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October     Last updated: October 28: 7:00 p.m.

Spell of Hindi on Pakistanis

Muzaffar Hussain

When the last time Atal Behari Vajpayee spoke in the United Nations General Assembly in Hindi, there was a great uproar raised by the self-proclaimed intellectuals and other sundry anglophiles including the parasitical among the English journalists, objecting to the great expenses it involved to the Indian Government. This time when the Prime Minister spoke in Hindi at the august house, the anglopholes were nowhere to be heard. Similar is this predicament of the Pakistanis who are allergic to anything even remotely associated with word Hindu, as also the language Hindi. Since they set their separate house after Partition, they try their level best to disabuse their masses of their age-old vocabulary full of Hindi words. Thus if fly to Pakistan and ride a taxicab from Karachi's Mohammed Ali Jinnah International Airport to enter the city then you cannot miss the hoardings on either side of the road. Most of them no doubt proclaim the niceties of the wares they advertise. But there are smaller boards which publicize government organised schemes or programmes. Many of them dilate on the literacy campaign or the environment awareness movement lanuched by the government.

On one such was printed Ped pragati ki nishani hai (Tree is a sign of progress) another said Ped qudrat ki sampatti hai (Tree is the wealth of Nature). When the Pakistan, who never tire of condemning Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan all the twenty-four hours of the day, use words like pragati (progress) or sampatti (wealth), one wonders why the Urdu equivalents like tarakki and daulat have not been used in a country whose declared national language is Urdu! Does the Pakistani government not know that the country, against which it is busy planning all sorts of incursions, has Hindi as its national language? And that the Pakistanis are merrily using Hindi expressions without any hesitation. There is no answer to this question either with the Urdu enthusiasts in Pakistan or to their Indian counterparts who never tire of maligning Hindi language. And the fact of the matter is that the magic of Hindi language does not recognize man-made artificial barriers, and its fascination influences not only its friends but its enemies also.

If we painstakingly analyse the releases of the Pakistani print and electronic media we cannot escape the conclusion that scores of chaste Hindi expressions are used without even a dropping of an eyelid. If one enters the Pakistani market place one is struck with the typically Indian expressions the merchants and the shoppers use without even being aware that they are paying an unintended tribute to their "congenital" adversaries. When a Pakistani loses his temper he easily lapses into Hindi expletives as a duck takes to water, and one is surprised to find echoes of Inidan gestures accompanying them. The same sala, gadha and suar are interspersed with other much more racy rebukes, all reflecting the similar racy reproaches one hears in Indian verbal bouts. Bhai is more often used than biradar. A Pakistani of Hyderabad or Lucknow origin would suffix it with jan as bhaijan, bhabhijan, etc. But there are some Hindi words the Pakistanis cannot do without. They are prem, dakghar, bhaiya, dam, ghar, roti, jivan, ghati, dharati, mol, tol, nai, dhobi, pinjara, dhandha, etc. Some of the days of a week also are described in Hindi: Somvar, Mangalvar and Budhvar. The largest-circulation daily Nava-i-Waqt gives Hindi month names and their tithis along with months and dates of Gregorian and Arabic calendars.

Strangely the Urdu newspapers not only use janab as Urdu counterpart of Mr, but they also style some persons as Shri. And while mentioning Atal Behari Vajpayee they even use Shriman and Sonia Gandhi is Shrimati Sonia Gandhi. Do they not know that the term Shri is not only a Hindi equivalent of Mr but it also means one of the deities of the Hindus? When those who day in and day out condemn Hindu deities do not shy away from using words that mean Hindu gods or goddesses, it can only be considered a magic spell of Hindi. Hindi and Urdu are quite similar, in fact if Urdu is written in the Devanagari script of Hindi it no longer remains Urdu, it becomes Hindi. The spoken language and its grammar is the same in both. But as the very formation of Pakistan was unnatural, there came a very deliberate attempt, an unnatural exercise, to weed out all the Hindi words from Urdu. Even the words of dialects such as Braj Avadhi, Bhojpuri, Malvi, etc. But like all unnatural schemes this koo was bound to fail. Because the masses could not be made to purge their common speech of all these "foreign" words. It was most ironic. Because all these dialects are part of the soil from ages. It was only after the eighth century that the Arabic and Persian words began to trickle down into the speech of the masses after the Muslim invaders began their inroads into the subcontinent.

Therefore, truly speaking, the Arabic and Persian words can be termed as "foreign" to the subcontinent. While the words of Braj, Bhojpuri, Avadhi or Malvi are indeed very much indigenous. The Pakistanis along with their Hindi-baiter Indian cousin should shun the Arabic or Persian words if at all they are so averse to "foreign" words. But blind dogma can never be countered with reason. This chauvinism went to such an extent that the Pakistanis began saying Allah Hafiz when they realised that Khuda in Khuda Hafiz hails from Iranian culture, which today belongs to the Shias of Iran, a bete noire for all Sunnis. Thus the Pakistanis' inability to do away with Hindi words from their "living speech is an indication that Hindi indeed is a natural speech, a "living speech" of the subcontinent. What keeps Hindi and Urdu apart is the "left-going" script of Urdu. If this dividing factor is removed then Pakistan has forty million Hindi-speaking population. Pakistani schools do not teach Hindi. But it is part of the "Indian studies". At one time Lahore University had courses in Hindi up to post graduate level.

But now in Pakistan only Karachi University has provision of Hindi studies. In the Karachi University building under the picture of Panini on the wall his name is given in English, Urdu and also Hindi. Pakistan proudly mentions Panini as its national hero. Many postal stamps sport Panini's pictures. The Hindi-lover in Pakistan Dr Shahida Habib says that if the Pakistanis intend to counter Indians in the field of ideology and thinking, Pakistanis will have to learn Hindi. In the Dayal Library in Lahore there are some 14,000 Hindi titles. Many Sanskrit manuscripts are lying there gathering dust of ages. Many people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar had migrated to Pakistan. They now even read poems by Ghalib and other Urdu stalwarts in Devnagari script published by Rajpal Publishing Co. Shahila Habib follows Ahmedia sect. Some years back when she visited Qadiyan in Gurdaspur district, she expressed her desire to translate in Urdu, Dinkar's Sanskriti ke Char adhyay. Hindi people are in the forefront in politicizing a language. They organise world Hindi conventions in Fiji, Trinidad and Mauritius. But when people of Indian origin are threatened in Fiji, these Hindi lovers cannot spare a word of sympathy for these overseas brothers. This apathy of Hindi-speaking people is the biggest impediment in the development of the language.