Linguistic Identity and Fazli’s Use of Hindustani

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed an overarching influence of British institutions and notions of identity on Indian society. Significantly, the dissemination of education and the printing press in North India, coupled with demands by competing interest groups, created situations that were conducive towards formation of rifts within the North-Indian urban populace who demanded greater access to public institutions established by the British as a means for ensuring social mobility, economic prosperity and cultural dominance. One major notion that these groups used to define their identity and create solidarity amongst them was that of language. According to Kumar (1990) The Bengali urban gentry had had access to English for a significantly longer period of time (starting with the British occupation of Bengal in 1757) and was therefore equally adept at using English and the vernacular, which resulted in their being placed highly in British administration far and wide from Bihar to Punjab (7). Unlike this, the North-Indian ‘Hindi’ speaking belt that stretched form Bihar to Eastern Rajasthan, was linguistically extremely diverse and people here were ill-acquainted with English. The court language here had been Persian, and later Urdu. So too was the case in education, where most establishments provided training in vernaculars like Urdu and classical languages like Sanskrit and Persian, thereby leaving the students devoid of any knowledge of the language of colonisers.

When the Mughal Empire ended and the British established themselves decisively, there were radical changes in education and ways of accessing public service. In light of the changes that precipitated in this time and their effects on ideas of linguistic identity, this chapter will look at how in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Urdu and Hindi came to acquire new and essentially separate identities of their own. We will see how competing desires for social mobility shaped ideas of what constitutes ‘Real’ Hindi and Urdu and what effect this had on the idea of a common shared language ‘Hindustani’. The second part of this essay will then see how Fazli’s language challenges ideas of linguistic identity, literariness, and the nature of public discourse. By analysing his use of language which is laden with equally generous amounts of Persian and Sanskrit words that are used in everyday speech, we will see how he critiques linguistic categorisation on lines of religion that is an inheritance form Independence and Partition. Fazli’s urban setting too shall be taken into account to see how the urban milieu has shaped language in context of the Hindi-Urdu divide, especially in wake of the Partition of India.

The politics of language and the resultant divide between Hindi and Urdu can be traced back to the struggle for educational and employment opportunities, starting in the late 19th century. It is here that we find the questions of Hindu identity and revivalism raised in a significant manner. The search for group solidarity and collective identity was crucial in this era as it allowed people who were vastly different in terms of caste, class and language, to gather and mount a struggle for independence, and movements based on revivalist ideas played a significant role in this process. Since the British now ruled India through a system of Education that produced loyal subjects who were supposed to be ‘British in tastes and opinions’ (Macaulay 1935), the dissatisfaction with British education system among sections of population who could not access English education resulted in a demand for alternative forms of education that would be more suited to their backgrounds. Therefore, education was the first institution to come under the influence of revivalist ideas.

One of the main branches of Hindu revivalism (in the form of Arya Samaj[footnoteRef:2], started by Dayanad Saraswati[footnoteRef:3]) was established in Bombay in 1875. It appeared in the North Indian plains in what today are states of Uttar Pradesh (erstwhile United Province), Madhya Pradesh (erstwhile Central Province) towards the ’80s. These areas are what constitute the Hindi belt today and the cause of this can be found in the initial workings of the Arya Samaj, since one of their main tasks was propagating Hindi as the Arya Bhasha (Language of the Reformed Aryas) and introducing it as a medium of instruction on educational institutions (Kumar 6). The task of revivalism required two basic tools, i.e., a common imagination of a glorious Hindu nation that existed before the arrival of the Muslim rule, and a common language for the dissemination of this idea in a landscape that was extremely varied in its linguistic construction[footnoteRef:4]. [2: A Hindu reformist society started in 1875, which emphasised the authority of Vedas, preached Monotheism, and rejected Idol worship.] [3: 1824-1883. Hindu Reformist leader and the Founder of Arya Samaj. ] [4: It should be noted that while Dayanand Saraswati was himself a scholar of Sanskrit, the idea to use Hindi as a medium for propagating his reformist ideas was given to him by the Brahmo Samaj leader Keshub Chandra Sen in 1872. It was only after this that Saraswati emphasised the use of Sanskritised Hindi.

This process was aided by the introduction of the printing press which allowed the construction, dissemination and reception of texts and imagination over a large landscape with a scattered audience. This resulted in the coming together of a town based society of salaried professionals, that consisted of mainly upper caste Brahmins and Kaayasths. The dissemination of symbols of cultural solidarity required a uniform language in a uniform script, and workers of the Arya Samaj insisted this should be Sanskritised Khari Boli in the Nagari script, which they called Hindi. In fact, the workers of Arya Samaj are to be credited with the establishment of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha in 1893 which insisted on the use of Nagari script in official and administrative work in government offices and courts (Kumar 8-9).

