Devanagari (Re: SV: Workshop on Islamicate Culture)

[Lakshmi Srinivas]

--- Yashwant Malaiya <malaiya at CS.COLOSTATE.EDU> wrote:
> The official languages used by the British were
> earlier Farsi and
> Urdu. ...

> However in much of north India, for non-government
> purposes, people generally used
> Devanagari.

The term "non-government purposes" seems to need
qualification. True most people had their Gita and
prayer "pothi"'s in Devanagari, but for all other
purposes they seemed to use the Perso-Arabic aka Urdu
script. For example, I have not seen a single Punjabi
trader using 'Nagari even for business purposes. As
late as 1970, if you bought 2 seers of mustard oil
from a Punjabi Lala in Delhi or western UP, like as
not he'd write down your order as

2     <sin-re> superscript <te>

where <sin-re> is the Urdu commercial code for
"sarson" or mustard and the Urdu letter <te> the
marker for the "tel" or oil. But they used Roman
numerals!

But Rohan's right about Bihar. But when Bihar in 1881,
decided in favor of Hindi in Devanagari script over
Urdu in Persian script, it was seen primarily as a
manifestation of the Hindu Muslim communal conflict.
(cf Paul R Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in
North India, CUP) I do not have the book to hand so
can't give page numbers.

In fact, this can be seen more clearly in the alacrity
with which the Punjabi Hindus took up the demand for
Devanagari. In fact this was the political baptism for
Lala Lajpat Rai (incidentally the patron saint of my
alma mater) who wrote in Urdu all his life. In 1882,
he joined the Arya Samaj and spearheaded the demand
for Hindi in Devanagari script. He could neither read
nor write Devanagari at that time. There is some
evidence that he never learnt it.

Soon in Punjab, one could see three
language-script-religion complexes viz.,
Urdu-Persian-Muslim, Hindi-Devanagari-Hindu and the
Punjabi-Gurmukhi-Sikh. In fact it is well known that
right from the census of 1911 onwards, the Hindus of
Punjab started returning their mother tongue as Hindi
as opposed to the Census Official's category called
Hindustani. In fact, it would appear that by 1941, the
information pertaining to mother tongue was considered
so unreliable that it was not collected at all by the
Census people. (Brass)


In this context, the quote from McEldowney seems not
really relevant since language itself was not the
issue. But the remark by S Madhuresan does seem to be.

> One of the main differences between Hindi vs. Urdu
> and the creation of Devanagari vs. Islamic scripts
> is the Hindus' efforts to "come out" of their
> Islamicate culture.

As an aside, is not the current trend towards an
inclusive Hinduism also a manifestation of the same
trend i.e., of a Hindu effort to come out of an
Islamicate (or a composite Hindu-Muslim culture, if
you will) culture? One index of this is temple
building with a renewed vigor. Some of these temples
are billed as " Nagara style temples, first time in
the last 1000 years". What is meant of course is first
time since Mahmud of Ghori.

Thanks and Warm Regards,

LS

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