Babel #7: Spread of Farsi; and Hindi-Urdu Split

Farsi, the language of Iran (#15, 110 million speakers) is a very old language and Persia was a mighty ancient empire, says Gaston Dorren in Babel. You’d think Farsi must have expanded its coverage and influence on the back of the mighty Persian empire. But no, it didn’t. Why not? Because Farsi was not the language of the court. It was the language of the masses…

 

With the rise of Islam, the Arabs conquered Persia. Farsi’s script changed to the Arabic one, and a lot of Arabic words became part of the Farsi language. Yet Persian culture thrived since the “Persians had thousands of years of urban life and empire-building under their belt” whereas the Arabs were, er, just conquering tribals. And so:

“Arabic remained the language of religion, but Persian (Farsi) became the language of fine culture throughout the Middle East.”

When Islamic rulers, both Sunni and Shia, conquered more and more lands, the language of culture and the ruling class was Farsi. Which is why the influence of Farsi can be seen in regions as far off as Turkey and India. It had spread not on the back of the mighty Persian empire of yesteryear but on the backs of Muslim rulers of (much) later generations!

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Dorren says Hindi-Urdu should be considered a single language (#4, 550 million speakers) even though they’re not exactly identical and have their distinct identities. Why? After all, he argues, Bollywood movies are understood in Pakistan, and Urdu ghazals are appreciated in India. Therefore:

“It is a rift rather than a break.”

Left alone, the rift would heal. But it was never left alone – there have been active attempts to separate them for a very long time for different reasons (Muslim, Mughal, Pakistani v/s Hindu, Brahmin, Indian).

 

He takes us back in time. Long, long ago, there was a continuum (spectrum) of dialects or languages spoken across the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, though there was no “umbrella” language.

 

Things started to change with the Delhi Sultanate, followed by the Mughal empire. These rulers were of Central Asian origin, but linguistically and culturally (as explained in the first half of this blog), they were Persian by influence. They coined the umbrella term for the north Indians languages - Hindi. The languages started to mix – Farsi with Hindi and that is how we ended with what was called Hindustani.

 

Then came the British. The missionaries among them wanted to educate and convert. For that, it was simpler to have a single language, so out went the dialects and a single language, Hindustani, was made dominant. Then the British ran into sensitive ground - religion. Hindus would accept religious teachings only in Devanagari script (Sanskrit) and Muslims only in Arabic script. Therefore, Hindustani split into 2 scripts, one Devanagari, the other Arabic based.

 

Future attempts at spreading education by the British now had to use these 2 scripts and the split was starting to widen. As India modernized, with the railways, postal system, and the civil services, the Hindus and Muslims began to clash over the split of the new economic opportunities. As the animosity started to rise, both sides picked on more areas of differences, and with two scripts, the language got sucked into the arena of conflict. At independence/partition, Pakistan picked Urdu as its national language, and India called its language Hindi. From here on, Hindustani is not a term or language either country uses.

 

But this entire split is political, argues Dorren. Linguistically, they are very similar, which is why he counts them as a single entity in his book.