech drawing on

the speech of the Hindu and Muslim communities.76
Unfortunately, Hindi and Urdu were moving apart, making their

derivatives based on the rules of Sanskrit and Arabic rather than their
own genius. The phonetic system of Khari Boli and its grammatical
and morphological rules are different from that of Sanskrit and there
is no point in trying to modify the sound structure of the dialect
which is the basis of both Hindi and Urdu. There are seven forms
of the declension of nouns of which six constitute the cases of
Sanskrit, but Hindi and Urdu have both lost all these forms. They
do not have more than three true cases. The difference between
Modern Hindi and Urdu was, therefore, not fundamental. On the
other hand, both these languages differ from the Sanskrit and Persian
systems materially. Modern Hindi, Hindustani and Urdu are all
Aryan languages and therefore the effort to create artificial languages
like Sanskritized Hindi and Persianized Urdu should be arrested in
order to create a vibrant lingua franca like Hindustani.77
Who Created the HindiUrdu Divide?
The debate on language has also been influenced by the historical

reasons for the divide between Hindi and Urdu. Among the
nationalists, primarily close to the Congress, there was a view that
the reasons for the divide were unimportant and that there was an
urgent need to promote Hindustani as the lingua franca. The support
for Basic Hindustani was based on the need to reduce the growing
linguistic and communal divide. Jawaharlal Nehru advocated the idea
of Basic Hindustani, along the lines of Basic English, which merely
required knowledge of about a thousand words. The idea was to make
Hindustani a language for communication suitable for all Indians. It
was merely trying to make the spoken form of Hindustani the
medium for inter-provincial communication. He did not want to
impede the development of either Hindi or Urdu as literary languages
but regarded their growing divide as a political problem that had to
be tackled.78 In this he was sincere, as were Dr. Rajendra Prasad
and Subhas Bose. Although these leaders represented different
ideological shades within the Congress, it did not affect their

Imagining Hindi 39
substantive position on the need for Hindustani as the preferred form

of the future national language of India.
There were nationalists and communalists who argued that the

divide was created because Urdu deliberately chose to cut itself off
from the spoken languages of the people of north India, from the
18th century onwards. The Mughal Empire had adopted Persian as
the language of administration and culture.79 Even after its collapse
it was a court language in many states that cropped up in the 18th
century. The Muslim elite chose to develop Hindustani/ Khari Boli
as a literary language drawing on Persian words, metaphors and
literary styles which involved the use of complex compound or
samasik words. In an address to the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan it was
asserted that Urdu scholars went out of their way to imitate the
Persian style; instead of references to Indian flora and fauna they
chose Persian names. It is with considerable exasperation that Hindu
nationalists and Hindi advocates refer to the alienating impact of
this choice made by the Muslim elite.
Another line of argument against Hindi is that it tried to

undermine the stranglehold that Urdu allegedly had over the elite
and therefore crafted a language that was heavily laden with Sanskrit
vocabulary.80 There are scholars who disagreed with this view and
some of them were European experts.81 In the opinion of Grierson,
writing in 1887, the importance of Bharatendu Harishchandra's essay
Hindi Bhakha, was that it spelled out the different dialects of Hindi
that he was familiar with. He identified six types of Hindi prose: the
first in which Sanskrit words predominated; the second in which there
were some Sanskrit words; the third in which there were no Sanskrit
but only pure Prakrit words; the fourth in which foreign words were
admitted; the fifth which was full of Persian words; and finally the
sixth in which English words were used. Grierson points out that
Harishchandra considered prose which had Persian words as Hindi,
although he preferred the second and third type of Hindi. He thought
that as far as the natives were concerned the difference between
Hindi and Urdu did not depend on the vocabulary but idioms and
the order of words.82

40 Rohit Wanchoo
The difference between Urdu and Hindi was not very clear cut
during the early 19th century. Although the missionary William
Carey, who translated the Bible into Hindustani, used the term
indiscriminately he did believe that there had to be two translations
of the Bible. In his First Memoirs, published in 1808 and cited in
Graham Bailey, Carey wrote that a Hindustani with a great number
of Persian words would not be understood by a Pandit born and
brought up in north India who was accustomed to a large number of
Sanskrit words.83 In a letter by Reverend David Brown of 1806 there
is a mention of two specimens of writing he had received from
Serampore one Shanscrit Hindoostanee and the other Delhi
Hindoostanee. In fact the language that Carey used for translating
the Bible was Urduized Hindi, although the words would have been
familiar to those who spoke Hindi. William Hunter's version was in
pure Urdu with the help of Mirza Fitrut. It is an indication of the
missionary concern about reaching out to people that a Hindi version
was published soon after and this was based on the translation by
the Baptist missionary, John Chamberlain.84
In the opinion of a Hindi scholar, who had a Marxist

understanding of the problem, the Urdu language developed as a
result of the cultural inclinations of a narrow circle of people in a
feudal atmosphere where they were cut off from the mass of people
in north India. The argument, that Urdu was a language that emerged
as a result of the commingling of the Muslims with the Hindus, has
been challenged by Ram Vilas Sharma. He cites Sayyad Ehtisham
Hussain, the historian of Urdu literature, thus until the end of the
18th century the word Urdu was not used to refer to a language.
The small group of Hindus and Muslims, who used Persian as the
official language, tried to study and understand the language through
Hindi. Besides, the common Hindus and the Muslims spoke the
regional dialects.
Until the time of the poet Mir the Urdu poets did not fight shy
of calling their language Hindi. The language of the Muslims who
were writing in Braj and Awadhi was not very different from the
language that was being used by those Muslims who were writing
in Khari Boli. The vocabulary or shabd bhandar that was produced

Imagining Hindi 41
by Jayasi, Rahim, and Raskhan in Braj and Awadhi was not very
different from that used by writers in the Deccan. Although the
Hindus and Muslims had been living together for over five centuries
an independent language had not developed. Urdu had not developed
independently of Hindi until the 18th century.85
The adoption of Persian as the official or state language by the

Mughals had two distinct consequences. On the one hand it enabled
the direct and indirect expansion of the influence and popularity of
Hindi. On the other hand it prevented the development of Khari Boli
as a language of the broad masses or the jatiya bhasha. Although
the rulers of the Deccan, in Bijapur and Golconda, gave the status
of an official language to Hindi this privilege was denied to Khari
Boli Hindi in Delhi, its place of birth. The fascination of the declining
Muslim feudal elite with the Persian language led to the steady
incorporation of loan words through Persian into Khari Boli; this
also accounts for their inability to accept the more liberal tradition
of early Dakhini Hindi.86 The narrow elite, both Hindu and Muslim,
who were cut off from the dialects like Braj and Awadhi, were unable
to forge a language that could evolve as a common national language
of the Hindustani jati or people.87 Therefore, the British were able
to exploit a cleavage in Indian society by creating a difference
between Hindi and Urdu.88
Debating Hindustani: Hindu and Muslim Views
There was considerable optimism among many writers and

scholars about the viability of Hindustani. In the early years of the
twentieth century, before the communal violence and polarization
of the 1920s, a Muslim scholar wrote approvingly of Hindustani and
the common linguistic and cultural inheritance of Hindus and
Muslims in India. Yusuf wrote that the language of Kabir, Tulsidas,
Malik Mohammad and Nazir would find some way of articulating
the common aspirations of the Hindus and Muslims of India.89 Ali
delivered this lecture in March 1917 in which he stated that Hindi
and Urdu were structurally the same language. The Hindustani
language was flexible and catholic in its approach and accepted
words from outside although it had a well developed literary tradition

42 Rohit Wanchoo
of its own. The literature that he included in Hindustani included

works with religious themes, folk songs and poetry, essays, history
writing and literary works of both the Hindus and the Muslims.
Ali was concerned with the conflict between Hindi and Urdu
but felt the problem could be handled. When he spoke of the creation
of an academy for Hindustani he expected that it would produce
a standard form of literary Urdu, if nothing else. Despite the
differences between Hindi and Urdu the proceedings of the All India
Urdu Press Conference held a short while earlier showed the way
forward. He argued that Urdu was a language that had been created
by the Hindus to communicate with the Muslims who spoke and
wrote in Persian. This was an observation of Sir Charles Lyall which
he quoted approvingly. He wanted to systematise the use of Urdu
and to make it capable enough to serve as a means of education in
the future. While the classification of literature was catholic the future
of Hindustani or Urdu was not clearly delineated.90 The author was
against the pedantic tendencies of people out of touch with the
world but that did not tackle the issue of Hindustani versus Urdu or
Hindi head on.
A strong argument that had been advanced in Padma Singh

Sharma's book, published in 1932 by the Hindustani Academy of
Allahabad, was that the vocabulary of Urdu and Hindi was not as
dissimilar as the spokesmen for the former claimed. The systematic
import of Arabic and Persian words ought to be stopped to keep the
common language called Hindustani alive. The authors in Urdu not
only adopted words from Arabic and Persian but also vyakaran and
pingal were distorted under that influence. The artificial difference
between Hindi and Urdu was exaggerated and the divide between
Hindi and Urdu widened because of communal feelings and religious
sensibilities. This was probably unheard of anywhere else in the
world.91 Maulana Altaf Hussein Hali wrote in a review of the
Farhang-e-Asfiya by Sayyad Ahmad Dehlavi in 1887 that an Urdu
dictionary should be written only by someone who spoke chaste Urdu
and was also a cultured Muslim from Delhi. As a consequence the
President of the Second Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Pandit Govind
Narain Misra, was compelled to declare that Hindi and Urdu could

Imagining Hindi 43
not be considered as the same language. Janab Ahsan Marharvi, who

is cited, argued that the Hindus were, therefore, compelled to follow
the Muslim example. The gap between Hindi and Urdu thus began
to widen.
Raja Shiv Prasad Sitare-Hind was appalled by the fact that instead
of a common grammar for Urdu and Hindi the gap between the two
languages was widening. The Pandits and the Maulvis were pulling
in different directions, denying the slow evolution of a common
language. There was one set of books for Muslims and Kayasthas
and another one for Brahmins and Banias. In an assessment of Urdu
Maulvi Sayyad Wahiduddin Salim Panipati, a professor of Osmania
College, argued that the words drawn from the Aryan languages
outnumbered the Semitic ones in the ratio of six is to one. Of the
54,009 words included in the Farhang-i-Asafiya the words that were
drawn from Hindi and Punjabi and eastern dialects numbered 21,644
and the words that were formed by the combination of Hindi with
other languages were 17,505. From Arabic and Persian respectively
7,584 and 6,041 words were included. Even the words from Hindi
were three times the number of words from Arabic. The author of
Wazzeh Istallahat argued that the attitude of contempt towards words
from Hindi, as those that were used by people in the bazaar or by
the uncultured, was an indefensible attitude. Why was there an
antipathy to the use of Hindi words in common use in Urdu when
it came to producing standard works?92
IV
The Perception of Punjabi
There is among some of the earlier colonial scholars a favourable

view not only of the sturdy Punjabis but also their language. In the
Punjab the colonial administrators and scholars saw hard working
peasants, trustworthy and brave soldiers and men who respected
strong leaders rather than rule-based bureaucracy. One scholar went
so far as to argue that not only was Punjabi a substantial language
it had the ability to express fine distinctions better than Urdu.
Grahame Bailey argued in a review of the Linguistic Survey by
Grierson that although the Punjabi language was not as well

44 Rohit Wanchoo
developed as Urdu it was in a better position to absorb words from

different sources. It could draw upon Persian, Arabic and Urdu as
well as Sanskrit and Hindi for literary or scientific words. The genius
of the language allowed it to do so easily.
The absence of a strong literary tradition has enabled Punjabi to

remain more natural and true to its soil. As a language of conversation
it was far superior to Urdu because it was spoken in the homes of
people. When it came to expressing thoughts for every word in Urdu
there were three in Punjabi. In Bailey's view there were not many
Europeans who would not prefer Punjabi to Urdu if they were
proficient in both languages. In the western part of Punjab which
was predominantly Muslim the Persian script was in use while in
the eastern part Gurmukhi was popular. The difference was not
confined to the script alone. For the western part of the Punjab the
translation of the Bible used words like Khuda for god and gunah
for sin; in the eastern part Parmeshwar and pap were used instead.93
The connection between Western Hindi and Punjabi was also

noted by scholars. While the language of Nanak, which was close
to Western Hindi, was gradually transformed into Punjabi during the
period of the later Gurus, the writing of the tenth Guru in the Dasam
Granth was very close to Western Hindi. The fact that a lot of poetry
that could be considered Hindi was written in Gurmukhi had led
many scholars to underestimate the influence of Hindi on the Punjabi
language. The Hindi and semi-Hindi of the Sikh scriptures had had
an impact on Punjabi Sikh literature and had influenced forms of
speech in Punjabi. The prose hagiographies of Lal Singh and Atma
Singh were more Hindi than Punjabi in style. It was after
independence that the Punjabi language flourished with contributions
from notable writers including women writers like Amrita Pritam.94
In the Punjab the educated elite were familiar with and fond of
Urdu. It flourished because it was adopted as the official language
by the British after they annexed the Punjab. Even the Hindus were
adept at Urdu and it was regarded as the language of culture. The
literary men of the Hindi heartland were not aware of the extent of
the popularity of Hindi in the Punjab. At the time of the Hindi Sahitya

Imagining Hindi 45
Sammelan, the Chairman observed that they were under the

impression that Hindi was not very popular in the Punjab. The
schools established by the Arya Samaj played a very important role
in the propagation of the Hindi language. The work done by this
organization brought out the fact that the Punjab was not averse to
Hindi.95 In the absence of a dictionary of common and spoken Hindi
words there was great difficulty in imparting education. The linguist
Dr. Siddheshwar Varma from Jammu, who commended the
Janapadiya programme, also pointed out that Hindi examinations,
particularly in the Punjab, were nothing but an exercise in rote
learning. Neither the students nor the teachers could understand the
Hindi words that they used.96
The Arya Samaj was an advocate of Hindi and Lala Lajpat Rai
in fact became convinced that political solidarity demanded the
spread of Hindi and Devanagari even though he did not know the
Hindi alphabet when he made this decision.97 The Hindu Mahasabha
in one pamphlet promoted the idea of Hindi as the language of the
Punjab as Bengali was that of Bengal. The influence of Hindi in the
Punjab was not negligible although the main task of the Arya Samaj,
the Hindu Mahasabha and proponents of Hindi was to oppose the
dominance of Urdu in the Punjab.98 Urdu was the language of the
courts and administration in the Punjab but communication with the
people depended on Punjabi. Although it flourished as a colloquial
language, Punjabi did not do so by overt resistance to colonial rule.
It was resilience which enabled Punjabi to constitute a broader
vernacular culture.99
It was the colonial administrators who assumed that there was

a clear connection between the Gurmukhi script and the Punjabi
language. In reality, each script was used for multiple languages. A
quarterly return for books in 1877 recorded entries such as Hindi in
Gurmukhi character and Urdu in Nagri character. While the
standardization of Urdu and Hindi took place during the 19th century
it did not happen in the case of Punjabi. Despite a vibrant print culture
in Punjabi there was no standardization of the language. Mir argues
that this shows that states play a critical role in the standardization
of languages. Print culture did not bring about an ethnolinguistic

46 Rohit Wanchoo
nationalism based on Punjabi in the way vernacularization processes

in Europe did. Nor did it operate in the ways that Benedict Anderson
suggested in Imagined Communities, where he describes how print
cultures in vernacular languages produce nationalist sentiment.100
Although Mirs work has also shown the elements of shared piety
in Punjab and the robustness of the Punjabi literary formation this
was being challenged by the rival communalisms which flourished
in the three decades before partition, if not earlier.101 As she herself
observes the Punjabi language never managed to create a sense of
linguistic nationalism in the Punjab before partition.
In some ways it was the Partition of India that allowed Punjabi

to flourish in India, largely owing to the determined support for
Punjabi in the Gurmukhi script by the Sikhs. The HindiPunjabi
dispute that developed after independence was the product of Hindu
and Sikh identity politics. The creation of a Punjabi-speaking
province ultimately led to the assuaging of the sentiments of those
Sikhs who were fearful of losing their identity in Punjab and not
only the rest of India. The fate of Hindi in the Punjab was therefore
determined by the interaction of three communities, Hindu, Muslim
and Sikh. While the Hindus and Muslims spoke Punjabi but
advocated the use of Hindi and Urdu as their literary languages the
Sikhs were the most determined advocates of Punjabi because their
religious and cultural identity was tied up with the Punjabi language.
Although the development of Punjabi as a literary language has

been slower than that of Urdu and Hindi the vibrancy of the language
has not been in doubt. Even though Punjabis have been attached to
their language, Punjabi has not been very closely linked to state
power in both India and Pakistan. That may account for the
dominance of Urdu in Pakistani Punjab even after partition and the
support for Hindi declared by many Hindus in Indian Punjab during
the census of 1961.102 Whether Punjabi was one of the developed
dialects of Western Hindi may be a debating point for linguists, but
cultural politics ensured that eventually many accepted Hindi as their
literary language with the creation of the state of Haryana.103

Imagining Hindi 47
State, Market and Popular Culture
It is important to keep in mind that the development of languages

depends on many factors. The state and the patronage it provides
have an impact on the development of languages as has been
discussed with regard to the rise of the vernaculars in pre-modern
India.104 The regional kingdoms of India played an important role in
the rise of languages like Kannada, Telugu, Marathi and Gujarati;
the patronage of the Mughals helped spread Persian words into Indian
languages. The rise of the vernaculars was uneven and many genres
and performative practices shaped language at the elite and popular
level. It has been argued that the English language spread across the
world because of the role that Britain and America have played in
the world economy and the growth of modern means of
communication. The language has been absorbed in various ways
in different parts of the world. As far as its acceptability as a means
of communication is concerned that is not dependent on the
knowledge of the classics of English or Kings English. In many
ways Hindustani and Hindi also spread in India without any
substantial official patronage before independence.
The debate about language was at different levels: that of the

literary language, of science and education and of inter-provincial
communication. While the question of high culture would tend to
pull Hindi and Urdu apart the need for everyday communication
would make an amalgam like Hindustani more acceptable. The rise
of print culture in India has similarities with that of Europe, at least
in terms of the number of books that were published in the second
half of the 19th century.105 In Bengal the language that was used in
folk songs or performances by folk artistes was very different from
the Sanskritized Bengali that was being promoted by the literary
figures in 19th century. The rise of printed books had an impact on
the Bengali language only over a period of time and varied according
to different genres.106 Sanskritized Hindi arose in the late 19th
century but was briefly challenged by those who believed in local
literary patriotism and the Janapada movement.
The difference in terms of the language actually used by different

social classes was also the subject of discussion. Rao Sahib Kibay

48 Rohit Wanchoo
argued that he had observed in England that the speech of the

common people differed from that of those who were educated or
upper-class. This difference was bound to exist in Hindi as well.107
So to some extent we need to separate the language appropriate for
literary, scientific and educational purposes and that meant for
communication among various Hindi-speaking people of different
social classes or between Hindi and non-Hindi-speaking people.
There was also a tendency among authors in the past to use
Hindustani or Urdu words for Muslim characters in their works.108
The variations in spoken language and the relatively limited
vocabulary required for communication were factors which were not
seriously considered by the protagonists of Hindi and Urdu. Also,
the regional responses to Hindi could vary. G.R. Vaishampayan,
addressing the Abohar session of the Sahitya Sammelan noted that
in non-Hindi speaking regions like Maharashtra when someone
had to be scolded it was preferable to do that in Hindi rather than
in Marathi.109 Hindi expressed anger or annoyance more forcefully
or with more josh. Whether this makes Hindi a 'language of
command' for some Marathis may not be clear but it certainly shows
the regional variations in the response to Hindustani.
The spread of Persian and Arabic words into Hindvi, Rekhta,

