|
The Hindi–Urdu controversy is an ongoing dispute—dating back to the 19th century—regarding the status of Hindi and Urdu as a single language, Hindustani, or as two dialects of a single language, and the establishment of a single standard language in certain areas of north and northwestern India. Although this debate was ''officially'' settled by a government order in 1950, declaring Hindi as the official language, some resistance remains. The present notion among Muslims about this dispute is that Hindus abandoned Urdu language, whereas some Hindus claim that Urdu was artificially created during Muslim rule. Hindi and Urdu are literary registers of the Khariboli dialect of the Hindi languages. A Persianized variant of Khariboli, known variously as Hindi, Hindustani, and Urdu, began to take shape during the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526 AD) and Mughal Empire (1526–1858 AD) in South Asia.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 A Historical Perspective of Urdu )〕 The British East India company replaced Persian with Urdu written in Urdu script as the official standard of Hindi-speaking Northern provinces of modern day India in addition to English. The last few decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the eruption of the Hindi–Urdu controversy in North-Western provinces and Oudh with "Hindi" and "Urdu" protagonists advocating the official use of Hindustani with the Devanagari script or with the Persian script, respectively. Hindi movements advocating the growth of and official status for Devanagari were established in Northern India. Babu Shiva Prasad and Madan Mohan Malaviya were notable early proponents of this movement. This, consequently, led to the development of Urdu movements defending Urdu's official status; Syed Ahmed Khan was one of its noted advocates. In 1900, the Government issued a decree granting symbolic equal status to both Hindi and Urdu, which was opposed by Muslims and received with jubilation by Hindus. Hindi and Urdu started to diverge linguistically, with Hindi drawing on Sanskrit as the primary source for formal and academic vocabulary, often with a conscious attempt to purge the language of Persian-derived equivalents. Deploring this Hindu-Muslim divide, Gandhi proposed re-merging the standards, using either Devanagari or Urdu script, under the traditional generic term Hindustani. Bolstered by the support received by Congress and various leaders involved in the Indian Independence Movement, Hindi in Devanagari script along with English replaced Urdu as the official language of India during the institution of the Indian constitution in 1950. == Background == The main cause of this divide may be attributed to the aspirations of both communities (Hindu and Muslim) to spread their cultural views, which became open contention during Indian independence. Muslims have mostly looked towards their Muslim Ummah for cultural inspiration whereas Hindus generally get inspiration from the ancient Vedic Culture and other ancient past. During the rule of Muslims in the subcontinent, whom almost always were of Turkic and Afghan origin, an amount of people who converted to Islam readily adopted aspects of the culture the Turko-Afghan conquerors and rulers brought with them. Persian at that time was considered a prestigious and important language in many parts of Islamic world like Central Asia, which they thus brought with them. The founders of Islamic rule in India were from different ethnic background viz. Turks, Mongols, Arabs, Afghans etc. and all of them used Persian as their lingua franca and court language. In general, from its earliest days foreign Muslim culture was imported and patronised in the subcontinent by Turks and Afghans, laying the firm basis that would eventually further developed under the Mughals.〔Sigfried J. de Laet. (''History of Humanity: From the seventh to the sixteenth century'' ) UNESCO, 1994. ISBN 9231028138 p 734〕 Hindus considered these things as an alien culture. With the passage of time things like Sanskrit language, Dhoti, Ayurveda etc. came to be associated with Hindus, and Arabic, Persian Language, Chaghatai, Turkish, Yunani Medicine with Muslims.〔The New Cambridge History of India, Volumes 3–5,page 180〕 There also came to be differences in the cuisine and culture of two communities. Urdu became the language of the courts of Muslim rulers who governed parts of the Indian subcontinent from the eighth century onwards. It developed from the Khariboli dialect of the Delhi area with an infusion of words from Arabic, Persian and Turkish. As the Muslim rule spread in Northern India, Urdu interacted with various vernaculars and introduced Persian words into local languages and absorbed local vocabulary, and over a period of time developed into a distinct spoken language. Hindi also developed from Khariboli, albeit with the assimilation of words from local languages and Sanskrit. Several factors contributed to the increasing divergence of Hindi and Urdu. The Muslim rulers chose to write Urdu in Urdu script instead of Devanagari script. In time, Urdu in Urdu script also became a literary language with an increasing body of literature written in the 18th and 19th century. A division developed gradually between Hindus who chose to write Hindustani in Devanagari script and Muslims and some Hindus who chose to write the same in Urdu script. The development of Hindi movements in the late nineteenth century further contributed to this divergence.〔 Sumit Sarkar notes that in the 18th and the bulk of the 19th century, "Urdu had been the language of polite culture over a big part of north India, for Hindus quite as much as Muslims". For the decade of 1881-90, Sarkar gives figures which showed that the circulation of Urdu newspapers was twice that of Hindi newspapers and there were 55% more Urdu books as Hindi books. He gives the example of the famous author Premchand who wrote mainly in Urdu till 1915, until he found it difficult to publish in the language. Professor Paul R. Brass notes in his book, ''Language, Religion and Politics in North India'', 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hindi–Urdu controversy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|