Urdu,Hindi,and Sanskrit

[Aditya, the Cheerful Hindu Skeptic]

Stephen Hodge <s.hodge at PADMACHOLING.FREESERVE.CO.UK> has written as follows:

>While it is true that Arabic script is particularly unsuited for
>writing Turkish and a move to the use of a Roman script undoubtedly
>helped improve literacy rates dramatically, one must realize that
>Ataturk had other agendas at the same time arising from his
>totalitarian programme of secularization.

So what? Did you want him to be single item in his agenda?
I think most of his reforms have been admirable and have brought Turkey to
come out of its obscurantism of the medieval age after WWI. It is the only
muslim country which still has legal separation between the church and
state.

>By virtually outlawing the use of Arabic script he was also able to
>ensure access to older religious -- especially Sufi -- literature
>became much more difficult and thus was able restrict the transmission
>of most religious teaching.  This is corroborated by the fact that he
>also made all Sufi meeting places, the use of religious titles like
>Sheikh, the "sema" ritual of the Mevlevis ete etc illegal.  His covert
>aim can be seen as little less that the outright elimination of Islam
>from most areas of life.  It is only in reecent years that Sufi
>literature has begun to be easily available in romanized Turkish.
There was no ban on translating sufi or any literature but you should
remember that after WWI Turkey had to undergo very severe economic
depression from which it has not yet recovered and people had other
priorities than reading sufi poems.

>A similar idea seems to lie in part behind the Communist Chinese
>simplification of the Chinese script, the reduction of current
>characters and the several attempts to replace the traditional script
>with Pin-yin romanization.  If people cannot read their classics, then
>their minds will not be "polluted" by the ideas contained therein.
New ideas always try to replace the old ones regardless of the script in
which they are written. China has come a long way without giving up its
script and communist philosophy while India with Nehruvian dictatorship and
dynasty has not fared any better.
>
>Imagine what the level of religious understanding and knoweldge would
>be in India now of all the religious and philosophical classics if the
>British, for example, had outlawed devanagari and other traditional
>scripts in  favour of total romanization !
As a matter of fact they did make English mandatory in schools and did
everything to degrade Devnagri script by preferring Urdu script in their
courts so that there was little incentive to study Devnagri script. It was
only Arya Samaja and Gandhi who hailed from non-Devnagri regions of India
who kept the interest in Hindi written in Devnagri script alive.

BTW, in British army Hindi was actually written in Roman script and soldiers
were required to learn only one script.


Have a peaceful and joyous day.
Aditya Mishra
Primary email: a018967t at bc.seflin.org
Primary homepage: http://www.pompano.net/~aditya
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Random thought of the day:
        Hands that help are far better than Lips that Pray.