The Farce that is HINDI

[Samar Abbas]

On Fri, 2 Feb 2001, Raveen Satkurunathan wrote:
> South Slavic Serbo-Croatian is also written in two scripts, Cyrillic for
> Serbian and Roman for Croatian.

 But Hindee is written in a whole four scripts: Perso-Arabic, Devanagari,
Kaithi for its Bihari `dialect' and Mahajani for its Rajasthani `dialect'.
Now, which other language in the world has a whole 4 scripts ?  Perhaps
the Sanghvi linguists may wish to explain. Why, even the Mahatma would
have a hard time explaining that.

  Moreover, the term `Serbo-Croation' itself indicates its origin lies in
Judeo-Marxist multiculturalism of the Yugoslav era. Such hypotheses aimed
at creating a Yugoslav melting-pot failed miserably, and I doubt whether
the governments of Serbia and Croatia are now teaching `Serbo-Croatian' in
their schools after the bitter civil war. They are no doubt teaching
Serbian and Croatian, respectively.

 The official Sanghi linguists who for the past 50 years have claimed that
Kaithi is merely a `derivative' of Devnagari and that Bihari is a dialect
of `Hindi' can for themselves how much they can understand of a manuscript
written in Kaithi:

  http://www.library.upenn.edu/etext/sasia/skt-mss/1876/5b.html
     {  Mahagaapatistotra in Kaithi script }

 Kaithi appears as different from Hindee as Bengali from Hindee.

Yashwant Malaiya wrote:
> The word "Hindavi" was used by Khusrow, "Hindi" was used by Sharfuddin
> Yazdi (1424) ... What about Kabir (1398-?) ... Raidas (1398-1448) ...
> Amir Khosrow (1283-...

 Most of the personages above wrote in Punjabi, Avadhi and Rajasthani.

 The Muslims used Hindvi to refer to all languages of `Hind', which
included South-East Asia. It was a purely geographical definition which
had no linguistic basis, being akin to `European' or `Firangi'. Indeed,
all languages of `Hind' were included in `Hindawi', including Bengali and
Kannadiga. Indeed, when Khosrow et al write in `Hindwi', they merely mean
that they are writing in one of the languages of Hind. Stretching
Khosrow's geographical term to linguistics to its fullest extent would
result in Thai and Malay being all dialects of `Hindi'. Surely, another
contradiction for our official linguists.

  Likewise, many Indians confound all European languages as `Firangi',
including Russian, English and French. That does not mean that the French
(ie. Franks or the real Firangis) can claim that English or Polish are its
dialects. Unfortunately, the official Sanghvi linguists are doing someting
similar in the case of Khadi Bolee. But then, such fantasies are only
expected of those who believe that the Taj Mahal is actually Tejo
Mahalaya.

Shailendra Raj Mehta wrote:
>Actually, the language that is in real trouble in India...is Urdu.

 This exactly was the rationale behind the formation of Pakistan. At least
the language of the Mughals survives there. Mr. Mehta's statement reveals
that, in retrospect, Jinnah was right after all.

Samar