In the Mughal Empire, the largest state located on the Indian Peninsula, Persian was the state language. More precisely, a kind of Persian called "dari". The name comes from the Persian word "gift", derived from our word "court" in the meaning of "the royal family together with those close to it." Simply - “court language”.
In general, that "dari" dominated the entire East. He was state not only in India, but also in Persia and a number of Central Asian states. The language of fiction and arts in the Ottoman Empire. Nowadays, since 1964, the name "Dari" for one of its two official languages has been used by Afghanistan. The second official language here is Pashto.
After the fall of the Mughal Empire in 1837, power passed to the British East India campaign. Along with English, the British proclaimed the official language "Urdu". The name is from the word "horde" or simply "Horde" language. This is the same Persian language with a large number of loanwords from numerous local languages and dialects. By that time, "Urdu" had long been in use among the local Horde nobility. A rich literary tradition has developed.
The separation of Urdu (Horde) and Hindi (Indian) began in 1867.
When the British government, to please the Hindu communities, in some northwestern provinces (now the states of Uttar Pradej and Bihar) changed the script of the Urdu language from Persian to the local Devanagari. Hindus believed that the Persian script was too similar to the Arabic script in which the Muslim holy book "Koran" was written. And so they didn't want to use it. Soon the Hindus demanded that Hindi replace Urdu as the official nationwide.
The situation forced Muslims to defend the interests of the Urdu language. The movement was led by a prominent Muslim political and public figure, philosopher and scientist Said Ahmad Khan.
Said Ahmad Khan.
He opposed formalizing Hindi. He contributed to the spread of "Urdu" by publishing his works in it. He founded educational institutions, in particular, a Muslim university and a scientific society in the city of Aligarh, where teaching and scientific discussions were conducted in Urdu. After a debate about the language, wise Ahmad Khan realized that Hindus and Muslims in the future would not be able to get along together.
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“I am now convinced that Hindus and Muslims will never be able to become one nation, since their religion and way of life are very different from each other,” he said. Subsequently, Ahmad Khan developed the concept of "two nations".
In 1900, the British government issued a decree formally equalizing the rights of "Hindi" and "Urdu". After that, language disputes arose with renewed vigor. The languages began to diverge linguistically. Until that moment, they were essentially one language, differing only in writing. Hindus began to diligently purge "Hindi" from Persian words, replacing them with Sanskrit counterparts. This even caused the regret of Mahatma Gandhi, who sought to preserve "a single language for a single Indian nation."
Said Ahmad Khan's associates Muhsin ul-Mulk and Mawli Abdul Haq organized the Urdu Defense Association and Anjuman-i Taraqqi-i Urdu, respectively, organizations to promote Urdu language, Urdu literature and Indian Muslim cultural heritage.
Nawab Muhsin ul-Mulk.
The protege Ahmad Khan Shibli Nomani went to great lengths to make Urdu the official language in the Principality of Hyderabad, an autonomous state under British protectorate, and to introduce Urdu teaching at the Osmania University here.
In 1947, British India was divided into two independent states, India and Pakistan. The Urdu language has become one of the two official languages of Pakistan (the second is English), and also, as we would say, the language of interethnic communication. In addition to him, 93 percent of the country's inhabitants also speak various local languages.
On September 14, 1949, the constituent assembly adopted Hindi as the state language of India. The second state is also English. In 1954, the Indian government established a committee to prepare the Hindi grammar. The report of the committee "On the basic grammar of modern Hindi" was published in 1958. He standardized the spelling based on the Devanagari script, which made it possible to conduct paperwork in Hindi.