Dakhini or many other languages was because of the power and
prestige of those who spoke the languages. The language of the ruling
elites was bound to influence the speech of the people who had to
deal with them. Ordinary people also accepted words that were used
in the courts, revenue records and official pronouncements. Whether
or not it was voluntarily accepted, the influence of the language
patronized by the state was bound to increase.110 In a short interview
published by the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Sheikh Abdullah
commented that just as Hindus had learnt Persian and Arabic during
the medieval period to get ahead in life, the Muslims too would have
to learn Hindi in India.111 This Conference was held and the volume
was published during the Emergency period when the power of the
state must have appeared even greater than in earlier times. The flaw
in the mercurial Sheikh Abdullah's argument was that the propagation
of language in medieval India by the ruling elite cannot be bracketed
with the policy of a regime based on democracy and pluralism.
Secondly, the spread of Hindi was far easier because it was the

Imagining Hindi 49
language of the majority of the people. Finally, the ruling elite had
to deal with language riots and agitations, particularly in 1968, and
had good reasons to be mindful of linguistic sentiments unlike the
medieval rulers.112
Shankar Dayal Singh, a Member of Parliament and a member of

the Congress Parliamentary Board, reported that a Tamil friend, who
met him after twenty-two years, argued that Hindi was being
introduced in a half-hearted way. If the state announced that
henceforth all work would be done in Hindi from the very next day,
as Kamal Ataturk had done in Turkey, everything would fall into
place. Undoubtedly, there would be rumbles of protest but things
would eventually settle down.113 This was a bit too optimistic about
the power of the Indian state and the appeal of unitary nationalism
even during the period of Emergency in India.113A The linguistic
diversity of Turkey was less than that in India and the regime of the
modernizing Ataturk was not based on electoral democracy. Also
the task of nation-building in post independence India could not
command the allegiance of the people in the same way as it could
during the freedom struggle.113B
Some of the Indian nationalists were aware that the early stirrings
of nationalism and the feeling of belonging to one nation was based
on the fact that they spoke the same language English.114 Although
the ultimate goal of nationalism would be to displace English, the
contribution it made to nationalism could not be denied. The language
had bound together patriots from different linguistic groups in the
country. The popularity of English after independence has been
attributed to various reasons: the brown sahib mentality of the elite
who secured power; the reluctance of the elite to educate the masses
in order to maintain their economic and social advantages; the
reluctance of the southern states to learn Hindi; and finally the
reluctance of people in the Hindi speaking states to learn another
Indian language or accept the three language formula. The popularity
of English was also based on the perception of advantages that
knowledge of the language provided to its speakers.
The demand for the English educated in the country helped to

provide a major impetus to English after independence. It was the

50 Rohit Wanchoo
language of science and higher education and remains so largely till

today. The English Indians speak may have been made fun of but
the language spread although it was spoken with many different
accents and styles.115 Hinglish and Pinglish flourished; so did
'conventia' Hindi, a Hindustani language with English words and
accents in post-independence India.116 The popularity of Hindi among
Indians is also based on the development of Bambayya Hindi and
Madrasi Hindi; although these styles of speaking are made fun of in
Bollywood movies, they represent the spread of Hindi by market
forces rather than state power. The protagonists of Hindi may lament
the loss of lyrics and meaning in Hindi songs but they are the carriers
of the national language. This is how major languages achieve wider
currency and popularity and the purists must not obstruct this process.
The rise of newspaper publishing in regional languages was

greatly facilitated by the development of capitalism and market
forces. The rise in literacy, the development of printing technology,
the rise in rural incomes and literacy has led to an increase in
advertising in regional language newspapers by private businessmen.
This has provided much needed financial support for regional
language newspapers. With these changes coming during the 1980s
there has been a tremendous increase in the publication of
newspapers in languages like Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. These trends
have been insufficient to help languages like Urdu according to Robin
Jeffrey. 117 However, the private television channels that have
proliferated, have also played a dynamic role in the spread of Hindi
and Bhojpuri and Urdu, apart from regional languages. As the
consumer culture spreads and languages lose their intensely
emotional appeal for many people the language conflicts have
subsided in terms of political importance. As far as the position of
Hindi is concerned it is rapidly becoming more popular, although it
is not the only language to become so. As the number of languages
shrink around the world and also decline, in India, the ability of Hindi
to reach out to a wider population, is growing.
The collection of local poems, folk tales and proverbs was an

important factor in the case for enriching Hindi with the vocabulary
of the localities and the dialects. While Hindi tried to link up with

Imagining Hindi 51
the localities and there was the rise of the aanchalik upanayas or
the novel with focus on regional culture in Hindi, this was not
necessarily based on the use of the regional dialect. Although
Phanishwar Renu wrote novels with a focus on regional culture he
used a language familiar to those who spoke relatively Sanskritized
Hindi. Although he was born in Purnia he did not use the language
of that region. There was a great use of ardh-tatsams that would
have been more familiar to speakers of Braj a few centuries earlier.
Therefore, the idea of using the uniqueness of the language of
particular localities, did not work out as the protagonists of the
Janapada movement had imagined. The willingness to ignore or bend
the rules of grammar and the use of spoken speech in the novels of
Renu has some features that Suniti Chatterjee had favoured in his
essay on Chalu Hindi. In any case the language Renu sometimes
used was close to that of people who spoke Bengali and eastern Hindi
without due importance given to gender or grammar. 118
V
The Question of Science and Technology
The divide between Hindi and Urdu may have begun with the
18th century turn to Arabic and Persian words by those who wanted
to preserve their culture and identity, but by the late 19th century
the effort to create a Sanskritized Hindi was also gaining momentum.
The themes of the writers of Hindi and Urdu were rather limited in
the period up to the early twentieth century, because the range of
interest of the scholars and writers as well as the readers in these
languages was not too extensive. The idea of a modern language,
suitable for a developed society, was becoming a vital issue for
scholars and patriots of many different hues during the second quarter
of the 20th century. While Urdu culture was criticized for its lack of
social concern and interest in modern science Hindi was regarded
as a language that was deficient in the field of science as well as
sophisticated culture. There was a substantial amount of legal and
administrative vocabulary in Urdu and those well versed in it resisted
the rise of Hindi as a language of education and administration,
especially in the politically important United Provinces. In the field
of science some fields were not underserved in Urdu. It has been

52 Rohit Wanchoo
pointed out that the British encouraged a lot of translations of medical

texts into Urdu in the early 19th century and that this played an
important role in the rise of the Unani system of medicine practiced
by the Muslim hakims.119 The role of British scholars like Ballantyne
in producing translations of scientific terms and works into Hindi
has recently been highlighted.120 The effort petered out after some
time and seems not to have had an impact on subsequent discussions
about translations of scientific terms.
In an article about the creation of scientific terms Krishnanand

Gupt, writing in Madhukar in 1942, felt that it would be impossible
to invent or create scientific terms on the basis of words in common
use without the use of Sanskrit. Some of the writer's friends believed
that it was possible to write on scientific subjects without the use of
either Sanskrit or Arabic and Persian. They argued that if water was
called pani instead of jal, air was called hawa instead of vayu and
electricity was called bijli instead of vidyut, the conflict between,
Hindi and Urdu would come to an end. Gupt argued that when it
came to science the use of words based on the classical languages
would be better and more precise than terms that were drawn from
desi or commonplace words. Even in English the words used by
professional scientists were not to be found in everyday speech and
conversation. The choice before the others was either to accept these
terms as internationally valid or to invent new ones in their own
language. Without precise scientific terms it was impossible to write
about science. The reason why there was less opposition to the
invention of words in the English language was because more than
half of them were in common use. Frequently used scientific words
had gained popular acceptance. This could happen in the case of
Hindi too. The Urdu writers recognized this problem and used the
term vark instead of bijli for electricity.121
The option before Indians was either to accept the scientific terms
in vogue in English or to create a new terminology on their own.
Since for the majority the English words were as difficult or
unfamiliar as the ones based on Sanskrit would it not be better to
use indigenous words? Writers on science in Hindi could either
accept words derived from Arabic or Persian by Urdu writers or

Imagining Hindi 53
invent words based on Sanskrit. The choice before us was to use the
words they had produced or to invent words based on Sanskrit. Over
thirty years ago during the Bangiya Parishad meeting this issue had
been discussed. Both the Nagari Pracharini Sabha and the Science
Council or Vigyan Parishad had been in favour of using Sanskrit
dhatus for creating scientific terms.122 In matters of science precision
was paramount; simplicity ought not to be at the expense of clarity
and precision. One should not ignore the rich literature and
substantial terminology available in Sanskrit in fields like
mathematics, astrology and Ayurveda. There was also the possibility
of inventing words based on Sanskrit that could be common to many
Indian languages like Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and Hindi. There
was a clear need to decide about the way in which classical or
standard works in science would be produced.123
The development of terms for the sciences based on coining

words using Sanskrit or Arabic roots had its limitations. In the
opinion of Dr. Tarachand, Sanskrit words have phonetic values
unsuited to Hindi, Urdu or Hindustani speech. Arabic suffers from
the additional defect that it has little capacity to form compounds.
Neither of them can provide enough terms for all sciences and some
dependence upon European languages is therefore inevitable. He
advocated the grouping of the sciences according to their
requirements. The mathematical sciences required exact and
extensive terminologies but not many general words; for disciplines
like Chemistry, Physics, Anatomy or Geology although exact terms
were important there was a greater need for description; and finally
for the sciences relating to man such as Anthropology, Economics,
Philosophy or Psychology the general vocabulary needed was much
larger than for the first two categories.123A The adoption of English
terminology was the most practical solution for these two
categories provided some clearly defined rules were formulated to
modify English terms in accordance with the linguistic peculiarities
of Hindustani.124
Dodson has shown that scholars like Dalmia have not taken note
of the role of colonial educators and traditional Indian scholars whose
works could have created some basis for the construction of Hindu

54 Rohit Wanchoo
identity and conceptions of Hindi during the late nineteenth century.

He has drawn attention to the fact that the essentially European
orientalist preconceptions which underpinned translation into Hindi
during the 1850s and 1860s under Ballantyne and Hall in Benares
College, and the formation of a pure and classical Hindi by
reference to Sanskrit, have largely been elided from discussions of,
for example, Bharatendu Hariscandra's formulation of Hindi as
India's national language (desbhasa), or his notion that the linguistic
improvement of Hindi must necessarily precede north Indian social
evolution. Nevertheless, the Sanskrit oriented scientific vocabulary
scholars like Ballantyne produced, did not find much favour later,
and the scientific lexicon produced by the Nagari Pracharini Sabha
in 1906 preferred utilization of English transliterations in the absence
of suitable Hindi equivalents.125 In a sense the preference for
scientific terminology based on Sanskrit during the late colonial
period was a return to an earlier failed initiative. In the post
independence period the project did achieve considerable success
in terms of creating a new scientific vocabulary, but not in achieving
popularity or acceptance within the educational system.
VI
Some Comparisons
The significance of the national language for creating a sense of

nationalism has been identified by Benedict Anderson. He has argued
that the rise of print culture promotes the national language. A
scholar, who has done empirical work on Indonesia like Anderson,
has argued that the national language of Indonesia does not claim
exclusivity and deep origins. Comments Webb Keane, On the
contrary, Indonesian, like perhaps Swahili or Filipino, and in contrast
to many national, ethnic and religiously freighted languages such as
French, Gaelic, Hebrew, or Tamil, is not normally depicted as a
language of ancient lineage or as a closely guarded cultural property.
The national language of Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesia, is a variant
of Malay; it is self-consciously modern and is regarded as potentially
a superordinate and cosmopolitan language.126 The national
language of Indonesia was a second language for all the linguistic
groups in the country. Even those who spoke Low Malay would have

Imagining Hindi 55
to make considerable effort to learn the standardized national

language.
The choice of Indonesian as the national language was made in

1928 after the Youth Oath. Although the leaders of the national
movement were accustomed to Dutch they committed themselves
to the idea of a national language Bahasa Indonesia even before
the creation of the independent state of Indonesia. At this time only
4.9% of the population of the East Indies spoke Malay, compared to
47.8% who spoke Javanese and 14.5 % who spoke Sundanese. In
1990, 15.5 % of the population declared that Indonesian was their
first language and over 70% said that it was their second language.
Those who claimed to be Javanese speakers declined to 38.8%.
Malay, the language of a small group, was able to develop as the
national language despite the presence of several numerically and
culturally dominant groups.
This success of Indonesian has been contrasted by Keane with

that of Hindi in India. There were several reasons for the success of
Bahasa Indonesia; most importantly the fact that it was not identified
with the colonizer or any privileged ethnic group. Although Malay
had developed as the lingua franca of the region between the
Moluccas and the Philippines, before the Dutch had established their
rule, standard Malay did not emerge until the end of the 19th
century. Standard Malay was developed along the lines of the literary
forms which had emerged in the Riau sultanate although this was
different from what most Malay speakers were familiar with.
Therefore, the difference between Malay speakers and those who
spoke other languages, when it came to learning Indonesian, was
only one of degree.
The Indonesian language is supposed to lack two features: a

clear social-geographical centre or exemplary best speakers.
According to Keane an easy language to learn has the disadvantage
that it lacks depth and subtlety. This weakness probably afflicts
Swahili and Hindi as well. Those who shaped modern Indonesian,
like Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana, wrote in 1948 that the task was to
build a new culture in keeping with the times. Indonesian was

56 Rohit Wanchoo
conceived as a modernist project which would produce an egalitarian

speech that would avoid, for instance, the lexical choices among
the vocabulary sets of high, middle, and low Javanese.127 The
modernist project with regard to Indonesian may have been sustained
by an authoritarian regime, but also succeeded because of the lack
of linguistic movements against it.
What could be the possible implications of this experience for

India? First, it was clear that in India the lingua franca was
Hindustani, as far as the spoken language was concerned, and it was
also in contention for becoming the national language of India. The
problem was disagreement about the developed form of the national
languagewhether Urdu or Hindi or both should be accepted.
The preferences in India were based on religious and cultural
considerations unlike the modernist nationalism that was invoked
in favour of Indonesian.127A Secondly, the use of common Sanskrit
words in most Indian languages, except in Urdu, made Hindi closer
to Sanskrit a choice which could be justified on both linguistic and
religious grounds. Secular as well as communal Hindus could often
come to the same conclusion on the question of Hindi and therefore,
the HindiUrdu divide grew.
As the Muslim elite regarded Urdu as the language of high culture

and the devout saw it as the bearer of Muslim religious traditions it
tended to bring both secular and communal Muslims on a common
platform. Therefore, in India the creation of an altogether new
language was ruled out. Even if we stretch a point and argue that a
modernized Hindustani could be regarded as the 'modern' national
language the situation would not be comparable to that of Indonesian.
The problem was not only about the desire to create a new language
like 'Hindustani', but also from where it would borrow to make it a
language suitable for education, science and governance. One is not
aware of the sources from which Indonesian has drawn its
vocabulary, but clearly rival religious traditions and classical
languages have not been contending for dominance over Bahasa
Indonesia.
In the case of the Philippines about 85% of the population spoke

eight major languages of the Filipino-Austronesian family, although

Imagining Hindi 57
there were about eighty major and minor languages. The vernaculars
were suppressed by the American colonizers, who had promoted the
use of English. The Philippines after independence decided to adopt
Filipino as the national language a modified form of Tagalog that
was used in Manila. The Cebuano language, the mother-tongue of
a quarter of the population according to the 1960 census, was more
popular than Tagalog. It was spoken in the Visyas region and served
as a lingua franca for this region. Tagalog, however, was known to
the largest number of Filipinos as the second language and as the
language of culture. On the basis of census data of 1970 the Tagalog
speakers outnumbered those who used Cebuano as the first language
or the language spoken at home. The Ilocano speakers of the northern
part of the country, who were prominent in the economic sphere,
were also very attached to their language. By 1990 those who spoke
Tagalog rose to 27.9 % of the population while those who spoke
Cebuano had declined to 24.3%.128
The authors praise the Indian language policy which gives due
recognition to the rights of regional languages while promoting Hindi
as the national language. Even Spain has adopted this policy by
recognizing linguistic diversity while promoting Castillian Spanish.
Unfortunately, in the Philippines the state has adopted a policy of
ignoring the indigenous languages. These languages are not used as
a medium of education and the students are expected to get their
education through English or Filipino as mediums of instruction. The
indigenous languages are used for spoken communication, and are
popular, but they are not accepted as the medium of instruction in
schools and colleges. The real tussle has emerged between Filipino
and English; the national language is in conflict with the international
language. The state, therefore, actively began promoting Filipino
to counter the influence of English by adopting a Bilingual policy
in education in 1973. In the 1970 census, 48% of the population
claimed that it was able to speak English while that number rose to
64.5% of the population above six years in 1980. The government
announced that it would try and make the nation competent in both
English and Filipino in the country and that both languages would
be used as the medium of instruction in the schools from Grade1.
This was a policy accepted by the constitutions of 1973 and 1986.129

58 Rohit Wanchoo
The experience of the Philippines differs from that of India in

two ways although the authors have indentified only one. The
Philippines is a country in which the spread of English has been
greater than that in any ex-colonial country. In no non-white colony
has the ex-colonial language achieved such a remarkable success.
In India the use of English has been a source of hostility and
resentment among many supporters of Hindi in the northern states
but there has been fairly strong support for the retention of English
as the language of administration and education in the southern states.
No matter what people understand by the term national language
the attitude towards English and Hindi in India has to do with the
implications for jobs and power and not only linguistic pride or
chauvinism.
Secondly, the use of the regional languages as the medium of

instruction in schools and colleges has been quite successful in India.
Policy-makers in India have been more supportive of regional
languages than those in the Philippines. The languages in India are
probably more developed than all but three of the languages in the
Philippines but the advocates of Indian regional languages have also
been more vocal in supporting their mother-tongues. This is in spite
of the fact that most of the Indian languages have a link with Sanskrit
and the Philipino dialects and languages do not have such a classical
language to bind them together.
VII
The Impact of Partition
The national movement failed to achieve independence with

unity. The inability to resolve the relationship between Hindi and
Urdu or the 'rightful' place of Urdu in the country also contributed
to the developments which led to the Partition of the subcontinent.
The division of the country on the basis of religion led to a
considerable reaction in India alhough the country remained wedded
broadly to the ideas of democracy and secularism. Nevertheless, there
was a backlash of sorts; if that word seems too strong then we can
say that the political realities changed substantially. There was no
longer the need to come to a settlement with the advocates of

Imagining Hindi 59
Persianized Urdu to preserve the unity of India.130 Secondly, the

decline in the number of Muslims in the polity meant that they did
not pose as serious a political challenge to Hindu nationalists as they
had earlier. Therefore, as long as the country accepted a more
Sanskritized Hindi as the national language, the Muslims could
develop Urdu along lines they thought best for themselves. The
debates on language in the Constituent Assembly indicate the changes
that Partition had brought about.
The advocates of Hindi as a national language became more

assertive after independence and Partition. The problem was that
there was a decline of the strong nationalist fervour that had led to
the acceptance of Hindi as the national language of India. The
development of incipient linguistic nationalism or of interest groups
organized on lines of language led to the demands for new linguistic
states. The opposition to the use of Hindi in administration led to
the demand for retaining English as the link language. This conflict
reached its peak in the mid-1960s; there were pro-Hindi and anti-
Hindi agitations during the years 196768.131 This indicates that
nationalist attitudes of the 1930s and 1940s were no longer present.132
Not only had the times changed, the rise in democratic participation
and the development of regional languages had made the
formulations of the earlier period less popular. Hindi continued to
grow in influence but at a slower pace than earlier nationalists had
hoped for, without any substantial links with its dialects. Therefore,
it became even more dependent on wholesale translation of English
words.133
The debate about the nature of Hindi was not only about the
relationship with Urdu but also with the regional dialects and Bolis.
Although languages like Maithili and Bhojpuri remained popular,
the education that was provided in post-independence India was in
standard Hindi. In fact, the elites who shaped the policies with regard
to Hindi and its use as a medium of instruction were not by and
large supportive of policies favouring dialects.134 The rise of Sanskrit-
based Hindi was not the outcome of partition alone; it was also
because the regional dialects were less assertive about their claims.
Nation-building demanded a standard language for education and

