HISA 3003 Lecture 10: Communalism Part II
6 Jul 2016
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Document Summary
The fight over language: hindu vs. urdu controversy. Hindi: devnagri script: became a hindu language. Urdu: arabic script: became a muslim language. Roles of languages during mughal rule: persian: course language, urdu: great literary language, hindi: great spoken communication. Roles of languages during british rule: persian: replaced by english, urdu: great literary language, hindi: unspeci ed. Hence, hindi followers began a movement to push the signi cance of hindi. Na badet yavani bhasham pranah kanthgatepi va : we will die and will not speak persian , introduced hindi as o cial language in bihar in 1880. Controversial because substantial population of bihar = muslim. The hindi movement in north india intensi ed + spread in the states bordering. Bihar: so what did these activists do to promote this movement, chose varnasi as their core city because it is a sacred city. Gave the language a very hindu tone. Harishchandra (1850-1885: wrote poems to express his ideologies.
