As of yet I do not have a specific outline for my research so I had better get myself in line and start doing some more research. My research question is: How do the speakers of Hindi and Urdu view their own languages and speech communities in Varanasi.
For those of you not familiar with Hindi-Urdu is a member of the Indo-Aryan language family which is a part of the Indo-European language family which English, Spanish and many other European languages belong to. There have been many scholarly and household theories as to the origins of Hindi-Urdu and the extent to which Hindi and Urdu are separate languages or the same language. The most commonly held theory is that Hindi-Urdu is descended from Khari Boli, which was the spoken language in parts of Northern India. When the Mughals ruled India from 1526, they used Persian as the court language for their empire. A highly Persianized version of Khari Boli, called Urdu, became the language of the elite. The spoken language of the non-elite also became highly Persianized and was called Hindustani. When the British colonized India, they used Urdu and Hindustani interchangeably.
The linguistic scenario upon the colonization of Northern India was not one of recognized discrete languages and Indians did not make a clear distinction between Hindi and Urdu as languages, they merely recognized that some Muslims used more Persian words and some Hindus used more Sanskrit-borrowed words. Anyone who studies the colonial history of India will tell you that the English liked to do surveys and put Indians in to categories that were much more ridged that the previously existing systems. They solidified cast and Indian law in this manner. In the same way they attempted to categorize the languages of India. This is the mindset that gave rise to the ideas of Hindi and Urdu as separate languages. In 1902, in Grierson's Linguistic survey of India he gathered linguistic data from over the whole country and divided it up into discrete languages. However the Indians themselves did not see their languages in this manner. One student at Banaras University said to his professor, “we do not clearly understand what you Europeans mean by the term Hindi, for there are hundreds of dialects, all in our opinion equally entitled to the name, and there is here no standard as there is in Sanskrit.” Since then however, the idea of Hindi and Urdu as separate languages has emerged. Muslims and the Persian script have generally been associated with Urdu. Hindus and the Devanagari script have been associated with Hindi. Hindi and Urdu however are so similar that most linguist do not make a distinction between then except at the sociolinguistic level.
This is of course a very simplified version of the history of Hindi-Urdu, but I do not have time to go into depth. I will perhaps do so later.
My research will be looking at modern day perceptions of the sociolects Hindi and Urdu, how they differ linguistically and socially and how the speakers view their language and the other group as well. The point of my research is not to study religious differences, but to study the power of culture and politics upon our views of language. I am really excited to see what viewpoints I will find in a religiously conservative and yet open city such as Varanasi.
For those of you not familiar with Hindi-Urdu is a member of the Indo-Aryan language family which is a part of the Indo-European language family which English, Spanish and many other European languages belong to. There have been many scholarly and household theories as to the origins of Hindi-Urdu and the extent to which Hindi and Urdu are separate languages or the same language. The most commonly held theory is that Hindi-Urdu is descended from Khari Boli, which was the spoken language in parts of Northern India. When the Mughals ruled India from 1526, they used Persian as the court language for their empire. A highly Persianized version of Khari Boli, called Urdu, became the language of the elite. The spoken language of the non-elite also became highly Persianized and was called Hindustani. When the British colonized India, they used Urdu and Hindustani interchangeably.
The linguistic scenario upon the colonization of Northern India was not one of recognized discrete languages and Indians did not make a clear distinction between Hindi and Urdu as languages, they merely recognized that some Muslims used more Persian words and some Hindus used more Sanskrit-borrowed words. Anyone who studies the colonial history of India will tell you that the English liked to do surveys and put Indians in to categories that were much more ridged that the previously existing systems. They solidified cast and Indian law in this manner. In the same way they attempted to categorize the languages of India. This is the mindset that gave rise to the ideas of Hindi and Urdu as separate languages. In 1902, in Grierson's Linguistic survey of India he gathered linguistic data from over the whole country and divided it up into discrete languages. However the Indians themselves did not see their languages in this manner. One student at Banaras University said to his professor, “we do not clearly understand what you Europeans mean by the term Hindi, for there are hundreds of dialects, all in our opinion equally entitled to the name, and there is here no standard as there is in Sanskrit.” Since then however, the idea of Hindi and Urdu as separate languages has emerged. Muslims and the Persian script have generally been associated with Urdu. Hindus and the Devanagari script have been associated with Hindi. Hindi and Urdu however are so similar that most linguist do not make a distinction between then except at the sociolinguistic level.
This is of course a very simplified version of the history of Hindi-Urdu, but I do not have time to go into depth. I will perhaps do so later.
My research will be looking at modern day perceptions of the sociolects Hindi and Urdu, how they differ linguistically and socially and how the speakers view their language and the other group as well. The point of my research is not to study religious differences, but to study the power of culture and politics upon our views of language. I am really excited to see what viewpoints I will find in a religiously conservative and yet open city such as Varanasi.
I am glad you decided to do this blog. I haven't really had a blog while I've been in Turkey (I have something that is a mix between pedagogical tool and blog, but not pure blog), but looking back, I think it would have been a very positive way to reflect on the experience.
ReplyDeleteKnus,
Ib