60 Rohit Wanchoo
governance and the Bolis were not encouraged to make the task more
difficult. Most of them accepted their relegation to the status of a
spoken language. Writers abandoned their mother-tongues and
switched to standard Khari Boli both because of patriotic impulses
and the desire to reach out to a wider public.135 Several nationalists
feared that the support for dialects that were dormant would tend to
create divisions and weaken the nation.136
The need to coin words that could be used to translate works of

science and technology into Hindi was arduous enough and there
seemed little point in encouraging the Bolis as mediums of education
as recommended by advocates in the 1940s. The task was
complicated by the fact that only one of the Bolis or dialects could
be used as a language for education and administration in any
province or any synthesis of the dialects spoken there. To many it
seemed more pragmatic and patriotic to accept standard Hindi than
to promote competition between the various dialects of any province
in order to create a regional language. The attempt to create a
Rajasthani language, it was argued, would create fears about the
dominance of Marwari, the most widely spoken language. The
competition between dialects between Mewari, Dhundhari, Bagri,
Haroti and Mewati would obstruct the process of integration of
people into Rajasthani society. Further, since 60 per cent of the words
in the dialects were from Hindi, it was becoming increasingly
acceptable to people in Rajasthan. Doshi and Purohit, writing in 1968,
identified and welcomed this development because it would have
been pointless to create a new Rajasthani language based on the
synthesis of more than twenty dialects.137 Such an attempt would
have created friction and disrupted the integration of Rajasthan with
Indian society. It is interesting that even before independence there
were people who were opposed to creating a distinct Rajasthani
language and using it as a medium of instruction in educational
institutions. 138

Imagining Hindi 61
VIII
Summing Up
There were clear signs that Hindi and Urdu were moving apart
as two standardized versions of the same language in late colonial
India. The rise of communalism and the cultural preferences for
different classical languages for loan words was driving the two
languages apart and the effort at creating a common Hindustani ran
into serious difficulties.139 The Partition of the country in 1947 led
to a tremendous setback to the idea of Hindustani in the subcontinent.
India eventually opted for Hindi with a tilt in favour of Sanskritized
Hindi as the national language. The opponents of the Janapada
programme like Chandrabali Pandey and Makhan Lal Chaturvedi
during the 1940s were joined by many others in the post-
independence period.140 In Pakistan, Urdu became the national
language despite, or because of, the fact that it was the mother-tongue
of very few people in that country. Hindi was progressively
Sanskritized after the Partition of India because it reduced the moral
and political compulsions to evolve a common Hindustani
language.141 Urdu became more and more identified with Indian
Muslims and became a minority rather than a national issue.
Although the idea of Hindustani that was debated in the two

decades before independence lost its political salience the idea has
not died. Even in the 1990s there have been arguments in favour of
Hindustani and in favour of a more vibrant and simplified Hindi.
There are people who believe that Hindustani, including both Hindi
and Urdu, is capable of becoming the lingua franca or link language
of the whole of South Asia.142 Some others believe that Hindustani
is not merely simple Hindi and Urdu. Hindustani has had its own
identity and traditions from the time of Khusro and Kabir to
Premchand and Manto down to modern day writers. While Dushyant
and Shamsher Singh are writing ghazals in Hindi even today Nida
Fazili and Bekal Utsahi are producing songs and dohas in Hindi.143
In the modern age because of the growth in the audio-visual

forms of communication the preservation of linguistic diversity has
become easier. According to Bhalachandra Nemade there has been

62 Rohit Wanchoo
a hierarchy among languages in India from the earliest times. The

supralanguages like Sanskrit, Prakrit, Persian and English have
played a pivotal role in India's cultural life and geopolitical unity or
bhurajkiya rashtriyata.144 In future too Hindi would be able to
become a national language but not the mother-tongue of the majority
of people. Just below the level of the supralanguage regional
languages have flourished. Then, there are the dialects the
upbhashas and Bolis. In the Marathi speaking region these are
Khandeshi, Vahadi, Konkani and nearly a hundred Bolis. Finally,
there are link languages or jodbhashas.
The jodhbhashas serve as a medium of communication where

the more literary supralanguages do not hold sway. In north
Karnataka, Goa, southern Madhya Pradesh, the IndoreMalwa
Raipur region, Marathi serves as the link language. Urdu serves as
a link language throughout the country and unless Hindi gives up
its excessive use of Sanskrit words it will find it difficult to become
a national language. Nemade has asserted that only that language is
likely to become a national language that has the capacity to replace
English. Without taking the help of Urdu and other link languages
like Marathi it would be difficult for Hindi to succeed in displacing
English which is an international language. Only by securing for
Hindi and its supportive link languages the advantages that English
enjoys can we move towards strengthening Hindi as a national
language. Our language policy should promote all the Indian link
languages while simultaneously promoting Hindi at the international
level.145
In the opinion of Krishna Kumar, the tragedy of Hindi as a

language is that what has been promoted by the state through
education and the media does not evoke any feelings among the Hindi
speakers. The kind of Hindi that could arouse the people is in dire
need of support. Hindi has become a language fed on translations,
a language that has lost touch with tradition and literary sensibility.
The narrow focus of those who were confined to literary themes has
emasculated the language and prevented it from playing a role in
the intellectual life of the people. Very few original works in fields
like economics and science or environment are being written.146 The

Imagining Hindi 63
criticism may be exaggerated but draws attention to the limited use

to which Hindi is put and the triumph of an official language. In
any case, the idea of a Peoples Hindi, which would be able to reflect
many dialects and regions, did not make headway in the postcolonial
period.147
The men who were debating the Janapada and Vikendriyakaran

movement during the closing years of colonial rule were those who
wanted to bring the Hindi language close to the hearths and hearts
of the common people. They were not in favour of a lifeless literary
language. They sought inspiration from the past, from local
knowledge and from nature but they were trying to create a lively
and vibrant language.148 The evolution of society makes their vision
seem far too preoccupied with the rural idyll or local literary
patriotism than is acceptable today. Besides, even those who
sympathised with some of their aspirations, like Vyohar Rajendra
Singh, did not want to weaken the credibility of Hindi as a national
language.149 Although scholars today might find their sources for
literary inspiration and linguistic development somewhat restrictive
or dated, they represented a trend that offered alternatives to the rapid
manufacture of the language under the umbrella of Sanskrit.150 Even
the broad vision of Banarsidas Chaturvedi or V.S. Aggarwal appears
insufficiently exciting or attractive today. What is difficult to deny
is that they represented a trend within the Hindi public sphere and
literary universe which could have thwarted the process of creating
a heavily subsidised official language with limited public appeal.
The men who were able to claim that the language of education
should be the mother-tongue of people and not literary Khari Boli
in the Hindi-speaking world, like Rahul Sankrityayan, were slowly
swept away after independence. The rising tide of standardized Hindi
was supported by the state, by the compulsions of nation-building
and the conflict between different dialects vying for recognition and
support within new political boundaries. 151 The approach of
Chaturvedi and Aggarwal was to make Hindi a language fit to be
the national language, although their knowledge of the literary
achievements of other Indian languages was not very extensive. They
were not sufficiently multicultural and modern themselves, but they

64 Rohit Wanchoo
wanted Hindi language and literature to have a broad-minded and

catholic attitude towards the languages of the common people,
whether they spoke dialects of Hindi or regional languages and
dialects. Nevertheless, the two of them were believers in the need
to promote Hindi as the national language and did not endorse the
viewpoint of Rahul Sankrityayan.152 The postcolonial state created
a vast apparatus to protect the linguistic and cultural heritage of India
but within the Hindi literary circles there was probably a less catholic
view that slowly gained ascendancy. 153 This narrowness of
perspective affected not only the relation of Hindi with Urdu but
with other Indian languages as well.
Krishna Kumar argues that the fact that Hindi was declared the
national language of India created an arrogance or smugness among
Hindi speakers who regarded other Indian languages as regional and
therefore inferior to Hindi. The development of literary and
intellectual activity in Hindi was severely restricted by the slow
development of literacy in the Hindi-speaking states owing to limited
expenditures on literacy, caste prejudices and class differences. Only
by breaking these barriers would Hindi be able to progress.154 In a
sense the postcolonial state has been unable to build on the more
capacious vision of Hindi that developed in the 1930s and 1940s
among a few literary people. That some of these broad and people-
oriented proposals fell by the wayside may also have to do with their
association with parochialism on the one hand and radicalism on
the other.
Chaturvedis concern for the creation of Bundelkhand was

probably perceived as narrow-minded and parochial and
Sankrityayans appeal to Soviet nationality policies might have
disturbed both the supporters of nationalism and conservatism.155 Not
very long after India gained independence advocates of Hindi also
developed notions of the superiority of Hindi vis--vis Indias
regional languages. This was a departure from the more earnest
attempt of the pre-independence period when spokesmen of Hindi
sought to make it rich enough and catholic enough to be acceptable
to other Indian language groups.156 There was also anxiety about the
ability of Hindi to hold its own vis--vis the regional languages, both

Imagining Hindi 65
in terms of numbers of speakers and literary influence.157 On the other

hand the decline of Urdu after independence was a product of
growing official and market support for Hindi, inadequate increase
in literacy in the Hindi belt and the identification of Urdu with
Muslims and Islam.158
The main argument advanced in this article is that we need to

take a serious look at a brief period in India's cultural history when
there were lively debates among literary figures of considerable
importance about the future path of development of Hindi language
and literature. These were not the men who decided the fate of Hindi
after India got independence but had their views been given due
importance the rise of official Hindi would have been less swift
and smooth. Whether the views of these scholars could have
promoted the development of Hindustani as a literary language is
far from clear, but it could have kept Hindi closer to the dialects.
More importantly, some thought that the survival of Urdu itself
depended on how close it wanted to come to the dialects.159 The
development of Hindi as a language fit for science and administration
would have compelled some degree of Sanskritization, or
modification of English terms, as recommended by Dr. Tarachand,
but bulk manufacture of scientific and administrative vocabulary
would have been contested and resisted.
The argument advanced here is not about the inherent superiority

of the viewpoint of these scholars of the 1930s and 1940s,160 but
about the relative broad-mindedness of their views and their earnest
desire to create a vibrant language closely linked to the life of the
common people. 161 The men who shaped Hindi in the post-
independence period were able to create a language with a large
vocabulary but a relatively lifeless one. Hindi has, nevertheless,
evolved because of market forces and the media and as a medium
of communication or lingua franca it is as vibrant as ever. The official
crust of Hindi may not be able to keep the dynamic language spoken
by diverse groups in South Asia under its baleful influence for long.
When the language of the common people will be accorded
respectability and recognition, the men whose hearts throbbed at the
mention of the Janapada programme and the principle of
Vikendriyakaran, will rejoice and find peace.162

66 Rohit Wanchoo
Hindi was faced with many challenges before independence and

Partition. There was competition with the dialects of Hindi, rivalry
with Urdu, conflict with English and anxiety about the relationship
with the regional languages. After independence the position of Urdu
and the regional dialects weakened vis--vis Hindi both in terms of
state support and popularity as a language of communication at the
pan-India level. The limited availability of intellectual and financial
resources required to develop languages also contributed to the
decline of the dialects and the sluggish growth of Urdu as a modern
language.163
While the state determined the language of the courts and of

education it was the market which influenced the language used by
the newspapers, the television channels and the makers of cinema.
The language of the former is more Sanskritic and the language of
the latter more syncretic or eclectic. The forms of spoken Hindi are
far more responsive to the needs of various kinds of speakers than
the written and literary language. This is true of most substantial
languages and also of a global language like English. Nevertheless,
the development of Hindi as a language of science and higher
education is still inadequate. Hindi has forged ahead of the dialects
and Urdu in India but it has not overcome resistance to its role as
a national language by the regional languages. It is trailing behind
English in the fields of higher education and science and
technology.164 Languages evolve all the time and Hindi still has a
long way to go. The debates about the future of Hindi during the
1930s and 1940s might not influence or enthuse those who wish to
shape language today, but they reveal the complexity of the
arguments on the eve of independence and a great concern for
connecting with everyday life and ordinary people.165 The need for
an equally free and wide-ranging debate about imagining Hindi is
only too apparent today.

Imagining Hindi 67
Notes
1
Z.A. Ahmad (ed.), National Language for India: A Symposium, Kitabistan,
Allahabad 1941. Mahatma Gandhi said, Hindustani of the Congress
conception has yet to be crystallized into shape. It will not be so long as
Congress proceedings are not conducted exclusively in Hindustani. The
Congress will have to prescribe the dictionaries for use by Congressmen
and a department will have to supply new words outside the dictionaries...
For the purposes of crystallizing Hindustani, Hindi and Urdu may be
regarded as feeders. A Congressman must therefore wish well to both and
keep in touch with both in so far as he can. Quotes pg 36.
2
Z.A. Ahmad (ed.), National Language for India, Allahabad 1941. Preface,
quote pg 7. Ahmad observed, The difficulty at present, however, is that
Hindustani still represents only a tendency in literature. Unless this tendency
is rapidly and vigorously concretised, it would not be an easy matter to stop
the pull of literary Hindi in one direction and that of literary Urdu in the
other. Besides when we come to actual writing, we find a good deal of
difference even among the supporters of Hindustani. This obviously is due
to the fact that the conception of Hindustani has not yet taken a definite
literary form. Ibid pg 10.
3
Harish Trivedi, The Progress of Hindi, Part 2: Hindi and the Nation, in
Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from
South Asia, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp 9581022, spl pp 975980.
Quote pg 977.
4
Tara Chand, The Problem of a Common Language for India, The
Twentieth Century, Allahabad, 1944. pp. 251263. Dr. Tarachand observed
that while the Indian National Congress at its Karachi session in 1925 had
decided that Hindustani would be the lingua franca of India this position
was revised at Nagpur in favour of Hindi-Hindustani by the Hindi Sahitya
Sammelan. Tarachand does not hold Gandhiji responsible for this decision
but recognized that it had negative consequences as pointed out by Harish
Trivedi. The nationalist-minded Muslims were disappointed by this decision
and the Muslim League demanded that Urdu should be considered the lingua
franca. However he points out that Mahatmaji in May 1942 created the
Hindustani Prachar Sabha to promote Hindustani and also outlines the way
in which Hindustani could be promoted in future. pg 251.
5
Sampurnanand and Dr. Zakir Husain also spoke up for Hindustani.
Sampurnanand argued that if the Hindus accepted Persian vocabulary and
the Muslims Sanskrit vocabulary to some extent many difficulties could be
tackled. The Congress believed in not interfering with the language problem

68 Rohit Wanchoo
and the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha should do likewise
otherwise the language controversy would become more intractable. He
repeated Rajendra Prasad by stating that having both Sanskrit and Persian
words would add to the richness of the language. Ahmad, National Language
for India, Allahabad, 1941, pp. 122130. Zakir Husain argued that new
words should be taken from the speech of villagers, from that of craftsmen
and workers and even from foreign languages. Zakir Husain observed, Our
scientific terms we shall have to take over in large numbers from foreign
languages, and it will be a great advantage if Urdu and Hindi speakers
agree upon adopting the same terms, otherwise the scientific literature of
the one will be of little use to the other. We shall have still to borrow many
words from both Arabic and Sanskrit. Ibid pp. 97106. Quote pp. 103
104.
6
Rajendra Prasad was in favour of drawing upon Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian
and even English because new words had to be coined under the stimulus
of new ideas. Prasad stated, If we do so we shall be enriching Hindustani
by incorporating in it many words from different languages which will
serve as synonyms in the beginning but which, with the growing
replenishment of the treasury of words and expressions, will be eventually
distinguished from each other by finer shades of thought. Ahmad, National
Language, 1941, pp 7581. Quotes pg 76 and pg 77. Dr. Prasad argued that
although the commonly used words like roti had come from Turkish and
aag and paani had come from Sanskrit they had to be governed by the rules
of Hindi and Urdu. Many words which derived from Sanskrit and which
were not modified according to gender were now being unnecessarily
differentiated. Moreover, what was important in a national language was
that it was widely acceptable, not that it had the greatest vocabulary. Address
by Rajendra Prasad, 28th Kashi Session in A. Kaushalyayan (ed.), Rashtra
Bhasha Ki Samasyaein, Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Prayag, Allahabad 1986,
pp 1927. Our policy ought to be to include all those who were willing to
join; words which had become acceptable were not to be excluded regardless
of their origins. Those who sought to expand the influence of Hindi had to
be large-hearted. Ibid pg 27.
7
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin
and Spread of Nationalism, Verso 1982.
8
Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, Rashtrabhasha Ka Prashna, in Rithambhara,
Sahitya Bhawan Private Limited, Hindi Sahitya Press, Allahabad. Second
revised edition 1958, pp. 5091. He stated that most Indian languages
borrowed words because they were incapable of building or creating
them. From the very beginning Hindi borrowed from its grandmother

Imagining Hindi 69
Sanskrit. It adopted thousands of Arabic and Persian words and later accepted
many from English and other European languages. But how can we give
up the link between Sanskrit and Indian culture which has existed for over
three thousand years? Quote pg 67.
8A
For a discussion of Braj at the Mughal court and its role in creating a
composite culture see Allison Busch, Hidden in Plain View: Brajbhasha
Poets at the Mughal Court, Modern Asian Studies, Volume 44, 2, March
2010, pp. 267309. Busch argues that Braj was more suited to a Mughal
politics of pluralism than either Sanskrit or Persian with their more limited
constituencies. Quote pg 204.
9
Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, Rashtrabhasha Ka Prashna, in Rithambhara,
Sahitya Bhawan Private Limited, Hindi Sahitya Press, Allahabad. Second
revised, edition 1958, pp. 5091. Reference, pg 68.
10
According to S.K.Chatterjee the use of Arabic and Persian words first
arose in Dakhani during the 16th century. The influence of Dakhini on the
Khari-Boli of Delhi led to the rise of Urdu during the early 18th century
under the influence of Wali Aurangabadi. Urdu provided mental and
spiritual compensation to the Muslim elite who were affected by the decline
of the Mughal Empire and the rise of British power in India. Muslim courtiers
of foreign origin contributed to the rise of Urdu although many traditional
and indigenous Indian Muslims, like the 18th century Muslim poet with
the nom de plume Garib, wrote in Hindi. It was the Muslim elite that
created Urdu, based on heavy borrowing from Arabic and Persian, as a
language for Muslims. Chatterjee cites the work of Chandrabali Pandey to
whom he gives the credit for removing misconceptions about Hindi and
Urdu. He does not believe that Urdu is older than Hindi or that Urdu
developed with the enthusiastic cooperation of the Hindus. If this
interpretation of the development of the HindiUrdu divide is erroneous or
biased then we might regard Chatterjees views as dated or based on
contemporary notions of nationalism. An interpretation that differs is
provided by Faruqi in the Pollock volume cited earlier. Shamsur Rahman
Faruqi, A Long History of Urdu Literary Culture, Part I: Naming and Placing
a Literary Culture, in Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures, 2003, pp. 805863.
10A
Suniti Chatterjee would have been quite perturbed if language reform
had produced the negative consequences discussed in Nergis Erturk,
Phonocentrism and Literary Modernity in Turkey, Boundary 2, summer
2010, pp. 155185. She argues that Turkish linguistic nationalism was a
form of self-surgery primarily concerned with the suppression of internal
difference. Erturk asserts, The creation of a transparent, abstract phonetic
writing system for the modern Turkish of the new republic could be presented

