Spell of Hindi on Pakistanis
Muzaffar Hussain
When the last time Atal Behari Vajpayee spoke in the United Nations
General Assembly in Hindi, there was a great uproar raised by the
self-proclaimed intellectuals and other sundry anglophiles including the
parasitical among the English journalists, objecting to the great
expenses it involved to the Indian Government. This time when the Prime
Minister spoke in Hindi at the august house, the anglopholes were
nowhere to be heard. Similar is this predicament of the Pakistanis who
are allergic to anything even remotely associated with word Hindu, as
also the language Hindi. Since they set their separate house after
Partition, they try their level best to disabuse their masses of their
age-old vocabulary full of Hindi words. Thus if fly to Pakistan and ride
a taxicab from Karachi's Mohammed Ali Jinnah International Airport to
enter the city then you cannot miss the hoardings on either side of the
road. Most of them no doubt proclaim the niceties of the wares they
advertise. But there are smaller boards which publicize government
organised schemes or programmes. Many of them dilate on the literacy
campaign or the environment awareness movement lanuched by the
government.
On one such was printed Ped pragati ki nishani hai (Tree is a sign of
progress) another said Ped qudrat ki sampatti hai (Tree is the wealth of
Nature). When the Pakistan, who never tire of condemning Hindi, Hindu,
Hindustan all the twenty-four hours of the day, use words like pragati
(progress) or sampatti (wealth), one wonders why the Urdu equivalents
like tarakki and daulat have not been used in a country whose declared
national language is Urdu! Does the Pakistani government not know that
the country, against which it is busy planning all sorts of incursions,
has Hindi as its national language? And that the Pakistanis are merrily
using Hindi expressions without any hesitation. There is no answer to
this question either with the Urdu enthusiasts in Pakistan or to their
Indian counterparts who never tire of maligning Hindi language. And the
fact of the matter is that the magic of Hindi language does not
recognize man-made artificial barriers, and its fascination influences
not only its friends but its enemies also.
If we painstakingly analyse the releases of the Pakistani print and
electronic media we cannot escape the conclusion that scores of chaste
Hindi expressions are used without even a dropping of an eyelid. If one
enters the Pakistani market place one is struck with the typically
Indian expressions the merchants and the shoppers use without even being
aware that they are paying an unintended tribute to their "congenital"
adversaries. When a Pakistani loses his temper he easily lapses into
Hindi expletives as a duck takes to water, and one is surprised to find
echoes of Inidan gestures accompanying them. The same sala, gadha and
suar are interspersed with other much more racy rebukes, all reflecting
the similar racy reproaches one hears in Indian verbal bouts. Bhai is
more often used than biradar. A Pakistani of Hyderabad or Lucknow origin
would suffix it with jan as bhaijan, bhabhijan, etc. But there are some
Hindi words the Pakistanis cannot do without. They are prem, dakghar,
bhaiya, dam, ghar, roti, jivan, ghati, dharati, mol, tol, nai, dhobi,
pinjara, dhandha, etc. Some of the days of a week also are described in
Hindi: Somvar, Mangalvar and Budhvar. The largest-circulation daily
Nava-i-Waqt gives Hindi month names and their tithis along with months
and dates of Gregorian and Arabic calendars.
Strangely the Urdu newspapers not only use janab as Urdu counterpart of
Mr, but they also style some persons as Shri. And while mentioning Atal
Behari Vajpayee they even use Shriman and Sonia Gandhi is Shrimati Sonia
Gandhi. Do they not know that the term Shri is not only a Hindi
equivalent of Mr but it also means one of the deities of the Hindus?
When those who day in and day out condemn Hindu deities do not shy away
from using words that mean Hindu gods or goddesses, it can only be
considered a magic spell of Hindi. Hindi and Urdu are quite similar, in
fact if Urdu is written in the Devanagari script of Hindi it no longer
remains Urdu, it becomes Hindi. The spoken language and its grammar is
the same in both. But as the very formation of Pakistan was unnatural,
there came a very deliberate attempt, an unnatural exercise, to weed out
all the Hindi words from Urdu. Even the words of dialects such as Braj
Avadhi, Bhojpuri, Malvi, etc. But like all unnatural schemes this koo
was bound to fail. Because the masses could not be made to purge their
common speech of all these "foreign" words. It was most ironic. Because
all these dialects are part of the soil from ages. It was only after the
eighth century that the Arabic and Persian words began to trickle down
into the speech of the masses after the Muslim invaders began their
inroads into the subcontinent.
Therefore, truly speaking, the Arabic and Persian words can be termed as
"foreign" to the subcontinent. While the words of Braj, Bhojpuri, Avadhi
or Malvi are indeed very much indigenous. The Pakistanis along with
their Hindi-baiter Indian cousin should shun the Arabic or Persian words
if at all they are so averse to "foreign" words. But blind dogma can
never be countered with reason. This chauvinism went to such an extent
that the Pakistanis began saying Allah Hafiz when they realised that
Khuda in Khuda Hafiz hails from Iranian culture, which today belongs to
the Shias of Iran, a bete noire for all Sunnis. Thus the Pakistanis'
inability to do away with Hindi words from their "living speech is an
indication that Hindi indeed is a natural speech, a "living speech" of
the subcontinent. What keeps Hindi and Urdu apart is the "left-going"
script of Urdu. If this dividing factor is removed then Pakistan has
forty million Hindi-speaking population. Pakistani schools do not teach
Hindi. But it is part of the "Indian studies". At one time Lahore
University had courses in Hindi up to post graduate level.
But now in Pakistan only Karachi University has provision of Hindi
studies. In the Karachi University building under the picture of Panini
on the wall his name is given in English, Urdu and also Hindi. Pakistan
proudly mentions Panini as its national hero. Many postal stamps sport
Panini's pictures. The Hindi-lover in Pakistan Dr Shahida Habib says
that if the Pakistanis intend to counter Indians in the field of
ideology and thinking, Pakistanis will have to learn Hindi. In the Dayal
Library in Lahore there are some 14,000 Hindi titles. Many Sanskrit
manuscripts are lying there gathering dust of ages. Many people from
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar had migrated to Pakistan. They now even read
poems by Ghalib and other Urdu stalwarts in Devnagari script published
by Rajpal Publishing Co. Shahila Habib follows Ahmedia sect. Some years
back when she visited Qadiyan in Gurdaspur district, she expressed her
desire to translate in Urdu, Dinkar's Sanskriti ke Char adhyay. Hindi
people are in the forefront in politicizing a language. They organise
world Hindi conventions in Fiji, Trinidad and Mauritius. But when people
of Indian origin are threatened in Fiji, these Hindi lovers cannot spare
a word of sympathy for these overseas brothers. This apathy of
Hindi-speaking people is the biggest impediment in the development of
the languag
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