Ironically, Hindi, the language that gives the region its name, is its least unifying factor. After all, it was not the first, and certainly not the only language, of the people who are colloquially referred to as Hindi-bhashi or Hindi-speakers.
Sadanand Shahi, who taught Hindi literature at the Banaras Hindu University, minces no words in describing this unique linguistic phenomenon: “Hindi is nobody’s mother tongue. We gave up our own languages to create a national language.” Adds Apoorvanand, who teaches Hindi literature at the University of Delhi, “Once the British linked Hindi with employment, people surrendered their languages.” Hence, just as the evolution of Hindi as the main language of this region was a political movement, the people’s identification with it as their principal language is also a political statement, as we shall see.
But first, let’s look at the languages of the Hindi belt. In Rajasthan, the traditional languages used to be Marwari and Rajasthani, both of which had a rich oral tradition. The well-known Rajasthani writer Vijaydan Detha, recipient of the Padma Shri and the Sahitya Akademi Award, insisted that even though his script may have been Devanagari, in which present-day Hindi is written (more on this later), his language was Rajasthani.
Weighing in on this, Manvendra Singh says, “The classical name for the Rajasthani language was Dingal, and within this, there were several dialects, spoken in different parts of the state.” According to him, Dingal, like Marwari, used to be written in the Mahajani script (not Devanagari), though writing was not so widespread.
Madhya Pradesh also had several languages spread across its expanse, from Bundelkhandi to Gondi, with Bagheli, Malvi, Katli, and so on. In Uttar Pradesh, the spoken languages ranged from Braj, Awadhi, Banarasi, Khari Boli, and Bhojpuri to Bundelkhandi, Garhwali, and Kumaoni. Further east, in Bihar, Bhojpuri was complemented by Magadhi, Magahi, Maithili, Kuduk, and Santhali. Yet, to an outsider, they all sounded rather alike.
Travelling from Allahabad (now Prayagraj) in 1869, Syed Ahmad Khan, founder of Aligarh Muslim University, observed, “All the way from Allahabad to Bombay, in villages and marketplaces and trains, with government officials and peons of all departments and coolies everywhere, I conversed in Urdu – and everywhere people understood and replied in Urdu itself. With some words there was a need to explain the meaning or sometimes to state one’s meaning more simply. But there is no doubt that everywhere in Hindustan the Urdu language is understood and spoken…”
A similar observation was made by British linguist GA Grierson after a 30-year survey of the Indian languages, which was published in 1928. He wrote, “It is thus commonly said, and believed, that throughout the Gangetic Valley, between Bengal and Punjab, there is one and only one language – Hindi, with its numerous dialects.”
In 1937, author Rahul Sankrityayan added a nuance to what he referred to as a common language which, he wrote, “incorporates all the languages which emerged after the eighth century AD in ‘Suba Hindustan’” – the region that is bounded by the Himalayas, and by all the regions associated with the Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Oriya and Bangla languages. Its older form is called Magahi, Maithili, Braj Bhasha, etc. Its modern form may be considered under two aspects: a widely disseminated form called Khari Boli (which when written in Persian characters and with an excess of Arabic and Persian words is called Urdu), and the various local languages which are spoken in different places: Magahi, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Banarasi, Avadhi, Kannauji, Brajmandali, etc…
Hence, the emergence of Hindi was the consequence of three factors. One, a desire to find unity in diversity, and a historic uninterrupted tradition of a “national” language which could be a worthy alternative to English. Therefore, nationalist Indians converged on Hindi as a mother language with multiple “dialects”. After all, Grierson had also validated this position.
Two, a broad intelligibility among all north Indian languages, as seen above; and three, the growing Hindu–Muslim divide after 1857, which led to religious ownership of the language – Hindi for Hindus and Urdu for Muslims.
These perspectives were partly correct, only because by the time these people experienced the commonality of the language, there existed linguistic syncretism in the Hindi heartland. But this was a consequence of several centuries of coexisting and collaborating. Says Apoorvanand, “All languages spoken in the wider region of the Indo-Gangetic plains have a degree of intelligibility, but to say that they are sub-languages, or subsects of Hindi is wrong. All these languages had their own vocabulary and grammar.”
In fact, “Some of these languages – Maithili, Avadhi, Braj Bhasha and Khari Boli – have literary traditions of several centuries while others – Bhojpuri and Magahi – have rich oral folk literatures… Villagers use these to talk with merchants in nearby trading centres and with villagers from other areas. Small town residents use them as their mother tongue, while both educated and uneducated city dwellers use them at home or among friends,” writes Christopher R King.
The intelligibility among the languages was the consequence of two factors. One, they all belonged to the Indo-Aryan group of languages with some commonality of vocabulary and grammar, points out author and linguist Peggy Mohan. The only exceptions here were the few tribal languages such as Gondi, Santhali, and Kuduk which were preserved by the itinerant tribes, though they did not belong to this region. Most of them traced their origin to the Dravidian lingual traditions. For instance, Neetisha Khalko, who belongs to the Kudukhar sub-tribe within the Oraon family, says her language Kuduk belongs to the Dravidian tradition. She says, “Kuduk is similar to the language spoken in parts of the central Konkan region.”
Two, as Mrinal Pande points out, “The Hindi belt has been India’s most mobile and colonised area with countless horizontal layers of linguistic cultures that the latest migrants/invaders brought. [Hence], there has been much linguistic give and take mostly through oral sources, among adjacent states.” Talking about the evolution of languages, she says, “Language normally doesn’t flood large areas it flows through. Like a slow-moving river, it keeps depositing new sediments over the old constantly along its path.”
Getting into the nuances of the traditional north Indian languages, Mohan says that contrary to popular belief, the modern (regional) languages are “not like Sanskrit and the Prakrits, though they adopted words from local Prakrits.” Consequently, she writes, “Is it a step down for our language to be a mixed language, not really different from a creole? Shouldn’t highly evolved people like us be speaking a language that is … pure?” Creole languages emerge over time by the assimilation of two or more languages. Answering her own question, Mohan further writes, “Languages are living things, and they live in ecosystems; they are highly responsive to signals from the environment… Languages that refuse to adapt, languages that hide from the light, tend to go extinct… Finding these mixed languages blooming around us, then, is a cause for celebration.”
Excerpted with permission from The Hindi Heartland: A Study, Ghazala Wahab, Aleph Book Company.