70 Rohit Wanchoo
as an efficient guarantee of the unitary self-identity of an otherwise hybrid,

multireligious, and multiethnic population. Quotes pp. 156157. The
Turkish language reforms under Ataturk did not bring the language of the
elite and the masses close to each other, abandoned the emphasis on
simplification of the earlier period and produced an artificial language. Citing
the sociologist Meltem Ahiska she asserts the reforms led to bifurcation of
the Republican everyday into two orders of things: one comprising the formal
authority of a pure Turkish society of external appearances, the other, the
interiorized illegitimacy of the disavowed Ottoman, along with the
republics peasants, fundamentalists, criminals, communists, and
ethnolinguistic others, the remainders of the Kemalist revolution. Quote
pg 182. If this view is accepted then the failure to follow the example of
Ataturk in India may not be a cause for regret.
11
Chatterjee, Allahabad, 1958, pg 72. It is important that the argument about
the rise of nationalism among Turks and Iranians was emphasized by scholars
who were less concerned about the linguistic rights of Urdu speakers in
India than its links with Arabic and Persian. At the 31st Haridwar session of
the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan Chandrabali Pandey observed that Arabic had
even less links with Indian languages than English. In his view Persian was
welcome but not Arabic. If Urdu was regarded as the language of the Prophet
Nabi ki zaban then its claims could not be accepted since the Prophet
believed in the primacy of the national language. Nabi deshbhasha ke pujari
they, kuch videshbhasha ke nahin. A. Kaushalyayan (ed.), Rashtra Bhasha
Ki Samasyaein, Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Prayag, Allahabad 1986, pp
3560. Quote pg 39. In Turkey the people have turned to Turkish; Arabic
may be the sacred language but cannot become the national language. To
think of Urdu or even Farsi and Arabic as national language is sacrilege.
Mazhab nahin kufr hai, Islam nahin upadrav hai. Ibid. Quote pg 40. Pandey
believed that Urdu had emerged as an un-Indian or abharatiya language. In
order to become Indian it would have to return to its Nagari rashtrabhumi
roots. He argued that the Sufis had used Hindi and other Indian languages
for the spread of Islam more than Urdu. Those who wanted to end the Hindi
Urdu dispute would have to change the outlook of Urdu Urdu ki pravritti
mein parivartan karna hi hoga. Ibid. pg 55.
12
Chatterjee, Allahabad, 1958, Quote pg 54 and pp. 6061.
13
Chatterjee, Allahabad, 1958 pp. 7476.
14
Madhukar, 1944. Article entitled 'Janpad Aandolan' written in Kundeshwar
in Tikamgarh by Jagdish Prasad Chaturvedi. pp. 116.
15
Pandey argued that there was no point in making an issue about the mother

Imagining Hindi 71
tongue matrabhasha ke poot naam par adhik bitanda ki aavashyakta

nahin. The mother also gives up her language for the language of her
husband. Chandrabali Pandey to B.D. Chaturvedi dated 5th November,
1943, Madhukar, 1944, pp. 8283. Pandey gave convoluted arguments to
justify why he had supported the Janapada programme at Haridwar although
he was basically an opponent of Vikendriyakaran.The reason why he
favoured the idea of Vikendriyakaran was that he found the language why
after reason currently in use lifeless. Not just the Urdu Janapada but the
firangi Janapada ought to be the subject of study. We should learn from
both the Deshgat and Videshi Janapadas. He wanted the language of the
nation to be strong and substantial in which every element in the country
was represented kan- kan ki boli. This is what he meant by centralization.
He was opposed to the idea that the Urdu Janapada was the maker or founder,
Vidhata, of the Hindi Rashtra. Besides, when there was no centre where
was the need for decentralization? Chandrabali Pandey, Nagari Pracharini
Sabha, Kashi to B.D. Chaturvedi dated 24th August, 1943, Madhukar, 1944,
pp. 7980.
16
Letter from C. Pandey to B.D. Chaturvedi circulated in the Hindi literary
world. The Sammelan needed to understand India and its people and this
would help the Janapadas to flower under the stimulus of Indian nationalism.
Both of them needed to come up with their own schemes for Hindi and
eventually produce one which would enable the whole country to speak in
one voice. Madhukar, 1944, pp. 8182.
17
Madhukar, 1944. Article entitled 'Janpada Aandolan' by Jagdish Prasad
Chaturvedi, pp 56.
18
Madhukar, 1944. Article entitled 'Janpada Aandolan' by Jagdish Prasad
Chaturvedi. Quote pg 7. In March 1934 B.D. Chaturvedi wrote in Vishal
Bharat that it would be far better to produce dedicated scholars like P.D.
Tandon and Babu Shyam Sunder Das than to criticize them for their
shortcomings. pg 8.
19
Madhukar, 1944. Article entitled Janpada Aandolan by Jagdish Prasad
Chaturvedi. pp 1011.
20
Dr. Sudheendra Bose, M.A., Ph.D., Prant Prem Jagrat Keejiye,
Madhukar, 15 June, 1941, pp. 2628.
21
Editorial comment by B.D. Chaturvedi on the article by Dr. Sudheendra
Bose, M.A., Ph.D., Prant Prem Jagrat Keejiye, Madhukar, 15 June, 1941,
pg 26.
22
Makhan Lal Chaturvedis comments in excerpts from scholars of the

72 Rohit Wanchoo
Hindi world in Janpadiya Karyakrama tatha Vikendriyakaran, Madhukar,

1944, pp 3435. The awareness of the overwhelming power of English on
Indian knowledge systems was reflected in an observation of Hazari Prasad
Dwivedi in this collection of excerpts. He noted that even information about
our flora and fauna, our mountains and forests and right down to the insects
was gathered together in English language texts. Excerpt from the address
given to the Hindi Sahitya Parishad, Monghyr, in 1941. Ibid pg 39.
23
Amar Nath Jha, Janpadiya Bhashaon ka Sawal, Madhukar, 1944, pg
119. Although A.N. Jha favoured elementary education in the mother-
tongueor the dialects of Hindi he recommended that the rashtrabhasha,
Hindi, should be used for secondary education. He asserted that Hindustani
was just bad Urdu, but he wanted both Hindi and Urdu to be used as the
medium of instruction in the United Provinces. He wanted Urdu to flourish
but thought its influence was restricted to U.P. and Punjab. He did not think
there was much point in adopting the Roman script. Amarnath Jha, Hindi
The Rashtrabhasha in India, The Twentieth Century, 1946, pp. 200204.
24
Letter to B.D. Chaturvedi from Devendra Satyarthi, Janta-janta, Sant
Nagar, Lahore dated 28 September, 1943, Madhukar, pp. 8588.
25
Banarsi Das Chaturvedis editorial Prant Nirman, Madhukar, 1 October,
1942, pp. 2933.
26
Vyohar Rajendra Singh, Jabalpur, Vindhyaprant Nirman Samasya, in
Madhukar, March 1944, pp. 577578.
27
Deendayalu Shrivastava, Prant Nirman Kis Liye? Madhukar, March
1944, pp. 599602. Shrivastava envied those who lived in Jabalpur and
could deal with the government and the courts in Hindi unlike those
Bundelkhandis in the UP districts who had to cope with Urdu. As a layman
Shrivastava was not pronouncing any judgements on the language question
but felt that there could be the use of the dialect for education if the people
wanted it.
28
Krishna Chandra Aggarwal, B.A., Vishvamitra Office, Calcutta, Mera
Bundelkhand Ek Kaise Ho? Madhukar, June, 1943, pp. 387390.
28A
Busch has cited Chandrabali Pandeys work as an example of those
literary historians who saw a Hindi couplet flowing from every emperors
tongue. Speaking more generally she writes, This type of scholar seems
to find solace in highlighting features of a more linguistically pluralistic
past, with Hindi-using Muslim poets and patrons revered as tolerant
advocates of national unity avant la lettre. Her own articles, however,
present a nuanced account of the patronage of Braj by Mughal emperors

Imagining Hindi 73
from Akbar to Aurangzeb and by a section of the Indo-Muslim literati and

elite. Allison Busch, Hidden in Plain View: Brajbhasha Poets at the Mughal
Court, Modern Asian Studies, volume 44, 02, March 2010, pp. 267309.
Quotes pg 270. As for Chandrabali Pandey, some of his stong
pronouncements against Urdu make his partriotism look narrow-minded.
See footnote 11.
29
Pandit Madanlal Chaturvedi, Brajbhasha aur Bundelkhandi, Madhukar,
16 November, 1942, pp. 112115.
30
Pandit Madanlal Chaturvedi, Brajbhasha aur Bundelkhandi, Madhukar,
16 November, 1942. Chaturvedi argued that he was proud of the Braj
language of Bundelkhand because it was a part of the literature in the Braj
language. pg 115.
31
Einar Haugen, Dialect, Language, Nation, American Anthropologist,
New series, Vol. 68, No. 4, August 1966 pp. 922935. spl pg 923.
32
It is worth noting that Suniti Chatterjee believed that the recognition of
any dialect as a language was based on differences in grammar, on the
extent of attachment to the dialect, the difficulty faced by dialect speakers
in acquiring education through the literary language in use in their region
and the possibility of developing the dialect as a literary language. The
Provencal of southern France, a variant of Catalan of northern Spain, and
once a rival of French, had over time been abandoned by Provencal speakers
in favour of French. On the other hand Catalan had evolved as a new literary
language. As far as India was concerned Chatterjee argued that there was a
greater sense of unity or milankami pravritti which had enabled Sanskrit,
Apbhransha and then Hindi-Hindustani to dominate in north India. While
the trend recently seemed to be in favor of Vikendriyakaran the matter would
be settled only in the future. Eventually mahakalwould decide. Dr. S.K.
Chatterjee, Hindi aur Janapadiya Bhashayein, Madhukar, 1944, pp. 113
115.
33
Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, Cambridge, 1990,
pp. 5962. This evidence is cited to support the argument of Anderson about
proto-national cohesion. Quote pg 59.
34
Haugen argued that the Irish language movement had not had great success
because of the tremendous importance of English as a language of
international contact. In the case of the New Norwegian movement the
influence of Danish had been difficult to shake off because of the pre-
eminence it had achieved over four centuries during the union between
Norway and Denmark. Progress had only been possible because Danish
was not such a great international language. Einar Haugen, Dialect,

74 Rohit Wanchoo
Language, Nation, American Anthropologist, New series, Vol 68, No. 4,

August 1966 pp. 922935. spl pg 928. Although the Finns had an unwritten
vernacular and the Israelis an unspoken standard both were able to develop
a modern and substantial language as a result of conscious effort. Therefore
languages could be created and developed in modern times. Ibid, pg 929.
35
Rahul Sankrityayan, Matrabhashaon Ka Prashna, Madhukar, 1944,
pp. 2430. Quote pg 25.
36
Ibid., Quote pg 26.
37
Ibid., Sankrityayan argued that the textbooks for the use of students in
the regional dialects could be produced easily because there was no dearth
of talent in the dialects. Sumitranandan Pant, Ilachandra and Hemchandra
Joshi were speakers of eastern Pahari; Banarsidas Chaturvedi, Harishankar
Sharma, Kishorilal Goswami spoke Braj; Maithili Sharan Gupt spoke
Bundeli; Nirala, Devidutt Shukla spoke Kausali or eastern Awadhi;
Jagannath Prasad Mishra and Amaranth Jha spoke Maithili; Chandrabali
Pandey, Ayodhya Singh Upadhyayay spoke Kashika or Benaresi and
Udaynarain Tiwari and Shivpujan Sahay spoke Mallika or Bhojpuri.
Therefore the preparation of texts would not take very long to prepare.
Talent and market forces were both supportive of education in the mother-
tongue. pp. 2627.
38
Terry Martin, Modernization or neo-traditionalism? Ascribed nationality
and Soviet primordialism, in Sheila Fitzpatrick (ed.), Stalinism: New
Directions, Routledge, London and New York, 2000, pp. 348367. Also
see Ronald Grigor Suny, 'Constructing Primordialism: Old Histories for
New Nations, The Journal of Modern History, Vol 73, No 4, December
2001, pp. 862896.
38A
The Turks were promoting secular nationalism but not socialism as in
Soviet Central Asia. There was a less accommodating conception of
Turkishness which particularly hurt the interests of the Kurds. But
modernization was also buttressed by pseudo-scientific theories. Ilker
Ayturk, Turkish Linguists against the West: The Origins of Linguistic
Nationalism in Atatrks Turkey, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 40, No. 6
(Nov., 2004), pp. 125. Amateur linguists, most of them members of the
Turkish Language Institute, concocted a theory that asserted that civilization
first emerged in Turkery and after it declined because of drought and climate
change the Turks started to emigrate in all directions, transmitting their
Neolithic civilization to other peoples of the world. Naturally, it was
assumed, the ancient form of the Turkish that these conquering emigrants
spoke was also carried with them and contributed to every primitive language

Imagining Hindi 75
the most important concepts necessary for abstract thought as loanwords.
Hence, the Sun-Language Theory had provided a pseudo-scientific
explanation for a presumed linguistic transplantation and complemented
the equally half-backed Turkish History Thesis. Although this theory gained
state support in 1936 it had emerged earlier in 1922. Quote pp. 1617.
39
In fact Amar Nath Jha argued that after Persian was replaced in 1837 by
the provincial languages in the law courts, the Muslims as the former rulers
could not reconcile themselves to the position of equality to which all
languages were reduced. While Muslims of Bengal, Madras and Bombay
were free to contribute to the languages of their province this was opposed
in Bihar, UP and Punjab. There was violent opposition to the cause of
Hindi among the Muslims. Ahmad (ed.) National Language, 1941, pp 184-
200. Quotes pg 186.
39A
A scholar has concluded that alphabet reform appears as a site where
the demands of the population for opportunities to learn to read and write
converged with the interests of a modernist state. Alphabet change becomes,
at least in part, the states response to social needs and demands, rather than
a topdown reform instituted against the wishes of the pupulation. Cited
in Hale Yilmaz, Learning to Read (Again): The Social Experiences of
Turkeys 1928 Alphabet Reform, International Journal of Middle East
Studies, Vol. 43, 2011, pp. 677697. Quote pg 686. The new Turkish alphabet
had to be accepted in the fields of education, law, government and
publications within two years at most. In practice the Ottoman script
persisted for many years afterwards. Yilmaz argues, Individual reactions
to reforms, and in particular the alphabet transition, had much to do with
cultural and habitual change at a very personal level and did not necessarily
fit the categories of ideologically oriented resistance or opposition. The
transformation to the new alphabet was more gradual and the government
policy toward noncompliance more accommodating than has often been
assumed in the literature. Ibid. Quote pg 694. Many Hindi scholars who
cited the changes brought about by Turkish linguistic nationalism
understimated the enormous difficulties involved in the process of transition.
40
Adeeb Khalid, Backwardness and the Quest for Civilization: Early Soviet
Central Asia in Comparative Perspective, Slavic Review, Vol. 65, No. 2,
summer 2006, pp. 231251.
41
Sampurnanand, Janapada Aandolan Ki Dharaein, Madhukar, 1944, pp.
116118. Sampurnanand considered the proposal of Chaturvedi as
misleading and unreasonable. There was a pointless argument being made
about dictatorship and Arajakvad or anarchy. In any case the autonomy of
the different parts of the body could not be used as a pretext for dismembering

76 Rohit Wanchoo
the body. Avyavon ki swatantra ke shrutimadhur naam par prani ka

angchhed to nahin kiya jaa sakta. Ibid., Quote pg 116.
42
William Gould, Congress Radicals and Hindu Militancy: Sampurnanand
and Purushottam Das Tandon in the Politics of the United Provinces, 1930
1947, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 36, No. 3, July 2002, pp. 619655.
43
Sampurnanand, Janpada Aandolan Ki Dharaein, Madhukar, 1944, pp.
116118.
44
Madhukar, 1944. Pandit Rahul Sankrityayan argued that after primary
school the students who were getting educated in their dialects should study
Hindi for two to three hours a week. Although he thought there might be no
opposition to making Hindi a compulsory second language in the thirty
Janapadas he had identified (broadly based on the list prepared by Grierson),
since this policy affected the entire country in Bengal, Andhra, Dravid and
Kerala regions people might have an objection to making Hindi a compulsory
second language. Therefore, he argued, whether to make it compulsory or
not ought to be left to the Janapadas to decide on their own. Hindi would
become more popular with time, but students should have the freedom to
appear for examinations in their mother-tongue. Clearly this was not the
idea of the modular nation-state that was spreading after the French
Revolution, although it owed a lot to the Russian revolution. Article
by Rahul Sankrityayan, Matrabhashaon Ka Prashna, pp. 2430 and 28
29. Quote pg 29.
44A
Chaturvedi and more importantly Sankrityayan were willing to
use the regional dialects to promote literacy; the Turks changed their alphabet
partly for this reason. The expansion of literacy was a genuine goal of the
proponents of alphabet reform. A related argument for reform had to do
with the unsuitablity of the existing alphabet for printing presses,
necessitating... more than 400 pieces of type, according to Yilmaz. A
more functional and simpler alphabet would make printing more convenient
and less expensive, thus contributing to increased literacy and readership.
After intense propaganda, led by Kemal Ataturk and his party, the Turkish
Parliament passed the Alphabet Law on 1st November, 1928. Hale Yilmaz,
Learning to Read (Again): the Social Experiences of Turkeys 1928
Alphabet Reform, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 43,
2011, pp. 677697. Quote pg 679. As a result of the literacy campaign the
level of literacy rose from 8.16 per cent in 1927 to 20.4 per cent in 1935
and 32.2 per cent in 1945. Ibid pg 681.
45
Madhukar, 1944. Jagdish Chaturvedi observed, Education has a big role
to play in the rejuvenation of the nation. The welfare of the people is

Imagining Hindi 77
paramount and we must work for it even if it hurts our sentiments. Today
the leaders of the nation are even willing to give up the unity of the country
for freedom. If by abandoning our commitment to the unity of Hindi we are
able to facilitate the spread of education among the masses we should do
so. Article entitled Janpada Aandolan by Jagdish Prasad Chaturvedi, pp.
1516 Quote pg 16.
46
See Orlando Figes, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia,
Penguin Books, London, 2003, chapters 4 & 5; also see E.J. Hobsbawm,
Nations and Nationalism since 1780, Cambridge, 1990.
47
Letter from Vasudev Sharan, Provincial Museum, Lucknow to Chaturvediji
dated 11th January, 1941. Madhukar 1944, pp. 5253. In this letter he
outlined a five-year programme in order to better understand the life of the
country and its people. The impact of Orientalist scholarship is apparent in
the open admiration for the masterly Bihar Peasant Life produced by
Grierson. He wanted that there should be eight committees to study the
Bundeli language and the collection of dhatu-path; the geographical features
and local rivers of the region; the local names for the different animal and
plants ; the record of local products as carried out by Watts' Dictionary of
Economic Products; the folk songs and proverbs of Bundelkhand; the
anthropological study of the customs and practices of the people of the
region including the aboriginal people; the local culture and civilization;
and finally, the study of the geological and agricultural conditions in order
to facilitate material prosperity.
48
Letter from Vasudev Sharan, Provincial Museum, Lucknow, to
Chaturvediji dated 25th July, 1940. Published in Madhukar, 1944. pp. 51
52. He admired the masterly dictionaries produced by Turner and Grierson
for Nepali and Kashmiri respectively and felt deeply upset by the fact that
there was no such work for Braj and Awadhi. This was galling because the
literary treasures in these languages were bound to result in more voluminous
works.
49
Letter from Vasudev Sharan, Lucknow, to Chaturvediji dated Vaishakh
Purnima 2000. Madhukar, 1944, pp. 5456.
49A
Urdu, based on the reformed Muslim schools and tireless printing presses
of colonial India, even influenced Afghan modernism. After the decline
of Persian in India from the mid-1800s, and before the Afghan governmental
investment in teaching and printing in Pashto from the 1930s, Nile Green
states, the emergence of a trans-regional Urdusphere connected Muslim
intellectuals as far apart as Kabul and Madras, not to mention readers in
such maritime Urdu outposts as Durban, Istanbul, and Cairo. Nile Green,

