Hindi and Urdu Short Stories
Exploring the borders between Hindi and Urdu
By CHRISTINE EVERAERT
In the past few decades, there has been a wealth of discussion in and outside India about the linguistic relationship between Hindi and Urdu. The linguistic and terminological histories of both languages are very closely related, to the extent that sometimes both linguistic communities claim the same author as one of 'their' authors, as happened with Kabir. Quite apart from this, there is a great deal of confusion about the terminology, which is changing all the time and has not been used consistently. At certain moments in the past it is difficult to grasp whether the terms 'Hindustani', 'Hindvi', 'Urdu', 'Hindi', 'Hindui', 'Dakhani' etc. are referring to what we now consider as Hindi, Urdu, or something else.The question of whether both languages are, and if so, have always been two separate languages, is often answered with political arguments rather than by linguistic studies.
The origin of the research
Two years ago I finished my dissertation on the Hindi short stories of Bhagavaticaran Varma, which were mainly written in the 1930s. I decided to work on the short story since it is a many-sided genre and besides that, a great deal of the existing research is on either poetry or novels.
During my research I noticed that the language used in these short stories consisted of a highly fluctuating percentage of Perso-Arabic- or Sanskrit-based words, depending upon either the character speaking or the topic of the story. I became fascinated by this feature and started a small piece of linguistic research of my own by counting how many words used in the different stories (and in some stories I examined the speech of different characters) had a Perso-Arabic, Sanskrit, Turkish, or English origin.
The percentage fluctuated tremendously: in one story 66.7% of the nouns were Perso-Arabic in origin, where in another 85% of all the words were of Sanskrit origin. Still both stories, written by the same author, were identified as pure Hindi short stories. At this point, the question arose as to where precisely the line has been drawn between Hindi and Urdu.
Theoretical aspects
The results of my dissertation are the foundation for the PhD dissertation on which I am working on at present. Often there are very heated discussions about whether or not Hindi and Urdu are two separate languages or only one. In the coming years I want to find an answer to a slightly different question: are Hindi and Urdu in their literary forms two separate languages, and if they are, has it always been that way?
To answer these (and several other) questions, I shall select short stories (or pieces of prose, if there is no other option) by several Hindi and Urdu authors. The texts will date from the 17th century to 1999. Dakhani, the variety of Urdu that started to evolve as a literary language during the 16th/17th century in the Deccan, is the oldest Indian language which consists of linguistic elements with either a Perso-Arabic or a Sanskrit background. Therefore I consider it useful to go back in time to one of the earliest prose-texts written in this language (1635), because it is likely that this language is the origin of Urdu, Hindi, or maybe both.
The entire collection of texts is written in places that take or have taken a prominent place in the linguistic development of Hindi or Urdu (Delhi, Lucknow, Deccan, Pakistan). The authors are from different backgrounds (e.g. Muslims writing in Hindi, Hindus in Urdu, Urdu authors living in important Hindu cities and vice versa). Moreover, the texts have been written at historically important moments (e.g. the electoral success of the BJP, a decade before and after the Partition, during the Partition).
This large corpus of texts allows me to investigate various matters. First of all, it should show whether there have been general developments in the use of the language. Apart from this aspect, I shall be able to do research on whether there has been a personal evolution in the language usage of any of the authors, who have lived through historically important changes (for instance somebody who was writing before, during and after the Partition). By comparing the texts it should also be possible to find out whether there have been regional distinctive changes.
The pragmatic side
Because this research only tells us about the literary use of the languages, I shall eventually transpose some Urdu texts of the corpus into Devanagari script and some Hindi texts into Perso-Arabic script. These texts will be given to different people from different regions and educational backgrounds, without telling them about the origin of the text. This should prove a good test of how much Hindi-speakers can understand of the Urdu texts and vice-versa. *
References
Dittmer, Kerrin
Die indischen Muslims und die Hindi-Urdu-Kontroverse in den United Provinces
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1972
King, Christopher R.
One Language, Two Scripts:
The Hindi movement in nineteenth
century North India
Bombay, etc: Oxford University Press, 1994
Rai, Amrit
A House Divided
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984
Russell, R.
The Pursuit of Urdu Literature,
A selected history
London, 1992
Sadiq, M.
A history of Urdu literature
Delhi, 1995
Shackle & Snell
Hindi and Urdu Since 1800:
A common reader
London: SOAS, 1991
Christine Everaert is assistant at the Department of Languages and Cultures of South- and East-Asia of Gent University, Belgium and teaches Hindi and Urdu,
E-mail: Christine.Everaert@rug.ac.be