The second step in this process of revivalism was the establishment of educational institutions like the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic School and College in Lahore in 1886, and later, the Benaras Hindu University in 1916, along with the preparation of textbooks and syllabus. It was BHU and the construction of syllabi that eventually precipitated the revivalist cultural agenda of exterminating all traces of Urdu and Persian from language of polite and educated discourse, as they were seen to represent domination of indigenous culture, being the languages of ‘foreign’ rulers, like English. In fact, it was in BHU, with the construction of Hindi Sahitya Ka Itihas (1929) by Ramchandra Shukla, that a distinct Hindu cultural and symbolic identity was finally codified and materialised by purging Hindi literature of all influences of Urdu and Persian. We can say that Shukla’s book did to the self-image of the Hindi speaking public, which Aab-e-Hayat (1880) did to Urdu. It created a sanitised image of the self by purging it of any corrupting influences and the organic interaction of languages and literatures over the course of centuries. King (1978) notes that the animosity and the desire to ‘correct’ historical wrongs exceed to such an extent that Pandit Gauri Datta wrote a play called Nagari aur Urdu ka Swang Arthaat Nagari aur Urdu ka Ek Naatak, which shows a prosperous land being ruled by Rani Nagari. This land was overtaken by Begum Persian and then her daughter Begum Urdu (114-115). Secondly, the project of cleaning up Hindi from influences of other languages like Braj and Awadhi, and sideling scripts like Kaithi and Mahaajani, resulted in educational opportunities and social status being confined to a narrow caste population confined within a particular geographical area[footnoteRef:5]. [5: This continues unabated in Independent India where these scripts have become virtually extinct. The literary languages of medieval North India like Braj and Awadhi too have suffered a similar fate.

The origin of these divides between Hindi and Urdu and the ascription of a religious identity to the two can be traced back to two educational institutions established by the British, namely the Fort William College in Calcutta in 1800, and the Delhi College established in 1825. The Hindustani Department of the Fort William College brought about the proliferation of the vernacular printing press, along with the rapid modernisation of Indian vernaculars. The Hindustani department of the College, under John Gilchrist, produced extensive works on the grammar and lexicon of Hindustani, which was understood to be Urdu. The Bhakha Munshi of the Department Lallulalji made advances in the Modern Hindi prose in the Nagari script. Zaidi (2015) claims that it was under the patronage Professor William Price, who succeeded Gilchrist, that the foundation of linguistic separatism was laid and Hindi and Urdu came to be understood as two languages written in separate scripts and using separate vocabularies (160-161).

With the divide between Hindi and Urdu increasing rapidly in the 20th century, there came into existence a defined group that was similar in its linguistic expression and literary imagination which gained monopoly over the Hindi language, having defined it radically in opposition to Urdu or Hindustani. This group was almost completely homogenous in its caste and class structure and exercised unprecedented domination over institutes of education that provided education in Hindi. They identified with each other through the common codes of language and religion (often one standing for the other) and a shared cultural heritage (real or imaginary). In their totality, they gave birth to what Orsini (2002) calls the Hindi Public Sphere. She claims that the Hindi intellectuals of early 20th used the terms Rashtra and Jati to refer to the political and the cultural aspects of collective identity. She also highlights the fact that this Hindi speaking populace was spread far apart over the Hindi heartland and thus not all who identified with the cause of Hindi necessarily speak as their first language, or even practice the same cultural and religious traditions. Thus, for them to enter the imagined community of Jati and Rashtra, and participate in the public sphere of deliberation over questions of nation, culture and identity, it was necessary to profess one language that would be universally understood. Orsini says:

Choices in matters of language mirror attitudes to the political sphere. ‘Pure Hindi’ mirrored, and brought into being every time it was used, an (ideal) community of serious, equal, educated, and public minded Indian citizens, without any visible marker apart from education and familiarity with cultural tradition: differences of caste and status were thus pushed outside (written) language. Similarly, according to this normative attitude only the matters that appeared under the Jatiy or national ‘guise’ were fit to be discussed. Anything that appeared particular or heterogeneous was, as a consequence, not part of the ‘public’. This of course does not mean that it disappeared: only, that it did not become part of the public self-definition of what is ‘Indian’ (13).

Such symbolic exclusion of caste identity from matters of public discourse, claims Orsini, had the effect of concentrating the privilege of participation in matters of collective interest in the hands of a small number of caste groups, primarily Brahmins, Khatris and Thakurs[footnoteRef:6]. [6: This influence of caste groups on ideas of a ‘pure’ Hindi language can also be seen in the Constituent Assembly debates on language in 1949. In a voting that took place within the Congress Party, the supporters of Sanskritised Hindi won with 78 votes in their favour, as opposed to 77 in favour of Hindustani.