78 Rohit Wanchoo
The Trans-Border Traffic of Afghan Modernism: Afghanistan and the Indian

Urdusphere, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 53, No. 3,
2011, pp. 479508, quotes pp. 485-486. The influence of Urdu in the
subcontinent, although substantial, had to cope with challenges.
50
In a postscript dated 18th May, 1943 in the letter to Chaturvediji the
author argued that although the domain of Hindi was one and indivisible
the work in this field would be based on samarajya, swarajya, vairajya,
dvairrajya and bhaujya and would continue to be so influenced. Letter
from Vasudev Sharan, Lucknow, to Chaturvediji, pg 56. Madhukar, 1944.
51
Letter from Vasudev Sharan to Chaturvediji dated 8th June, 1943,
Aggarwal was absolutely clear that there should be no link between the
Janapada programme and the movement for the creation of separate
provinces. Letter to Chaturvediji dated 11th June, 1943. Madhukar, 1944.
pp. 5758.
52
Letter from Vasudev Sharan to Chaturvediji from Kalsi dated 18th
November, 1943. He said the brighter aspects of urban life and the natural
sense of belonging and fellow-feeling of the rural people were admirable.
The villages also had preserved a part of the earlier culture of India. These
two aspects of urban and janapada life should be valued and synthesized.
This was the combination of the tea available in the towns and the meva
in the Janapadas that Satyendraji had recommended. Madhukar 1944,
pp. 6566.
53
Vasudev Sharan to Chaturvediji dated 22nd November, 1943. This letter
was written after Chaturvedi had resigned from the Janapada committee set
up after the Haridwar session. Madhukar, 1944, pg 67.
54
Vasudev Sharan to Chaturvediji, dated 24 November, 1943, Madhukar,
1944, pp. 6869.
55
Vasudev Sharan to Chaturvediji dated 10 March, 1944, Madhukar, 1944,
pp. 7172.
56
Before embarking on a study of Indian history and culture Aggarwal
believed it was necessary to study and collectively memorize the sixty-
three mantras of the Prithvi Sukta. The fact that he regarded this as a pre-
requisite for national programmes indicates his Hindu beliefs and
sensibilities. Religious sentiments were not excluded from national
programmes as the secularists would have insisted. Even the essay on Hindi
begins with a reference to the Prithvi Sukta of the Atharva Veda. V.S.
Aggarwal, Hindi Sahitya Ka Samagra Roop, Madhukar, 1944, pp. 109
112.

Imagining Hindi 79
57
Vasudev Sharan to Devendra Satyarthi, Lahore, dated 22nd August, 1943,
Madhukar, 1944, pp. 7375. Aggarwal felt that the literary men had to be
taught how to come close to nature like the prithviputras of earlier times.
58
Vasudev Sharan to Dr. Siddheshwar Varma, Kashmir, dated 24th October,
1943. Madhukar, 1944, pp. 7577. The attitude was one of learning from
others and rediscovering the lost treasures buried in the Janapadas. The
ideal path of development was without any religious or linguistic chauvinism.
Yet there was undoubted inspiration from Hindu religious traditions and
indubitable love for Hindi language and literature.
59
Suniti Chatterjee, Chalu Hindi, in Rithambhara, Allahabad, 1958
edition, pp. 2438.
60
In the essay on national language Chatterjee had argued that one had to
consider the following four points: differences in grammar, pride in the
regional dialect, the difficulty in coping with Hindi and the existence of a
substantial literature in the dialect. Only Maithili had all four points in its
favour and could be considered as a separate language. In the case of Magahi
there was the absence of pride in the language and a substantial literature in
the dialect. Nor did Chatterjee think there was a case for decentralization or
'vikendriyakaran' in the case of Bhojpuri although Rahul Sankrityayan had
tried to contribute to the growth of the language. There was a definite lack
of a substantial literature in Bhojpuri although the other three conditions
were met. Rashtrabhasha Ka Prashna, Rithambhara, 1958, pp. 7983.
61
Pattabhi Sitaramayya, the Andhra Congressman, wrote, The employment
of the past participle and gerundial infinitive used adjectivally is very
common in Telugu while it is almost absent in Hindi-Hindustani. The
two bugbears to us in the South in respect of Hindi or Hindustani are the
use of the letter ne with the subject and the distinction of gender for words.
When we people of the South however have to learn Hindi or Hindustani
we must be exempt from the tyranny of ne as well as of gender. It would
also be of advantage to abbreviate expression by using freely the gerund
and gerundial infinitive in an adjectival sense. Ahmad, National Language,
1941, pp. 250257 Quotes pp. 251252.
62
Dhirendra Varma argued that the problem was that even Hindi speakers
were being asked to accept changes in their language to be acceptable to
non-native speakers. But there was some confusion about the role of Hindi
as a literary and administrative language and one that was to serve as a link
language or lingua franca. D. Varma in Ahmad, National Language,
Allahabad, 1941 pp. 258276, spl pp. 269271. Quote pg 270. The spread
of English was essentially because it allowed different people in the world

80 Rohit Wanchoo
to use it in different ways. The emphasis on Queens English did not prevent
the dissemination of English in different forms with different grammatical
mistakes and multiple pronunciations. The Scots, Welsh and Irish did not
speak English in the same way as people in southern England. Therefore
the toleration of multiple accents and many variants did a lot to make English
a national and an international language.
63
The modification of grammar was unlikely to have a benign impact
according to Kaushalyayan. See, A. Kaushalyayan (ed.), Rashtrabhasha
Ki Samasyaen, Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Prayag, Allahabad 1986, pp.
117. Quote pg 9. Although the Bata shoe company may modify its shoes
to suit different foot sizes, no one would modify his foot to fit a shoe produced
by that company, he wrote caustically.
64
Kaushalyayan used a proverb in Hindi which says that it is the poor
man's wife who becomes the sister-in law of all and sundry, i.e. the poor
have no choice in dealing with others. Ibid pg 9.
65
Humayun Kabir asserted that the difference in the vocabulary of East
and West Bengal, based on the greater preponderance of Muslims and Hindus
in the two regions, did not lead to the creation of two distinct Bengali
languages. He observed, The difference in script has led to division in the
case of Hindustani, while the unity of script has saved Bengali from a similar
fate. Humayun Kabir in Ahmad, National Language, Allahabad, 1941,
pp. 277296. Quote pg 287.
66
Francis Robinson, Separatism among Indian Muslims: The Politics of
the United Provinces Muslims, 18601923, Cambridge 1974. Also see
Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere 19201940: Language and
Literature in the Age of Nationalism, New Delhi, Oxford 2002. Orsini has
argued that the success of constitutional politics after 1937 buttressed the
normative view of Hindi and steadily reduced the influence of critical voices
and popular culture in Hindi. Therefore, Hindi failed to become the unifying
language that could produce a more popular and inclusive understanding
of the public. Francesca Orsini, What Did they Mean by Public?
Language, Literature and the Politics of Nationalism, Economic and
Political Weekly, Vol. 34, No. 7, Feb. 1319, 1999, pp. 409416. Quote pg
415.
67
See Harish Trivedi in Pollock, Literary Cultures, 2003 and Amarnath
Jha in Ahmad, National Language, 1941.
68
A. Barannikov, Modern Literary Hindi, Bulletin of the School of Oriental
Studies, University of London, Vol 8, No. 2/3, 1936, pp. 373390.

Imagining Hindi 81
69
Ibid, pg 382 and pg 376.
70
Ibid, pp. 389390.
71
This has been partially questioned by McGregor. See R.S. McGregor, A
Hindi Writers View of Social, Political and Language Issues of His Time:
Attitudes of Harishchandra, of Banaras (18501885), Modern Asian Studies,
Vol. 25, No. 1 (Feb., 1991), pp. 91100. McGregor has also argued, The
pre-19th-century prose texts which have been preserved in Braj Bhasa, Khari
Boli, and Rajasthani dialects have a collective importance for our subject
as antecedents of the Sanskritized style of standard Hindi, based on Khari
Boli, which emerged in the 19th century. R. S. McGregor, The Rise of
Standard Hindi and Early Hindi Prose Fiction, Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 3/4 (Oct., 1967), pp. 114132.
Quote pg 114. McGregor observes that Devanagari during the 19th century
was able to subsume the potentialities of all the dialects of the Hindi
language area as vehicles for literary expression. Ibid, Quote pg 131. Padma
Singh Sharma writes that Bharatendu Harishchandra in Aggrawalon Ki
Uttapatti stated that the Aggarwals spoke Khari Boli, i.e., Urdu. This showed
that he did not think there was any difference between spoken Hindi and
Urdu and that he used Khari Boli as a synonym for Hindustani. Padma
Singh Sharma, Hindi, Urdu aur Hindustani, Allahabad, 1931 pp. 3235,
Quote pg 33.
72
Dr. Tarachand argued that there were scholars who were trying to curb
the growing divide between Hindi and Urdu but they were not very
successful. Against the Sanskritization of Hindi Balkrishna Bhat, Pandit
Giridhar Sharma and Ayodhya Singh Upadhyay had spoken out; Syed Ali
Bilgrami, Maulvi Wahidud Din Salim and Maulvi Abdul Haq had tried to
curb the zealous Arabicists. Ahmad, National Language, 1941 pp 131
157. Quote pg 144.
73.
Dr. Tara Chand, Influence of Islam on Indian Culture, The Indian Press,
Allahabad, 1946.
74
Dr. Tarachand therefore argued that the difference between Urdu and
Hindi as regards loan words was not so great. He observed, So far as
compounds and derivatives are concerned, the methods of combination and
the use of vocables (affixes) in forming derivatives are to a considerable
extent common. Ahmad, National Language, 1941. Quote pg 148.
75
Abdul Haq also lamented the fact that so-called Hindustani was only
useful for conversational and ordinary business needs. No organized and
united attempt has been made to make Hindustani an adequate vehicle for
expressing literary and scientific ideas. A dictionary, and a few newspapers

82 Rohit Wanchoo
and periodicals in Hindustani would go a long way in popularizing it. Ahmad,

National Language, 1941, pp. 8292. Quote pg 90.
76
Dr. Tara Chand, The Problem of a Common Language for India, The
Twentieth Century, Allahabad, 1944, pp. 251263. Quotes pg 261. Germans
developed new words from old words while the English borrowed from
other languages. Modern Hindi and Urdu are like English. He observed,
"Hindi writers eschew words containing sounds which are common to
Khariboli and Perso-Arabic, Urdu writers hesitate to use sounds which do
not occur in the Perso-Arabic phonetic system. Both forget that it is now
too late in the day to modify the sound structure of the dialect which is the
basis of both Hindi and Urdu. Quote pp. 256257.
77
Ibid, quote pg 257. Khari Boli has lost a number of Sanskrit vowels and
acquired new vowels. Tarachand argues, Its consonantal sounds too have
become different by losses and gains. A number of nasals and one of the
sibilants have disappeared: some rolled lateral and flapped sounds have
entered from non-Aryan Indian tongues, others like an uvular plosive and
fricatives have come from Perso-Arabic languages. It has developed certain
peculiarities of pronunciation: for example, it drops the ultimate short vowels
like a, i, u, it tends to break up compound consonants, and does not tolerate
them at the beginning of words: while Sanskrit words end mostly in vowels,
Khari Boli words end in consonants. Ibid pp. 255256.
78
Jawaharlal Nehru wrote that Basic Hindustani with a little effort from
the state... will spread with extreme rapidity all over the country and will
help in bringing about that national unity which we all desire. It will bring
Hindi and Urdu closer together and will also help in developing an all-
India linguistic unity. Ahmad, National Language, Allahabad, 1941, pp.
4574. Quote pg 64.
79
Muzaffar Alam, The Culture and Politics of Persian in Precolonial
Hindustan, in Sheldon Pollock (ed.), Literary Cultures in History:
Reconstructions from South Asia, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 131
198. Alam observes, Persian..... literary culture had a certain logical
connection with the Mughal political ideology. It helped generate and
legitimate the Mughal policy of creating out of heterogeneous social and
religious groups a class of allies. Like the emperor and his nobility in general,
this class also cherished universalist human values and visions. Quote pg
171. Alam cites Mirza Khan, an author of Aurangzebs time, who argued
that Sanskrit was a language of the gods. Observes Alam, No barbarian
(mleccha) would have been allowed to pollute it by choosing it as a symbol
and vehicle of his power. No mleccha could have used it to create the
world of his vision. Prakrit, by contrast, which was patal bani, the language

Imagining Hindi 83
of the underworld, of the snakes, the Mughals considered too low to

appropriate for lofty ideals. Braj, or Bhakha, the language of this world,
was only a regional dialect. Furthermore, Bhakha, in the Mughal view, was
suitable only for music and love poetry. Also Siraj al-Din Ali Khan Arzu
wrote in the 18th century that Hindvi had not evolved a uniform idiom in
northern India. Ibid, Quote pg 168.
80
Vasudha Dalmia, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu
Harishchandra and Nineteenth Century Banaras, OUP Delhi, 1997.
81
Amrit Rai has argued that Urdu broke away from Hindi during the 18th
century and that the British merely exploited an existing division. Amrit
Rai, A House Divided: The Origin and Development of Hindi/Hindavi,
Delhi: OUP 1984. Christopher King finds Rais argument convincing but
according to Trivedi attempts to deflect Rai's main thrust by arguing that
about a century after Urdu had caused the divide, Hindi reacted by causing
the other side of the divide as if a divide did not have two sides to begin
with. Trivedi in Pollock (ed.) Literary Cultures, pg 970. See also review
by Peggy Mohan, A Language Divided A House Divided: The Origin
and Development of Hindi/Hindavi by Amrit Rai, Economic and Political
Weekly, Vol. 20, No. 44 (Nov. 2, 1985), pp. 18671868. Peggy Mohan points
out that Rai criticized deliberate Persianization after the decline of the
Mughal Empire when Muslim power was replaced by emphasis on Muslim
identity; but he also opposed deliberate Sanskritization which robbed
Hindi of its natural genius. She argues that Rais book might have reached
its natural audience better if it had been written in Hindi or Urdu since it
constitutes a protest against the decline in the vitality of Hindi/Hindavi.
82
G.A. Grierson, Hints to Oriental Students: No 1. Some Useful Hindi
Books, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland,
New Series Vol 19, No 1, (January, 1887), pp. 138144. Spl pp. 140141.
The difference between Hindi and Urdu was also highlighted with reference
to Kahani Theth Hindi Mein. The text had hardly any Persian words and
the vocabulary was that of Prakrit, but the construction of sentences was in
the Urdu style. The verbs in Hindi come at the end but in this text they often
came in the middle. Although the vocabulary was pure Hindi the text was
regarded by scholars at that time as Urdu rather than Hindi. Ibid pg 142.
83
T. Grahame Bailey, Judge H.T. Colebrookes Supposed Translation of
the Gospels into Hindi, 1806, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great
Britain and Ireland, No 3, July 1936, pp. 491499. Spl pg 492.
84
Ibid, Spl pg 498.

84 Rohit Wanchoo
85
Ram Vilas Sharma, Bhasha aur Samaj, Peoples Publishing House, New
Delhi, 1961. Chapter12, Jatiya Bhashaon Ka Vikas aur Urdu, pp. 291
325. Spl pg 303.
86
Dr. Tarachand noted that the Hindustani that developed in the Deccan
was dominated by tadbhava vocabulary and had a sprinkling of Persian
and Arabic words. The borrowed elements were well digested. As the Mughal
emperors had patronized Braj it was only after their power waned that Urdu
emerged. In a passage that does not differ from the assessment offered by
Ram Vilas Sharma the historian comments, The practitioners of Hindustani
at Delhi were men whose ears were familiar with Persian sounds and whose
tongues were habituated to utter them. The phonetics of the Deccani
Hindustani were a strain upon them. To utter the cerebrals, plosives and
palatal affricatives, or the alveolar flapped or rolled consonants was a task
too difficult for their tongues. They naturally started a purification of the
language which robbed it of a considerable part of its inheritance. Thus
Hindustani was transformed into Urdu. Tara Chand, The Problem of a
Common Language for India, The Twentieth Century, Allahabad, 1944,
pp. 251263. Quote pp. 258259.
87
Ram Vilas Sharma, Bhasha aur Samaj, Peoples Publishing House, New
Delhi, 1961. Chapter12, Jatiya Bhashaon Ka Vikas aur Urdu, pp. 291
325. Spl pg 313. Sharma argued that the central question was whether the
words employed by poets such as Sur, Tulsi, Jayasi and the treasure trove
of words embedded in the Bolis of the Janapadas would be incorporated by
Urdu or not. If it accepted them it would attract the majority of Hindustani
people and by linking up with the older literary traditions it would be able
to represent the unity of the Hindustani jati and promote its cultural
development. Quote pg 313.
88
Padma Singh Sharma disagrees with this view since the East India
Company in 1803 appointed scholars under the supervision of John Gilchrist
to prepare a common language sarvasadharana ki bhasha which
would neither be too Sanskritic nor too Persianized. pg 30. He wrote that
Raja Shivprasad Sitare-Hind blamed the Maulvis and the Pandits and not
Grierson for creating two grammars instead of creating one for a common
language. But he was convinced about the superiority of the Hindi script.
He cites the author of Tamaddune-Hind, Shamsul-ulema Janab Maulvi
Sayyad Ali Sahab Bilgrami, to prove how Arya bhasha was easier to learn
than Semitic bhasha. Without knowledge of Arabic grammar and vocabulary
it was not possible to read texts in that language. This was not true of
Devanagari. In fact he cites Justice Sharfuddin of the Calcutta High Court
who said that Indian Muslims should even publish the Quran Sharif in

