Hindi and Urdu again (sigh!)

[Shailendra Raj Mehta]

Mr. Abbas piles error upon error without disregard for the truth. We learn
from him that Urdu was the court language of the Mughals. That Shakespeare
wrote in Medieval English. That Hindi became the official language of India
because the "Sanghis" (whoever they are) willed it so a hundred years ago.
That Kabir, Rahim, Raidas, Khusro, Jaisi, did not write in Hindi, and so on.

That Tamil should be the national language of India because of its older
and richer literature (by the way, old Tamil (say as in the Tirukkural, is
incomprehensible to modern Tamils), and because it is the language of
the "IT-literate state of India" (is that so?).

That Hindi is a farce because it is written in four scripts. (Actually, if
one were to do an analysis one would find that a minute fraction of 1% is
written in any script other than Devanagari. Also, what would that make
Urdu, since a significant fraction of it is written in each of Arabic,
Devanagari and Roman scripts (e.g. web ghazals)?

I have been a member of this list almost since its inception. Indeed it is
difficult to find any other poster in the history of this list who has a
higher noise to signal ratio. Not surprisingly it is difficult to find a
many factual posts by him with which anyone agrees (I am sure there are
some). And of course, his value judgements are in a class by himself.

Shailendra Raj Mehta
Purdue University