With the partition of India and Urdu becoming the National Language of Pakistan, these differences of identities only became more pronounced. This was the literary and linguistic landscape that Fazli inherited, and it is this landscape that his use of Hindustani as the language of his poetry acquires importance. Fazli’s poetry is the poetry of the everyday, and his ideas emerge from everyday experiences in the city. His language therefore conveys ideas through fluent use of words in everyday speech, words that are used frequently in the bazaars and homes[footnoteRef:7]. His vocabulary consists of a generous mixture of Sanskrit and Persian words and thus defies attempts of strict categorisation under Hindi and Urdu. A look at some of his works will make things clearer. In his poem “Sansaar” (The World), From Lafzon ka Pul (1971) he writes: [7: It should be noted that one of the objections against using Hindustani as the National language was that it was supposed to be the language of the bazaars and was therefore considered incapable of carrying out legal and administrative functions of the State.

Fazli’s language takes its origins from everyday speech, and thus shuns any attempts at purification, either through excessive Persianisation, or Sanskritisation. His language is the one that is understood all over the ‘Hindi’ belt, and is the Hindustani that was strenuously altered and converted into the highly sanitised literary Urdu and Hindi, with specialised vocabularies that would only be accessible to the educated elite, as has been discussed earlier. Most of his poems can be seen to be employing this vocabulary that widely understood. In doing so, Fazli can be seen to be taking a stand in favour of Hindutani, and against the deliberate imposition of literariness through employment of convoluted and obscure diction. This comes as a reaction to the increasingly separatist debates on the nature of Hindustani, with two states (India and Pakistan) claiming their version of it as real and official. Such a use of language where Sanskrit and Persio-Arabic diction seamlessly flows into one another also stands to contrast the religious identity ascribes to language before and after Partition. Such a usage of language allows Fazli to question the state sponsored construction of language and create an alternative space for the propagation of linguistic modes that counter the hegemonic ways through which the state imposes a prescribed language for public discourse. This is what Nancy Fraser (1990) calls Counterpublics.

Fraser builds on Habermas’ idea of the public sphere as highlighted in his The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). She claims that while Habermas is mindful of the discursive relation that exists between the public and the state in democratic societies through legal guarantees like free speech, free press, and parliamentary democracy where parliamentarians represent the people, at the same time he seems to overlook the fact that his study primarily focuses on the burgeois society in a social order where the newly emergent privatised economy was sharply differentiated from the state. Secondly, Fraser argues that the public sphere Habermas speaks of did not include all sections of society since it primarily consisted of educated property owning men, who were ‘intent on displacing... the various popular and plebeian strata it aspired to rule’ (60). Fraser notes that these burgeois publics were never historically the only publics seeking to voice their opinions. There were peasants, students and elite women too who aspired to have a channel to voice opinions and have a say in the matters of state. It is these groups who were effectively left out of bureoise discursive formations that Fraser calls Subaltern Counterpublics. These groups are ‘parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs’ (67).

In speaking of counterpublics, Fraser raises the important question of identity. She claims that public spaces, along with being fields for the formation of discursive opinions, are also places of enactment of social identities. For her participation becomes the way of using one’s own language and thus becoming the way for the consolidation of one’s identity. This is what Fazli tries to do with his use of Hindustani, instead of either Hindi or Urdu. By employing a heterogeneous vocabulary he foregrounds his identity as the inheritor of a syncretic culture. This also explains his references to Kabir, Mira and Khusro in his poetry, along with the practice of the Doha genre. He is one of the few Urdu poets who have written in this form. Fazli’s acceptance of this linguistic mode came at a time while both Hindi and Urdu scholars, in post independence India were trying to usurp its everyday nature and function as a link language for a large part of the population, while at the same time disapproving of its existence. Alok Rai (2003) claims that: Once it became crucial for the Hindi-Hindu savarna proto-elite in the period after 1857 to make space for themselves in colonial administration- the shared and overlapping linguistic space had to be divided and split up. Then the name Hindustani could mean either that overlapping part of the continuum which was common to both Hindi and Urdu... or Hindustani could mean that part of the continuum which was neither Hindi nor Urdu. As the politics of dissention gathered steam... ‘Hindustani’ came to denominate the terminological compromise which was advocated by Gandhi (76).

Gandhian ideas on language seen to exercising considerable influence on Fazli’s poetry as it was Gandhi who advocated the cause of linguistic autonomy and deciding on a language that could serve as the language of communication between all sections of Indian society. For Gandhi, as has been noted by Lelyveld (1993), this language had to be Hindustani without being unnaturally influenced by excessive use of Sanskrit or Persian. It was one of Gandhi’s great important projects to consolidate one language for India that would help to override differences of religion, caste and class; and for Gandhi only Hindustani could serve this purpose (668-669).

In this light, Fazli’s language can be said to be working in the direction that Gandhi aspired for Hindustani, i.e., a language that would be equally accessible and widespread so as to serve as the link language for the Indian populace. Indeed, this was the language in which most voices of freedom struggle found expression. In employing a diction and a form of linguistic expression that stands in opposition to the state sponsored ideas of purity of language and stability of religious identity, Fazlis’s poetry can be said to be pointing out the inherent flaws of such formulations that try to sanitise languages and segregate them in neat compartments. This fluidity of Fazlis’s idiom of poetic expression allows one to see contested languages like Hindi and Urdu as existing beyond manufactured and state imposed religious identities.