Imagining Hindi 85
Devanagari. Prof Badrinath Verma believed that the slow progress of

education among Muslim pupils was because of the difficulty of learning
the Urdu script. The number of educated Muslims was greater in those
regions like Sindh, Gujarat and Bengal where they used Arya alphabets or
Arya akshara. This indicates that some advocates of Hindustani, who thought
they were non-communal scholars, were convinced that the Devanagari
script was better than the Urdu script. Pandit Padma Singh Sharma, Hindi,
Urdu aur Hindustani, Hindustani Academy, Allahabad, U.P., 1932, pp .70
83.
89
Yusuf Ali wrote, "Who shall say that what Kabir, Tulsidas, Malik
Mohammed and Nazir had accomplished in the past no product of the
blended civilization of Britain, Islam and India will be able to achieve in
the future?" A. Yusuf Ali, L.L.M., a lecturer in Hindustani and Hindi, made
these remarks towards the end of his lecture at the School of Oriental Studies
in London. Yusuf Ali, The Importance of Hindustani, Bulletin of the School
of Oriental Studies, University of London, Vol. 1, No. I, 1917, pp. 109
111.
90
Ali referred to the need for education in the vernaculars, citing Lord
Chelmsford, but he specifically referred to the need for national education
and character-building in Upper India based on the use of Urdu. Yusuf Ali,
The Importance of Hindustani, Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies,
University of London, Vol. 1, No. I, 1917, pp. 109111.
91
Pandit Padma Singh Sharma, Hindi, Urdu aur Hindustani, Hindustani
Academy, Allahabad, U.P., 1932 spl section Bhinnta ke Karan, pp. 40
50. The author says that the similies and metaphors were also drawn from
Persia. The birds referred to were bulbuls, the flowers nargis, the heroes
were called Rustam, the just Nowsherwan Adil and the generous Hatimtai.
But the division between Urdu and Hindi was noticed even earlier in 1854,
by the French scholar Garcien de Tassy, based on religion observes the
author citing the Urdu of October, 1923.
92
Raja Shivprasad wrote that textbooks were created for Muslims and
Kayasths on the one hand and Brahmins and Banias on the other by the
Pandits and Maulvis. Maulana Abdul Haq observed that Urdu was a khalis
hindi zabaan and directly related to the Aryan rather than the Semitic
language family. P.S. Sharma, Hindi, Urdu aur Hindustani, Allahabad, 1931,
pp. 5063. Quotes pp. 52 and 53. For the statistics see pp. 5556. The
author of Wazzeh Istallahat wrote that it was wrong to oppose words from
Hindi on the ground that they were uncouth and unworthy. However, it is
unclear whether the author of Wazzeh Istallahat would agree with the
subsequent paragraph where Sharma argued that words from Sanskrit instead

86 Rohit Wanchoo
of Arabic and Persian should be adopted to bring Urdu and Hindi closer to
each other and indeed to other Indian languages like Bangla and Marathi as
well. Jis bhasha aur jis reeti se Hindi mein paribhasaon ka nirman hua hai,
vahi reeti Urdu mein bhi grahya honi chahiye. Quote pg 63. Ibid pp. 6263.
93
Grahame Bailey, Linguistic Survey of India Vol IX, Part I: Western Hindi
and Punjabi by George Grierson, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of
Great Britain and Ireland, 1918 July, pp. 605614. The author argued that
he had discovered about eight to ten years ago that Punjabi was a tone
language like Chinese. Northern Punjabi and Lahnda have four tones
level, high falling, low rising and low rising plus high falling. About 75 per
cent of the words have the level tone. Not many words have the double
tone. Ibid, pg 614.
94
L.D. Barnett, Some Notes on Hindi Poetry in the Panjab, Bulletin of
the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol 20,
No1/3, Essays in Honour of Sir Ralph Turner, 1957, pp. 7375.
95
Speech by Chairman Hindi Sahitya Sammelan G.R. Vaishampayan
delivered at 30th Abohar Session cited in A. Kaushalyayan (ed.),
Rashtrabhasha Ki Samasyaen, Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Prayag, Allahabad
1986, pp. 2934. He praised the work of Swami Keshavanand who had
created the Sahitya Sadan and popularized Hindi in Punjab. Even Amarnath
Kak of Kashmir was using Sanskrit-nishta Hindi at this conference. Ibid
pg 34.
96
Dr. Siddheshwar observed that V.S. Aggarwal was the first person to
emphasize the study of the Janapada Bolis but the study of non-Hindi
languages would also have to be taken up. The Deshaj words in Hindi would
have to be included in the dictionaries like in English. Letter to Dr. V.S.
Aggarwal by Dr. Siddheshwar Varma, Kud Dwara, Jammu, dated 22nd
September, 1943, Hindi Jagat Ki Pratham Aavshayakta: Boliyon Ka
Anusandhan, Madhukar, 1944, pp. 8990.
97
Lajpat Rai, The Story of My Life, in The Collected Works of Lala Lajpat
Rai, Vol 5, B.R. Nanda, (ed.) New Delhi: Manohar, 2004, pg 332 cited in
Bob van der Linden, Moral Languages from Colonial Punjab: The Singh
Sabha, Arya Samaj and Ahmadiyas, Manohar: New Delhi 2008, Chapter 4,
pp. 142179, Quote pg 144.
98
Bob van der Linden, Moral Languages from Colonial Punjab: The Singh
Sabha, Arya Samaj and Ahmadiyas, Manohar: New Delhi, 2008, Chapter
2, pp. 6798, Spl pp. 7683. Publication of books in Hindi in Punjab was
more popular than publications of Hindi newspapers. However, many
newspapers were merely advertising sheets. In 1911, 80 were published

Imagining Hindi 87
in Hindi, 450 in Punjabi and 600 in Urdu. In 1903 while there were 31
newspapers in English, 164 in Urdu there were only 6 in Hindi and 7 in
Punjabi. pg 80.
99
Farina Mir, The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British
Colonial Punjab, Permanent Black, New Delhi 2010, Chapter 1, pp. 27
61. Spl pp. 5861. Quote pg 61. Of the 413 periodicals published in Punjab
between 1880 and 1901, 82% were in Urdu. Publication of books in Urdu
was far greater than in Punjabi and Hindi during the late 19th century. Ibid
pp. 3334.
100
Ibid, Chapter 2, pp. 6290. Spl pp. 6470, Quote pg 69.
101
For the complex ways in which religious symbols and institutions were
used to create social distinctions and instruments of control see David
Gilmartin, Empire and Islam, OUP Delhi, 1989. For the competing basis of
identity formation in Punjab based on religion and language see Ayesha
Jalal, Self and Sovereignty, OUP Delhi, 2001.
102
Mir argues, We are compelled to read Punjabi's failure to serve as a
ground for a religiously plural linguistic identity in postcolonial India or as
a linguistic identity of any political impact in Pakistan as an absence of its
affective power. This is erroneous, as the history of the Punjabi literary
formation during the colonial period shows, because affective ties to
language and state-centric politics need not be linked. Mir, The Social
Space of Language, 2010, Conclusion, pp.183194. Quote pp. 185186.
103
The attitude towards language was shaped by communal controversies
generated by the fear of conversions, the struggle for jobs and political
representation in elected bodies. Linden reports how the Punjabi Hindus
and Sikhs were attracted to the Arya Samaj in the late 19th century. The
Brahmo Samaj with its more tolerant attitude gave little comfort to Hindus
surrounded by proselytizing traditions and fearful of Christian conversions.
They found the Arya Samaj more acceptable because of its quest for both
female education and the propagation of Hindi. Bob van der Linden, Moral
Languages from Colonial Punjab: The Singh Sabha, Arya Samaj and
Ahmadiyas, Manohar: New Delhi, 2008, Chapter 2, pp. 6798, pp. 8392
Spl pg 88.
104
Sheldon Pollock, India in the Vernacular Millennium: Literary Culture
and Polity, 1000-1500, Daedalus, 127, 3. 1998, pp. 134.
105
Robert Darnton, Book Production in British India, 18501900, Book
History, Vol 5, 2002. pp. 239262.

88 Rohit Wanchoo
106
For a discussion of the non-derivative character of Bengali prose and
literary production before the mid 19th century see Hans Herder, The
Modern Babu and the Metropolis, in Stuart Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia
(eds.), Indias Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century, Permanent
Black Delhi 2004. And Anindita Ghosh, An Uncertain Coming of the
Book: Early Print Cultures in Colonial India, Book History, Vol 6, 2003,
pp. 2355.
107
Sardar Madhav Rao Vinayak Kibay, Rai Bahadur, Indore, Madhukar,
1944, pp. 4748. He felt that at least those dialects of Hindi which did not
have any substantial written literature ought to accept the main form of the
language or mukhya bhasha. Those that were better developed could be
part of the Hindi language family or antargat bhasha. Despite many accents
of people from different backgrounds in Britain the literary and written
form of the language was the same for everyone. Unless there was deliberate
fostering of the dialects this would also be true for Hindi.
108
Chandradhar Sharma Guleri wrote that Hindu poets would use the dialects
for Hindu characters and Khari Boli for the Muslim ones. Padma Singh
Sharma, Hindi, Urdu aur Hindustani, Allahabad, 1932, pp. 3435.
109
A. Kaushalyayan (ed.), Rashtrabhasha Ki Samasyaen, Hindi Sahitya
Sammelan, Prayag, Allahabad 1986. G.R. Vaishampayan, Address to the
30th Abohar Session, pp. 2934. Spl pg 34.
110
Kanhaiyalal Maniklal Munshi argued that after English was adopted as
the medium of instruction the natural process by which Persian words were
absorbed into Indian languages came to an end. He cited the statistics put
together by Vyankatesh Narayan Tiwari about the decline in the popularity
of Persianised Hindi, i.e., Urdu between the 1890s and 1930s in terms of
books, newspaper readership and students enrolled in vernacular schools.
K.M. Munshis address to the Thirty Second Jaipur Session, Kaushalyayan
(ed.), Rashtrabhasha, 1986, pp. 6169. Spl pg 64. He proposed that a more
Sanskritized Hindi be adopted by Hindus for inter-provincial communication
and Muslims in different parts of India learn Urdu for the same purpose.
Only after the two communities had learnt to live with each other and
overcome separatism would a synthesis between Hindi and Urdu become
possible. This sanshleshan could come only in the second phase after both
Hindus and Muslims had developed Hindi and Urdu as languages of inter-
provincial communication for the two communities in the first phase. Ibid
pp. 6869.
111
Interview of Sheikh Abdullah, Bhasha ka Prashna, in Hindi Sahitya
Sammelan, Prayag Special Session (Visheshadhiveshan), Prayag, 1975,

Imagining Hindi 89
pp. 177179. This smarika was edited by Prabhat Shastri and Dr. Ratnakar
Pandey based on speeches and messages by delegates at Prayag on 6th, 7th
and 8th December, 1974.
112
While the sensitivity towards language of the ruling elite was greater in
post-1947 India compared to the medieval period, Urdu did decline because
of a variety of factors. See Mushirul Hasan, Legacy of A Divided Nation:
Indias Muslims Since Independence, Delhi, OUP, 1997. However, both
market forces and anti-Urdu sentiment played a role in the decline of
Urdu. The real dispute is about the relative importance of these two broad
factors. Aijaz Ahmad has argued that the number of Hindustani speakers
which was 50 per cent more than those who spoke Urdu in 1951 and
three times more than Urdu in the rural areas had virtually disappeared
by 1961. The communal identification of Urdu actually became greater
fourteen years after partition than immediately after. In India 62% Muslims
and in Pakistan 93% of the population did not identify much with Urdu
four years after partition. Ahmad, In the Mirrors of Urdu: Recompositions
of Nation and Community, 194765, in Ahmad, Lineages of the Present:
Political Essays, Tulika, Delhi, 1996, pp. 191220. Also cited in Papiya
Ghosh, Writing Ganga-Jamni: In the 1940s and After, Social Scientist,
Vol. 34, No. 11/12 (Nov. Dec., 2006), Spl. pp. i xx. pg ii. And footnote
4, pg xiv.
113
Note by Shankar Dayal Singh in Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, Prayag Special
Session (Visheshadhiveshan), Prayag, 1975, pp. 2123.
113A
In the post-independence period Hindu nationalists frequently expressed
admiration for the Israelis just as they had in the pre-independence period
admired the Turks. However, they underestimated the uniqueness of the
Jewish predicament which had created the conditions for the revival of
Hebrew. According to Nahir, The shift from Yiddish to Hebrew during the
Revival period may thus be regarded as having resulted from an aggregate
of small, individual and seemingly insignificant micro-language planning
(MLP) activities, the language planning goal being that of language revival
(see Nahir 1977a, 1984). As I have shown here, these activities were carried
out mostly by school teachers and principals, but also by various other
activists parents, school superintendents, local leaders etc. allMLP
agents, operating in MLP cells. Seen in this light, it may even be possible
to discern in their activities a pattern comprising Haugens four language
planning processes (1966, 1983). Many individuals in the settlements,
the MLP agents, made decisions, or SELECTIONS, involving a shift to
Hebrew; and they either participated in or used the results of other agents
activities that led toward the CODIFICATION of Hebrew. They then worked

90 Rohit Wanchoo
toward their implementation, and finally elaboration. Nahir concludes,

the case of the Hebrew Revival shows that it is not impossible for a
community to shift from one language into another; yet it will take a long
chain of highly unlikely, probably unfortunate historical twists before such
a sociolinguistic experiment can again be successfully accomplished.
Moshe Nahir, Micro Language Planning and the Revival of Hebrew: A
Schematic Framework, Language in Society, Vol. 27, No. 3, Sept 1998,
pp. 335357. Quotes pg 352353.
113B
In a letter to Walter Benjamin in 1937, cited by Erturk, the literary figure
Erich Auerbach, who taught at Istanbul University from 1936 to 1947,
observed, No one under 25 can any longer understand any sort of religious,
literary, or philosophical text more than ten years old and ... the specific
properties of the language are rapidly decaying. This does not mean,
however, that the Republican construction of nationalized pure Turkish
subjects was an unqualified success. We might say that the Republican
attempt to reconstitute an ontology of immediacy and self-presence, through
the reform of writing, produced a kind of spectral reality what Derrida,
in another context, has called hauntology. Nergis Erturk, Phonocentrism
and Literary Modernity in Turkey, Boundary 2, summer 2010, pp. 155
185 Quote pg 181. While in India the dialects declined or failed to develop
as languages after independence no one can argue that this constituted a
case of amnesia of the ruling elite. The intellectual and political elite in
India were not even promoting Sanskritized Hindi as the sole expression of
Indian nationalism. Erturk bemoans the fact that an immensely
heterogeneous, active cultural idiom was uprooted from its particularity,
converted to dictionary form, and lexicalized in abstract equivalence for
the Arabic or Persian language element (itself part of that active cultural
idiom). To take just one example of the heterogeneity of actually existing
language at the time, in all its linguistic confusion, the Tarama Dergisi
listed twenty-two possible Turkish substitutes for the Arabic loanword hikye
(story), and seventy-seven for hediye (gift). Ibid., quote pg 176. If we
consider the rise of Sanskritized Hindi in the post independence period this
might appear similar, but the relationship of Hindi with the dialects and
with Urdu reminds us of the dissimilarities.
114
Amar Nath Jha wrote, While it is no longer the ambition of any Indian
that he will achieve eminence as a writer of English, yet our debt to it is
incalculable in its contribution to the development of our sense of
nationhood. Further, "In the use, or misuse, of English all Indians are at an
equal advantage or disadvantage. No Madrasi need be in danger of being
ridiculed by the natives of Delhi and Lucknow; no Bengali need fear his
ignorance of the gender. Ahmad, National Language, 1941, pp. 184200,

Imagining Hindi 91
Quotes pg 199 and 200.

115
Even in the late 19th century Grierson observed that educated Hindus in
Hindustan spoke Hindi with lots of English words. They used English words
like the French did when they used words like jockey and a shake-hands.
G.A. Grierson, Hints to Oriental Students: No 1. Some Useful Hindi Books,
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, New
Series Vol. 19, No. 1, (January, 1887), pg 141.
116
Anoop Chandra Chandola, Some Linguistic Influences of English on
Hindi, Anthropological Linguistics, Vol. 5, No. 2, Feb 1963 pp. 913.
Chandola deals with the pattern of Anglicized Hindi or AH, an issue taken
up by Grierson briefly in his article published in 1887. The educated use a
new style of Hindustani with numerous loan words from English. Unlike
the impact of Persian and Arabic which led to the rise of Urdu this new
Hindustani does not have a name. This Anglicized Hindi has some loan
words that have been absorbed and naturalized. These Chandola has called
AL and the loan words that are found only in the speech of the educated
and are only superficially absorbed are designated SL. Hindi without SL is
pure Hindi. The SL come through Hindi English or HE which is one of
several varieties of Indian English spoken in the country. Thousands of
English words are being absorbed by Hindi in an effort to make it a language
suitable for education and administration. Chandola observed, The practical
importance of AH is very great, especially as a medium of higher instruction.
College students from non-Hindi areas can speak or understand AH more
easily than any other style of Hindi. A policy of retaining English terms
could ease the burden of students throughout India and save the time, money
and energy which are being spent in translating English terms into the 14
constitutional languages of India. This policy allows an easy switch-over
from English to Hindi or from Hindi to English and permits an easy access
to that knowledge which is expressed through English in the world. AH can
be a compromise between lovers of Hindi and English on the one hand and
lovers of any other regional language of India on the other. Quote pg 13.
117
Robin Jeffrey, Advertising and Indian-Language Newspapers: How
Capitalism Supports (Certain) Cultures and (Some), States, 19471996,
Pacific Affairs, Vol. 70, Number 1, Spring 1997, pp. 5784.
118
Kathryn Hansen, Renus Regionalism: Language and Form, The Journal
of Asian Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2, Feb 1981, pp. 273294. Hansen argues
that Renu's language can be considered similar to the bazaar Hindustani
used by the unschooled masses of north India identified by S.K. Chatterjee
as Basic Hindi. Ibid., pg 278.

