[Goanet]Hindi, Urdu, Alfredbab, Tariqmia......ani Konkani

[Dr. José Colaço]

Alfred de Tavares <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

<Tariqji,

Din't Hindi and Urdu --same but different alphabet ? -- come on the scene 
more as a colonial lingua franca, to serve the Indo-British administration 
and military purposes?>

=================>

Tariq Siddiqui  wrote in reply

<Not really. I believe Amir Khusro first wrote Urdu couplets, and that was 
before the British. Urdu and Hindi both have origins in Khari Boli, a 
language spoken in the Gangetic plains.

I found this website that gives a nice short overview:

http://www.urdustan.com/faq.html>



=====================>jc's response



Dear Alfred,

I believe you are correct. When you have the opportunity, please read Prof 
Alok Rai, Hindi Nationalism,  Orient Longman, New Delhi, 2000. It is 
refereed to in some circles as the “MacDonnell Moment”



<Hindi, he suggests, could also be called Urdu for these are but two names 
for a single language. Alok states in the very beginning of his tract that 
the essay is written with the conviction that “there is but one common 
language of north India, which has at different times…been described as 
Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani”(p. 15).>

<In tracing the ‘original sin’ that led to the schizophrenic split in the 
Hindi-Urdu unity, Rai’s research naturally goes back to the early days of 
British colonial rule around the turn of the eighteenth century when a 
British surgeon and self-styled linguist named John Borthwick Gilchrist took 
up the task of teaching ‘Hindoostanee’ to newly appointed officers of the 
East India Company. The College of Fort William set up in 1800, where 
Gilchrist was appointed Professor of Hindustani, brought together a staff of 
Indian scholars and translators who took upon themselves the onerous task of 
defining what the language was really all about.>

<Avoiding the cliched charge of adopting a deliberate ‘divide and rule’ 
policy against Gilchrist, Rai nevertheless points out how his attempts 
(aided by local zealots) to restore the language to its imagined 
‘pre-Mughal’ form ended up in turning out all the Arabic and Persian words 
in Hindustani and substituting Sanskrit ones.>

<Once initiated, this construction of a ‘pure’ Hindustani, like a 
predictable science-fiction monster, took a life of its own. Aided, abetted 
and fiercely nurtured by self-appointed guardians of the language from the 
savarna castes of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, this process finally laid 
the foundations of the unintelligible, highly Sanskritised ‘Hindi’ that has 
mistakenly been foisted on the Indian people as their ‘national language’>

<Tragically enough, in a classic example of how one fundamentalism feeds off 
another, the systematic attempts to de-Persianise and de-Arabicise 
Hindustani also provoked similar efforts to de-Sanskritise Urdu within 
sections of the Muslim elites. Ironically, it is this highly Arabicised and 
incomprehensible ‘Urdu’, that has become the national language of Pakistan 
and is a mirror image of the highly Sanskritised ‘Hindi’ in the Indian 
context>



So, Alfredbab,.......it depends WHAT one means by HINDI and WHAT one means 
by URDU! Jawaharlal Nehru's Hindi was the same as his Urdu.

But that was then!

It also depends on WHAT is meant by KONKANI! rather WHICH Konkani.

I would like to know (for purly personal reasons) WHY Jose and Joao became 
Zuze ani Zuam in the new S-Konkani - while JESU remained Jesu!

So much for politricks and politicians.

In closing, ALLOW me to say a THANK YOU to Diana (Flower) for her post on 
the "Rock and a Hard place" choices available in South Goa. In my humble 
opinion - excellent advice

BTW: There is a non-South Goan who opined (loudly - but privately) that One 
Swallow (Gilbert's post) did NOT make a summer. This non-South Goan contends 
that DEMOCRACY is VIBRANT in Goa.

Ha!

On the other hand.....I could be wrong. After all, I am here & the non-South 
Goan is ALMOST there! ( almost in South Goa) (:-)



regards

jc

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