On Thursday 24 May 2012 11:54:36 am Radhika, Y. wrote: > To complicate matters, Persian, > from which many Urdu words derive, is also an Indo-European tongue.
Persian had a pretty wide footprint as far as my reaidng goes. It was adopted in Afghanistan - from where Babur came in any case. It was the royal language in India while Urdu was a mix of local Indian languages and Persian spoken by the army. Some time under British rule Urdu replaced Persian as the official language in India. I recall reading somewhere that this caused great resentment among the Ashraf - the "high caste" Muslims who considered their language and customs superior to the "Ajlaf" low caste Muslim converts. It also later led to Hindu resentment as Hindi was the same but used the Devnagri script and the use of Urdu as official language was disputed. Ramachandra Guha writes that Hindi and Urdu were nearly the same except for the script and the fact that Muslims called it Urdu and Hindus, Hindi, and that Hindi+Urdu=Hindustani, the language of India. Gandhi and Nehru apparently wanted Hindustani to be India's national language so that it would please Hindus and Muslims and that both scripts could be retained. But clearly not all people in India were pleased with Hindi, let alone Hindustani. shiv