92 Rohit Wanchoo
119
Seema Alvi, Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of an Indo-Muslim
Medical Tradition, 16001900, Permanent Black, Delhi and Palgrave,
Macmillan, London, 2007.
120
Michael S. Dodson, Translating Science, Translating Empire: The Power
of Language in Colonial North India, Comparative Studies in Society and
History, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Oct., 2005), pp. 809835. In the 1840s Felix
Boutros of Delhi College had tried to translate western scientific terms into
Urdu. He sanctioned the inclusion of Greek prefixes such as mono, di,
proto, hypo, or peri, in the composition of compound Urdu words,
though he gave no examples of how this might be affected. pg 821. Later,
on this basis, James Ballantyne outlined a comprehensive chemical
nomenclature in Sanskrit. He favoured the use of words like gandhaka and
loha for sulfur and iron which had appeared in the Amarakosa, a revered
text. Terms such as suvarna for gold and amgara for carbon were also
well known. Otherwise, writes Dodson, the nomenclature created anew
was entirely descriptive, and self-interpreting. For example, hydrogen
was rendered jalakara, the maker of water; nitrogen became jivantaka,
that which puts an end to life; while chlorine was translated as harita,
greenish-coloured. Reflecting the evolving nature of his endeavour,
Ballantyne had originally translated oxygen as amlakara, one which
forms an acid, but later changed this to pranaprada, that which gives
breath, lest the former term preserve the exploded theory that there is no
generator of acids besides oxygen. Ibid pg 829. Dodson explains,
"Ballantyne noted the similarity of terminations such as -ic, -ate and
-ous in Latin and Greek to those in Sanskrit (-ika, -ayita and -ya) was
sufficient to provide the basic model. Sulphuric acid, therefore, became
gandhakikamla (where amla denotes acid), while sulfate was rendered
as gandhakayita. Moreover, the use of the Sanskrit suffix ja, indicative of
the use of the verbal root jan to be born, in an upapada tatpurusa
compound, resulted in the coining of such terms as pranapradaja, that
which is born from oxygen, or an oxide. While Ballantynes translational
scheme was relatively straight forward, it could also produce rather lengthy
compounds that, in effect, served to express the process by which a material
was produced rather than simply the material itself. Ibid. pg 829.
121
Krishnanand Gupt, Hindi Mein Vaigyanik Shabdon Ki Rachna,
Madhukar, 1st April, 1942, pp. 1217.
122
A substantial number of Hindi textbooks were published under the
auspices of Benares College during the 1850s which incorporated highly
Sanskritized vocabularies, including Hindi versions of Ballantynes A
Synopsis of Science. Several of the Pandits employed at Benares College

Imagining Hindi 93
also published vernacular textbooks on Ballantynes model. Bapu Deva

Sastri, Veni Samkara Vyasa and Mathura Prasad Misra translated scientific
texts into Hindi. Dodson writes, The highly Sanskritized vocabulary utilized
in all of these texts was further consolidated by the publication of a series
of Hindi dictionaries prepared by pandits employed in Benares College
during the 1860s, including the 1865 EnglishUrduHindi dictionary of
Mathura Prasad Misra, and a 1870 Hindi translation of H.H. Wilson's
Sanskrit dictionary by Ram Jasan. Dodson, 2005, Spl pp. 823832, Quote
pg 830.
123
Krishnanand Gupt, Hindi Mein Vaigyanik Shabdon Ki Rachna,
Madhukar, 1st April, 1942, pp. 1217. Gupt argued that words like hydrogen
could be translated as udjan and oxygen as oshjan. It was better to use
words like lauh for iron instead of the easier term loha because it would be
better to develop words for items made from iron or things which produce
iron as lauh-nirmit and lauh-dayak. As a lover of science who wanted to
produce books on science that young students could easily understand Gupt
wanted to use words in common use. Yet, he felt it was more appropriate to
use the word gurutvakarshan instead of the more easily available word
khichav for the earth's gravity. While the word bhap for vapour was quite
viable the term for vapourisation would be difficult to create; therefore it
was preferable to use the terms vashp and vashpikaran. For chemical terms
there was a clear need to develop a terminology that was precise because in
any language people who read such specialized works were expected to
have a basic familiarity with the scientific terms.
123A
The Turks were trying to purify their language while the pragmatic Dr.
Tarachand favoured a synthesis represented by Hindustani. The Turkish
language was to be purified by eliminating 1,400 Arabic and Persian words.
As a nationwide survey could not come up with suitable equivalents 130,000
words from ordinary and past usage were accepted. In place of 7,000
Arabic and Persian loan words a dictionary produced in 1934 suggested
30,000 pure Turkish words. The purist attitude which reached its apogee
during 193335 became less strident during 193536. This was reflected in
the Pocket Dictionary produced in September 1935. Ataturk himself began
using the Arabic millet instead of the pure Turkish ulus for nation in his
speeches after 1935. While there was a preference for new terms re-invented
from Turikish roots, by means of Turkish word formation, increasingly
Arabic terms were being replaced by European ones, especially French,
and being directly applied when a Turkish equivalent did not exist. Yilmaz
Colak, Language Policy and Official Ideology in Early Republican Turkey,
Middle Eastern Studies, Vo. 40, No. 6, Nov 2004, pp. 6791. Quote pg 84.
Some of the foreign words that were accepted were benzin, makina

94 Rohit Wanchoo
(machine), fizik (physics), psikoloji (pscyhology), kimya (chemistry),

telefon (telephone), elektrik (electricity), radyo (radio), gazete (gazette,
newspaper), kongre (congress), parti (party), demokrasi (democracy), and
so on. Ibid quote pg 91.
124
Dr. Tara Chand, The Problem of a Common Language for India, The
Twentieth Century, Allahabad 1944, pp. 251263. Quotes pp. 262 and 263.
This article was based on the address to the Journalists' Association at
Allahabad. For the third category Tarachand felt it would be possible to
borrow from Sanskrit, Arabic and the tadbhava elements in the kindred
languages. As far as subjects like history and biography were concerned
the resources of Hindustani should be supplemented by borrowings from
Indian classics and modern languages. For the fifth and final category of
creative literature there were to be no regulations or prescriptions. Once
communal passions subsided the writers would find the various ways of
expressing themselves and reaching out to the people. Ibid.
125
Michael S. Dodson, Translating Science, Translating Empire: The Power
of Language in Colonial North India, Comparative Studies in Society and
History, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Oct., 2005), pp. 809835. Spl pp. 832835. Quote
pg 834.
126
Webb Keane, Public Speaking: On Indonesian as the Language of the
Nation, Public Culture 15(3), 2003: 503530. Quotes pg 504.
127
Argues Webb Keane, In the egalitarian aspirations of early Indonesian
nationalists and many speakers today as well, the move into Indonesian is
meant to avoid the overt display of status differences. In practice, this means
a language supposedly abstractable from interactive contexts and the cultural
presuppositions they invoke. Such abstraction denies the indexical,
performative, and poetic dimensions of language in favour of reference and
semantics an emphasis that seems to be endemic to ideologies of the
public. Keane, Public Speaking: On Indonesian as the Language of the
Nation, Public Culture 15(3) 2003: 503530. Quote pg 519.
127A
See Yilmaz Colak, Language Policy and Official Ideology in Early
Republican Turkey, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 40, No. 6, Nov 2004, pp.
6791, Turkish language reform was based on ideas of modernism and
secularism and not just nationalism. Advocates of Hindi who admired Ataturk
for weeding out Arabic and Persian words from Turkish did not highlight
this aspect of Kemalism. Mustafa Kemal declared, So long as Turkish was
written from right to left, it could never properly express the ideals of
European civilization. The pictureseque involutions and intricacies of Arabic
script afforded a psychological background to the Oriental mentality which

Imagining Hindi 95
stood as the real enemy of the Republic. Quote pg 73.

128
Jerzy Smolicz and Illuminado Nical, Exporting the European Idea of a
National Language: Some Educational Implications of the Use of English
and Indigenous Languages in the Philipines, International Review of
Education, Vol 43, Nos 5/6, Tradition, Modernity and Postmodernity in
Comparative Education, 1997, pp. 507526. Spl pp. 511512.
129
Ibid., Spl pp. 512514. Although the number of people who can speak
Tagalog has risen steadily after the Philippines became independent in 1946,
rising to 77% by 1980 from 25.4 % in 1937, it has remained the first language
of a minority. In the Indian case Hindi is neither as commonly understood
as Filipino is throughout the country nor is it the first language of as small
a minority of people in India as Tagalog is in the Philippines. If we include
watching Hindi movies as the standard for knowing Hindi then of course
the situation might be even better than that in the Philippines.
130
Shripad Damodar Satvalekar observed in his address to the 35th session
of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan at Bombay that Hindustani was the product
of a political sin or rajkiya paap. The promotion of Urdu and Hindi would
have led to the revival and assertion of Muslim and Hindu culture and pride
respectively and this would not have been in British interest. Therefore
they promoted Hindustani which has remained a language used by cooks
or bawarchis. After British rule had come to an end there was no need to
use the paapjanya sankarjanya Hindustani the language which was the
product of sin and distortion. After the creation of Pakistan as a separate
nation for the Muslims and the acceptance of Urdu as the language of
Pakistan it was only proper that pure Hindi be accepted by Indian leaders.
After the failure to achieve HinduMuslim unity based on the acceptance
of Hindustani after partition and swaraj what was the need to go
begging for words from other languages? Apart from obstinacy hath
and duragraha what could be the reason for the support for Hindustani?
Kaushalyayan (ed.), Rashtrabhasha Ki Samasyaein, 1986, pp. 110139.
Spl pp. 112117. Rhetorically he asked that if Hindu Muslim unity was to
be achieved on the basis of a language taking words equally from Hindi
and Urdu would the need to come to an agreement with the Christians result
in the acceptance of one-third each from Hindi, Urdu and English? Ibid
pp. 115116.
131
Duncan Forrester, The Madras Anti-Hindi Agitation, 1965: Political
Protest and Effects on Language Policy in India, Pacific Affairs, Vol 39,
No 1/2, spring- summer 1966, pp. 1936.
132
For a somewhat less enthusiastic support for the very idea of a national

96 Rohit Wanchoo
language of India and the suitability of Hindi for such a role see P. Seshadri,
The Problem of a Common Language for India, The Twentieth Century,
1944, pp. 463471. The author asserted that the question of "a lingua franca
should wait for an exhibition of literary superiority by Hindustani". Seshadri
argued, The bulk of the people in the non-Hindustani speaking provinces
will hardly have any occasion to use the language in conversation and much
less in writing, like many of our England-returned men in India compelled
to go through a course in Latin or French in their University days. English
already serves as the medium for inter-provincial communication. The
average citizen of a distant province in India has hardly any occasion to use
Hindustani, observed Seshadri. The humorous remark that you can travel
through the whole of India if you know three Hindustani words, jaldi, asthe
and khabardar has a considerable measure of truth in it. Quote pg 470.
133
Sushil Srivastava, The Farce That is Hindi, Economic and Political
Weekly, Vol. 35, No. 43/44 (Oct. 21 Nov. 3, 2000), pp. 38983899.
Srivastava calls Hindi "the Sanskritized version of the English language".
Pg 3899.
134
Swami Bhawanidayal Sannyasi of Ajmer did not favour the idea of
education, administrative work, and publication of newspapers in various
dialects of Hindi. He was not convinced that it would be beneficial to develop
even languages like Rajasthani, Bundelkhandi, Awadhi or Bhojpuri. He
asserted that the difference between Marwari and Mewari was similar to
that between Magadhi and Awadhi. Hiralal Shastri, a well-known leader,
discovered that songs composed in the dialect of the southern tracts of Jaipur
state were not understood in the Shekhawati region of the northern and
Hindon region of the eastern part of the Jaipur state. Under such
circumstances a Rajasthani language was not viable. If the Rajasthani
language was constructed on the basis of incorporating words from the
different dialects in proportion to the numbers of speakers of the dialects
there would be hardly anyone who would understand that artificial and
concocted language. Sannyasi was trying to use the example of Hindustani
which was regarded as a language based on the acceptance of 50 per cent
words from both Hindi and Urdu. The reason why he endorsed the idea of
Vikendriyakaran was because he thought there were those who wanted to
use the power of the central government to impose Urdu or Hindustani on
the people of the regions. If Bihar and United Provinces were left free to
formulate their own policies they would not allow the small number of
Urdu speakers to dictate language policy. Men like Sir Tej Bhahadur Sapru
who wanted to make Urdu the national language could only be thwarted by
accepting decentralization. Swami Bhawani Dayal Sannyasi, Ajmer,
Janpada Andolan ka Vastavik Swaroop, Madhukar, 1944, pp. 120121.

Imagining Hindi 97
135
In the opinion of Dr. Dhirendra Verma, M.A., D.Litt. there had developed
a fashion for accepting the Soviet Union as an ideal. Soon after the Soviet
Union announced official recognition of the sixteen languages of the
republics of the USSR a demand for similar rights for the languages of the
sixteen Janapadas of the Hindi-speaking region was made. This revealed
the complete absence of any reflection about the past, present and future of
the region and the attitude itself was a consequence of 800 years of political
slavery. Verma conceded that the literary standard of Sumitra Nandan Pant
would have been higher if he had written in his mother tongue instead of
Hindi. It would be equally true to state that if a future Pant were to write in
Kumaoni instead of Hindi the reach of such an author would shrink from
ten crores to ten lakhs. The creation of a single literary language for the
whole Hindi-speaking zone made sense because it gave access to a wider
readership and a greater literary field for writers from all the dialects.
Dhirendra Verma, Hindi Vibhag, Vishwavidyalaya, Prayag, Madhya-desh
Ki Sahityik Bhasha, Madhukar, 1944, pp. 122129. Spl pp. 127128.
136
Although the nationalist-minded were aware of the dangers posed by
encouragement of the dialects and the Sankrityayan proposals they could
not have had more than a glimmering of what was actually happening in
the Soviet Union during the 1940s. For the effects of Soviet nationality
policies see Yuri Slezkine, The USSR as a Communal Apartment, Or How
a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism, in Sheila Fitzpatrick (ed.),
Stalinism: New Directions, London & New York, 2000, pp. 313347. On
the other hand some found what they knew about the Soviets quite
acceptable. See Rao Bahadur Sardar Madhavrao Vinayak Kibay, Janpadiya
Karyakram, Madhukar, 1944 pp. 130131. Kibay felt that looking at the
Soviet experience the awakening based on the Aggarwal and Sankrityayan
proposals would be beneficial Soviet Rus ka anubhav dhyan mein liya
to yeh jagriti kalyankar hi hai. The fundamental unity of India would not be
undermined by these proposals.
137
S.L. Doshi and D.S. Purohit, Social Aspects of Language: Rajasthan's
Multilingual Situation, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 3, No 38,
September 21, 1968, pp. 1441 and 14431444. On the basis of a survey in
Udaipur of students and parents the authors conclude that the speakers of
the dialects feel inferior if they have to use their mother-tongue for official
purposes and prefer to get education in Hindi or English. This natural and
logical development, based on the use of 60 per cent Hindi words in the
Rajasthani dialects, leads the authors to the conclusion that this process
should be accepted and encouraged. The dialects are not being suppressed;
people find it more convenient to shift to Hindi for communication between
different dialect groups.

98 Rohit Wanchoo
138
Shri Durgashankar Durgavat, Sthanapan Mantri, Rajasthan Hindi Sahitya
Sammelan, Udaipur, Madhukar, 1944 pp. 158159. Durgavat felt that
Rahulji's endorsement of dialects based on the Russian example was an
extreme proposal. It would be harmful to both Hindi and India. Those who
were aware of the differences between Hindi and Urdu should realize the
dangers of promoting the different dialects of Hindi. In Jaipur alone there
were fourteen dialects and a Rajasthani language would be difficult to create.
The development of language on the basis of popular support was also
difficult because of the influence of many princely states in Rajasthan.
139
As the divide grew during the late colonial period secular nationalists
tried to promote Hindustani. Narayan Sadashiv Bapat observed that it was
important to expose both Hindu and Muslim communalism which both
Mahatma Gandhi and the radical M.N. Roy had failed to do. He noted, We
must not condemn only one communalism to fondle another communalism.
The ideals of Pakistan and Pan-Islamism surpass in impossibility and
foolishness the ideals of Hindu-Pad-Padshahi or Hindu Raj. HinduMuslim
unity would have to be achieved by cooperation based on common self-
interest of the two communities. Chapter IV, Section 2, The Future of the
Communalist Movements, pp. 8790. Quotes pg 89. Bapat declared, We
want neither Sanskrit-Nishta Hindi nor Urdu to be ever our national
language. We can please neither the Hindu fanatics nor the Muslim fanatics.
We can only condemn and pity them.... Not to accept Hindustani is to accept
either some provincial, alien, Sanskrit Nistha Hindi or Urdu as our national
language which is an undemocratic, uncivilized and a barbarous action.
He believed that the charge that Hindustani has no literature was fallacious.
He observed, In fact, Hindustani has literature and if the fact is otherwise,
Hindustani shall have literature. N.S. Bapat, A National Challenge to the
Communalists Nationalism versus Communalism: An Essay on Hindu
Muslim Unity, Third edition, Poona, August 1943 (first edition 1938),
Chapter III, Section 4, Controversy Concerning the National Language of
India, pp. 6979. Quotes pp. 7678.
140
Chandrabali Pandey gave a rather convoluted argument to justify his
opposition to the idea of promoting the Bolis and dialects of Hindi. He
pointed out that even the mother did not use her own language or mother-
tongue after she got married. Thereafter, she uses the language of her husband
and his family. The mother is bilingual. Therefore those who were attached
to the idea of mother-tongue should also give importance to the idea of
pitrabhasha or the language of the husband or father. He was essentially
trying to justify giving due importance to the national language and not just
the mother-tongue as far as the Bolis in the Hindi-speaking world were
concerned. Languages are not simply inherited, they are acquired after some

Imagining Hindi 99
effort. Besides, children easily pick up languages spoken in their homes

and neighbourhood so Hindi could be easily acquired by those who might
have a dialect of Hindi as a mother-tongue. As he observed crisply,
"Janambhasha se nikal kar Karmabhasha mein dhasna he hoga. Anyone
who did not regard Hindi as a karmabhasha in this perilous period
pralayankari yug was being fooled to the top of his bent Brahma
dwara thaga gaya hai. In any case there was no need for the Hindi Sahitya
Sammelan to support movements for placing other languages in competition
with Hindi. This would only weaken Aryavarta. Chandrabali Pandey, Lanka,
Benares, Matrabhasha ki Uljhan, Madhukar, 1944, pp. 148149.
141
Sripad Damodar Satvalekar argued that in the non-Hindi-speaking
provinces people had come to believe that Hindustani was the national
language. They had even come to believe that only when there was an
admixture of Hindi and Urdu that the language could be called Hindustani.
He did not advocate the elimination of English, Urdu or Persian and Arabic
words that had been accepted by Hindi but a ban on the entry of new words
from these languages. Satvalekar emphasized the need for certain rules for
the absorption of new words into Hindi. He argued that if there were words
which featured in eight or more dictionaries of the fourteen or sixteen
regional languages of India then they were to be accepted in the national
language. In the dictionary of the national language the word should be
entered with the names of the languages in which that word was used. If a
word occurred in less than five regional languages then that word was not
to be included in the dictionary of the national language. Those foreign
words that were in use in more than half of the regional languages were to
be accepted; otherwise they were to be rejected. The creation of a dictionary
for the national language based on these rules would help in determining
the nature of the national language. Satvalekar in Kaushalyayan,
Rashtrabhasha Ki Samasyaein, 1986, pp. 121123.
142
Rakshat Puri, Dakshini Asia Ki Hindustani', in Muhammad Hasan (ed.),
Hindustani Boli, Ghalib Academy, New Delhi 1993, pp. 1721. Puri argued
that spoken words used in films, plays and advertisements would be able to
gain admittance in the literary form of languages in South Asia. Words
from Hindustani would be able to enter languages of South Asia and words
from these languages into Hindustani. With its flexible grammar and
openness to words from other languages Hindustani would be able to develop
as a lingua franca in the subcontinent.
143
Muhammad Hasan, Kaumi Ekta aur Tehzibi Milap mein Hindustani
Zaban, in M. Hasan (ed.), Hindustani Boli, Ghalib Academy, New Delhi,
1993, pp. 916. Professor Muhammad Hasan, the Director of the Hindustani

100 Rohit Wanchoo
Project of the Ghalib Academy, put together essays presented on the fiftieth
anniversary of the founding of the Hindustani Prachar Sabha by Gandhiji
in Mumbai in 1942. He advocated the adoption of the tadbhav instead of
tatsam words and the open-hearted acceptance of words without concern
for purity and pollution. Hasan also spoke of the relevance of theth
Hindustani adab and sahitya. Quote pg 14.
144
Bhalachandra Nemade, Rashtriya Ekta aur Rashtrabhasha Ki Samasya,
in M. Hasan, (ed.), Hindustani Boli, Ghalib Academy, New Delhi 1993,
pp. 4553.
145
Ibid, Spl pp. 5053.
146
Krishna Kumar, Hindi ki Giraftari, in K. Kumar, School Ki Hindi:
Shiksha aur Sanskriti Vishayak Nibandh Chayan, Rajkamal Prakashan, New
Delhi, 2001, pp. 6671.
147
Alok Rai, Hindi Nationalism, Orient Longman, Delhi, 2000. Although a
more vibrant language may be eminently desirable the problem of Hindi as
a language is not only about representing Muslims, Dalits and women in
literature and the media. The problem of medium of education and the
development of a peoples language suitable for science, law and
administration is not addressed by Rai. Vasudha Dalmia also blames Hindi
belt savarnas and their nationalism for the creation of Sanskritized Hindi.
The only way forward is for the English and Hindi elites to collaborate
with each other. Review by Vasudha Dalmia, The Locations of Hindi: Hindi
Nationalism by Alok Rai, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 38, No. 14
(Apr. 511, 2003), pp. 13771384.
148
N.C. Zamindar has argued from 1942 to 1947, Hindi literature was tossed
from leftist progressivism to nationalism and from nationalism to bitter
HinduMuslim revivals. There were terrible tensions but very few works
reflect them. He has also argued that the conflict between the views of the
Marxists and the nationalists, particularly because of the role of the Indian
communists during the Quit India movement, was not reflected in literary
works. N.C. Zamindar, The Modern Hindi Literary Scene, Books Abroad,
Vol. 39, No. 4 (Autumn, 1965), pp. 414415. The discussion in Madhukar,
however, shows that contemporary literary men did spend considerable time
in responding to the views of Rahul Sankrityayan although many found
them unacceptable.
149
Vyohar Rajendra Singh argued that economic and political factors were
destroying the isolation and independent existence of the Janapadas and
the country was being transformed by the power of nationalism. The scheme
for thirty languages based on thirty Janapadas with their thirty capitals was

Imagining Hindi 101
destined to remain a scheme confined purely to the literary field. It was

necessary to have more than just a sammilit bhasha that Rahulji spoke of. It
was undesirable to develop Bolis into languages as rivals and competitors
of Hindi. The difference between the various Bolis of Hindi could not be
compared with the different languages in Russia. The development of the
Bolis would create a permanent division between them and Hindi. This
would weaken Hindi and its claims to being the national language of India.
He was in favour of developing the Bolis and preserving their literature but
unlike Sankrityayan he did not want them to be used in local parliaments
and the courts, schools and universities of the Hindi-speaking region. Vyohar
Rajendra Singh, M.L.A., Sathiya Kua, Jabalpur, Vikendriyakaran,
Janapadiya Karyakram aur Matrabhashayein, Madhukar, 1944, pp. 150
151.
150
Avanindra Kumar Vidyalankar argued that in every country there were
tendencies favouring or opposing decentralization. There was a need to
maintain a balance between centrifugal and centripetal forces though it was
difficult to determine what the proper balance ought to be. He wanted India
to be like Britain and America, countries which were the product of many
races and languages. In order to get the support of the USA even Russia had
to sacrifice the Third international. He regarded this sacrifice as significant
because the Soviets had presented the world with a new ideal. If India wanted
to live like a free nation then it had to become one nation with a strong
centre. Vidyalankar, New Delhi, Kya Peechay Lautein? Madhukar, 1944,
pp. 131138, Spl pg 133. In India there was much sentiment in favour of
decentralization and not centralization. The transformation of dialects into
literary languages would be harmful to the country. Even the Soviet Union
was able to stand tall in the world on the basis of its strong centralized
government. The question before us was whether we wanted to go forward
or return to the path taken by our ancestors. Ibid pp. 134135.
151
In a letter to several literary figures and journalists Chaturvedi clarified
his position on the Janapada programme. He mailed the three crucial essays-
Janapdiya Karyakrama, Vikendriyakaran and Matrabhashaon Ka Prashna-
to help others understand his position on the issues mentioned therein. He
stated that V.S. Aggarwals programme was entirely apolitical and concerned
only with literary issues. Rahul Sankrityayan's programme was clearly
political and he was inspired by the Soviet Union where in fact there was
centralization of power. There was one party dominance, even one-man
rule. As far as he was concerned he favoured the encouragement of some
Bolis as languages but not all. He did not favour the development of readers
for education in Braj but was in favour of letting Rajasthani and Maithili
experiment along these lines. There was no reason to accept the viewpoint

102 Rohit Wanchoo
of the foreign rulers who believed that the development of Bolis as languages
would lead to the demand for new provinces. The development of Hindi
would be aided if it allowed its Bolis to develop. These Bolis were not its
rivals, but its mother or sisters. See Letter dated 19th July, 1944 by
Banarsidas Chaturvedi, Tikamgarh, Janpadiya Karyakram-Meri Sthithi,
Madhukar, 1944, pp. 9193.
152
In his short note Janpada Kalyaneeyam Dr. Vasudev Sharan Aggarwal
argued that the edifice of Hindi could not be constructed on the ruins of the
Bolis of the Janapadas. All the languages and bolis were invited to contribute
to Hindi. Madhukar, 1944, pp. 107108. In the accompanying essay, Hindi
Sahitya Ka Samagra Roop, Aggarwal emphasized the idea of Janapada
Jan as mentioned by Mauryan emperor Ashoka who used the language of
the common people to reach out to them. Madhukar 1944, pp. 109112.
153
Kamal K. Sridhar, Language in Education: Minorities and
Multilingualism in India, International Review of Education, Vol. 42, No.
4, The Education of Minorities (1996), pp. 327347. Observes Sridhar,
Thus, language movements against Hindi illustrate the conflict on the
following levels: (a) as a language of national communication, it comes
into conflict with English, which is recognized as the associate official
language of the Union; (b) as a developed (inter-) regional language at the
state level it comes into conflict with Tamil, Bengali, etc.; (c) as a lingua
franca for its own dialects, it comes into conflict with Maithili, Bhojpuri,
etc.; (d) as an alternate literary variant it comes into conflict with Urdu; and
(e) as an interethnic link language, it comes into conflict with Santhali,
Khasi, etc. (Srivastava 1984b: 109). Several minority and tribal languages
are agitating at one or more of these levels currently, which adds another
dimension of complexity to an already complex situation. Quote pp. 343
344. Nevertheless, the Indian educational policies are considered fairly
supportive of linguistic rights of people since 75% of the population does
get education through the mother tongue. Comments Sridhar, This still
leaves out a huge block of linguistic minorities (of various types), whose
size nearly equals the entire population of the US. Given the large number
of Indian languages, and the fact that not all of them have scripts, and some
that have scripts lack any kind of literary tradition, how feasible and practical
is this population? Ibid pg 335. The bulk of the Universities however
retained English as the medium of education as late as the end of the 20th
century even in the Hindi belt, particularly in the science departments. Ibid.
pg 338.
154
Krishna Kumar, Dayra aur Dambh, in K. Kumar, School Ki Hindi:
Shiksha aur Sanskriti Vishayak Nibandh Chayan, New Delhi, 2001, pp.
8285.

Imagining Hindi 103
155
Professor Satyendra argued against the Janapada programme forcefully.
He found that Banarsidas Chaturvedi's programme had become more
concerned with the creation of a state of Bundelkhand rather than the revival
of local culture and folk traditions. Rahul Sankrityayan was primarily
concerned with weakening the influence of Gandhian ideas inspired as he
was by the Soviet Union. A change of leadership was the aim of his policy
recommendation. Satyendra felt that the effort to transform the Bolis into
distinct languages was bound to weaken the sense of unity among the Hindi-
speaking people. The claim of Hindi to be the national language was based
on the strength of its numbers. The emphasis on the Bolis would weaken
the claims of Hindi to become the national language. Besides Vasudev
Sharan's programme was idealistic and had a romantic view of the past.
The programme did not pay attention to the forces which shaped the modern
world and the fact that these Janapadas in the past had been involved in
conflict with each other on the flimsiest of reasons. See Shri Satyendra,
M.A., Poddar Inter College, Tawalgarh, Jaipur rajya, Janpadiya Andolan
Ka Doosra Paksh, Madhukar, 1944, pp. 94106.
156
In an article about Rabindranath Tagore and Hindi Banarsidas Chaturvedi
admitted that although he did not get an opportunity to learn Bengali he
had once written a letter to Gurudev in simple Bengali. He approvingly
quoted the observation of Tagore, Do not rest contented with the accidental
advantage of your numbers. Attract people by creating great creative
literature. He also admitted that he had failed to bring the shy Premchand
to visit Gurudev at Shantiniketan. In fact, Chaturvedi felt it was regrettable
that when the Congress government in Madras was sending opponents of
Hindi to jail north Indians had not opposed this policy. Only by ensuring
the comprehensive development of Hindi literature and by substantially
cooperating with the other Indian languages could Hindi become popular
and acceptable. Supporters of Hindi had to follow the path recommended
by Rabindranath Tagore. B. Chaturvedi, Gurudev aur Hindi, Madhukar,
16th November, 1941, pp. 2832.
157
Dhirendra Verma argued that if the Hindi belt was broken up into sixteen
political units based on the development of dialects, then the bigger provinces
like Bengal, Punjab and Maharashtra would be able to ride roughshod over
the representatives of these scattered and divided units in representative
bodies tash ke patton ki tarah anek prakar se kat aur fant kar tarah
tarah se nach nachate rahein to aascharya nahin. The people of the Hindi-
speaking region would become as helpless as the smaller states of Europe
and the Balkan states. This does indicate Vermas anxiety about the
Balkanization of the Hindi-speaking people. In any case the development
of the Janapadas would be easier and more effective through the medium of

104 Rohit Wanchoo
a universally accepted language like Hindi a sarva-sammat bhasha.

Dhirendra Verma, Madhya-desh Ki Sahityik Bhasha, Madhukar, 1944,
pp. 122129. Quotes pg 128. Although Verma had sound cultural and
political reasons for advocating unity among the Hindi-speaking people he
was not in favour of denying any dialect the right to create its own literary
language if it seriously wanted to do so. Invoking the language of the joint
family Verma said that the unity of the Hindi-speaking people was founded
on love and sacrifice and not self-interest and obstinacy. Ibid pg 129.
158
Aijaz Ahmad has remarked that Hindu and Muslim communalisms agreed
that Urdu is the language of Muslims and that there is a direct link between
Islam, Urdu and Pakistan. A. Ahmad, In the Mirror of Urdu:
Recompositions of Nation and Community, 194765, in Ahmad, Lineages
of the Present, Tulika, Delhi, 1996, pp. 191220, Quote pg 203. While in
the communal imagination such a connection was made most of the
advocates of Hindi we have discussed so far asserted that Urdu was not the
language of all the Muslims of India. It was not the language of Bengali
and Marathi Muslims. Some argued that in the Hindi-speaking zone the
rural Muslims typically spoke the dialects of Hindi rather than Hindi or
Urdu. Therefore the politics of language cannot be understood in terms of
the census figures of 1951 and 1961 in India as Ahmad has himself pointed
out. The fact that incidence of bilinguality was much higher among Urdu
speakers than any other language in India, including Hindi, on the other
hand shows that many Muslims regarded it as a language of culture or an
inter-provincial language of communication for Indian Muslims. Ibid quote
pg 217.
159
Brindavan Lal Verma, advocate and writer based in Jhansi, stated that he
had got a note from the Hindustani Academy which declared that the
language spoken in Lucknow and Delhi should be regarded as Hindustani.
Verma asked rhetorically : then what should we call the language spoken in
the villages? To create a vibrant language Hindi would have to turn to the
villages, the cultural life blood of India. If Urdu had to survive and strengthen
itself it could only do so by drawing on the words and proverbs from the
villages of India. He was opposed to the mulamma or artificiality or sugar
coating in Urdu, whether that sugar coating was done in Lucknow or Delhi.
He did not think too highly of what was broadcast by All India Radio at that
time. He recommended that the literature of the villages should be used as
a resource, but with a sense of judgement and discrimination vivek ke
sath upyog kiya javega. Verma was quite clear that reason or wisdom would
dictate the manner in which the collection of literature from the villages
would be utilized. B.L.Verma, Hamari Sanskriti ke Meru-Dand, Madhukar,
1944, pp. 138139.

Imagining Hindi 105
160
The programmes associated with Janapadas and the dialects were not in
the long-term interests of the country according to Vidyalankar. Without
industrialization we cannot combat poverty, illiteracy and unemployment.
Industrialization would lead to greater urbanization and the dialects of the
Janapadas would not be a suitable medium for education even for the workers
in the new towns. It was vital to choose that language which would be
useful to the people in the future. It would not be wise to use the dialects
instead of Hindi. Besides, as the elections to the municipalities had shown
caste and racial pride in India was greater than national sentiment. When
we are aware that even a nationalist party like the Congress drops a Brahmin
candidate in favour of a Jat in an electoral contest with a Jat candidate it did
not make sense to promote greater parochialism based on dialects and
identities of the Janapadas. Would it be sensible for us to reach out to Greater
India on the basis of the Bundeli, Bhojpuri or Bagheli languages and
cultures? Education in the dialects and emphasis on the villages would create
impediments in the path of India's development. It was also highly unlikely
that the Muslims would accept the dialects as their language instead of
Urdu. As long as they used religion as a basis for achieving political power
they were unlikely to abandon Urdu in favour of the dialects. Avanindra
Kumar Vidyalankar, New Delhi, Kya Peechay Lautein? Madhukar, 1944,
pp. 131138.
161
Ram Iqbal Singh Rakesh writing from Bhadai in Muzaffarpur district
of Bihar argued that there was a need to develop the dialects in order to
strengthen the position of Hindi. The words in our mother-tongues the
dialects were pointed and appropriate but in Hindi they were flat and
dull. Interestingly, he believed that the Hindi language was artificial because
it was influenced by foreign culture and by an unnaturally developed
educational system shaped by lawyers, professors and the well-to-do. Hindi
abandoned its links with the mother-tongues and hung on to the coat tails of
Urdu and English. This view represents one of the two positions for
revitalizing Hindi of accepting words from other languages or turning to
the dialects. In the opinion of Rakesh it was ludicrous to claim that the
encouragement of Bolis could undermine Hindi. R.I. Singh, Janpadiya
Kendriyakaran Ki Samasya, Madhukar, 1944, pp. 144147. He wanted
Hindi to profit from cooperating with the dialects apni sahodar bahinon-
matrabhashaon kay sahyog se bharpur labh utha sake. Ibid. Quote pg 147.
162
There were critics like Thakur Shrinath Singh who asserted that Vasudev
Sharans programme was the pipedream of an opium addict. Although he
liked Chaturvedis programme he did not think that it was possible to inspire
people by establishing thousands of centres. Inspiration had to emerge
spontaneously, not by pressure from outside like the explosive energy of

106 Rohit Wanchoo
a volcano prerna aur sfoorti to janta mein se svayam footni chahiye jaise
prithvi se jwalamukhi futthaa hai. Thakur Shrinath Singh, former editor of
Hal and Bal-Sakha, Prayag, Madhukar, 1944 pg 157.
163
Professor Lalita Prasad Sukul argued in a contribution to Vishal Bharat
that the expenditure of money and intellectual energy required to develop
the various dialects was bound to be very substantial and, in view of the
availability of Hindi, quite wasteful. L.P. Sukul, M.A., Calcutta, 'Hindi hi
Kyoon? Madhukar, 1944, pp. 139144. He was also upset by the fact that
Amarnath Jha almost implied that Hindi was being promoted as the national
language not on the basis of its utility and quality but as a favor or out of
pity for the language pakshpat aur daya. The charge that Hindi was
humiliating or obstructing the development of the Bolis or mother-tongues
was wrong and uncalled for. No dialect or language was dependent on literary
works for its existence as a spoken language: koi bhi boli apne jeevan ke
liye sahitya ki mohtaj nahin. The fear that without literary works the Bolis
would not achieve a stable and standardized form roop mein sthiratha
was mistaken because the basic characteristic of any language was
continuous change or nirantar parivartan. Ibid Quote pg 141. Although
Sukul was free to advocate the use of Hindi he was definitely underestimating
the consequences of the neglect of the dialects as literary languages. His
views indicate both preference for Hindi and denial of the crowding out
effect on the dialects.
164
Hans R. Dua, The National Language and the Ex-Colonial Language as
Rivals: The Case of India, International Political Science Review, Vol.14,
No. 3, The Emergent World Language System (Jul., 1993), pp 293-308.
Dua observes, The awakening of linguistic consciousness at the regional
level seems to be accompanied by the erosion of a national consensus for
Hindi. Ibid pg 295. Also, writes Dua Since the linguistic capital controlled
by the dominant social group is primarily constituted by control of the
ex-colonial language, the educational system not only supports the
preponderant choice of English by the socially dominating groups but also
sets the standards and tendencies which strengthen the use of English by
other groups for social and ideological reasons. Finally, the market
economy tends to develop into a single uniform market through competition
and the elevation of academic qualifications in terms of social power, status,
and mobility. The high academic qualifications associated with the mastery
and control of the ex-colonial language are rated superior to comparable
qualifications attained through the national or other Indian languages.
Moreover, higher academic qualifications associated with English seem to
be symbolically consecrated, in the words of Bourdieu, as they mark the
distinction of international and intellectual life. Ibid. pg 303.

Imagining Hindi 107
165
Even Chandrabali Pandey and Vyohar Rajendra Singh who opposed the
idea of developing the Bolis in ways that could undermine the position of
Hindi as a literary and national language were keen to support the movement
to incorporate the literature embedded in the dialects and vocabulary of the
villages. This was not just the pressure of public opinion or the desire to be
seen as democratic regardless of conviction. It also represented the triumph
of the idea of the village or gram and the dialect or the Boli associated with
it. The villages and the dialects were perceived as vital for the future of
Hindi and of Indian culture. This reveals the hegemonic power of both
nationalism and democracy in late colonial India. For the views of a
Bundelkhandi writer see Vrindavanlal Verma, Hamari Sanskriti Ke Aadhar,
Madhukar, 1 October, 1940, pg 2.

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NMML

Imagining Hindi: The politics of language

Nehru Memorial Museum and Library

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Nehru Memorial Museum and Library

Price Rs. 100/-; US $ 10

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The debate on Hindi, Urdu or Hindustani has been one of the

One is an older nationalist account, largely based on a Gandhian

*This paper is based on research done as a Fellow, NMML (200911).

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created and nurtured by its supporters. Since the HindiUrdu divide

NMML Occasional Paper

The debate during the 1930s was influenced by the awareness

The Nationalist View

NMML Occasional Paper

and not their indigenous or foreign origin. Although he thought that

The nationalists had different explanations about the reasons for

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been any real common ground.3 This seems to be too severe an

The difference between the Hindi and Urdu versions of an extract

The future of Hindustani was being debated during the 1940s

NMML Occasional Paper

'nation.7 In India the problem was that many regional languages

The distinguished linguist, Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, was not in

Chatterjee was not denying the valuable contribution that Arabic

NMML Occasional Paper

The acceptability of Hindi as the national language in India was

With the spread of education Indian Muslims would change their

Suniti Chatterjee believed in the idea of a single nation, not a

NMML Occasional Paper

The question of forging a national language of India was not just

Banarsi Das Chaturvedi was also one of the leading spokesmen

NMML Occasional Paper

and fauna, local scientific knowledge and produce of the different

The demand for decentralization or the Janapada movement had

Until such time as decentralization was accepted, the proposal

NMML Occasional Paper

The proposals were passed by the majority after two amendments

In the world of Hindi scholars many fears surfaced, based on

NMML Occasional Paper

misunderstanding. According to the scholar and socialist, Dr.

Decentralization and Local Literary Patriotism

In February 1934, B.D. Chaturvedi wrote in Vishal Bharat that

B.D. Chaturvedi espoused the cause of local literary patriotism

NMML Occasional Paper

It would appear that while the desirability of promoting regional

B.D. Chaturvedi started the journal Madhukar from Tikamgarh

As late as June 1941, Satyendra had accepted the idea of

NMML Occasional Paper

Braj-Bhasha University. Satyendra, the mentor of Jagdish Chaturvedi,

The support for local patriotism was espoused by Banarsidas

Therefore, B.D. Chaturvedi believed that if the histories of

The Janapada programme

NMML Occasional Paper

The Janapada programme was interpreted in diverse ways, but

If education was encouraged in the dialects he felt that it would

NMML Occasional Paper

In response to the principle of decentralization and the Aggarwal