[This article has undergone a few edits after being published. I see that the whole discussion is revolving around issues peripheral to the theme of the post. In this post, I am denouncing the concept of purity being attached to Sanskritized Hindi, so I have removed bits I care less about and which are not directly relevant to the issue.]

14th September is celebrated in India as Hindi Divas (हिंदी दिवस). Foreigners often find it weird that India needs to celebrate ‘Hindi Day’—one doesn’t usually hear of ‘French (language) Day’ being celebrated in France or ‘English Day’ being celebrated in England. But in a country like India with no single linguistic identity, days like this make a reasonable amount of sense.

Anyhow, among many programs that will be held around the country today will be programs to promote what is called Shuddha Hindi (शुद्ध हिंदी). To put it simply, Shuddha Hindi, which I will call SH in this post, is Hindi that has been stripped of all words that do not derive from Sanskrit. There will be Shuddha Hindi speech competitions, where points will be docked off for every single use of a word of Arabic or Persian origin. I don’t think I am wrong in guessing that somewhere in the country, people would be handing out SH glossaries to help you purify your language.

In SH, words like मौका or तोहफ़ा or phrases like आम तौर पर are down-market—अवसर, उपहार and साधारणतः is what they should be. Proponents of SH claim that non-SH forms are a result of the bastardization which has corrupted our pure matrubhasha, the one which has its origin in the glorious language of Gods, our very own Sanskrut. I extend my full support to any activities that are for promotion of Hindi among our people but I am sorry I can’t be guilty of this linguistic imperialism.

Whose Hindi is Shuddh Hindi? It’s certainly not the Hindi that popular media uses—Bollywood has largely embraced Hindi-Urdu, whose vocabulary can be adjusted to choose the target register or dialect. Bollywood songs use Hindi-Urdu. We speak Hindi-Urdu. Nor is Shuddha Hindi the Hindi that Premchand, arguably the most famous and prolific Hindi-Urdu writer of the 20th century wrote. A quick look at any Munshi Premchand piece will show that he used both Sanskritized and loan-words in his writings. Whose Hindi is it? Hardly anyone associates with it, and many have trouble even understanding it. Around the world, a lot of political issues have language at the core—the whole Catalan v/s Castillian Spanish is a prime example—but those people fight so that their version of the language gets official recognition. In India, we have movements to go back to a version no-one uses.

There are two issues here, not one—

  1. The imposition of a so-called prestige dialect. This is wrong but it’s often necessary for purposes of standardization. Please note, however, that standardization can exist without imposition.
  2. The idea that Sanskritized Hindi is superior. This is what I have a greater problem with. To believe and propound that Sankritized Hindi is the true Hindi, as Arvind explained in his comment below, is to ignore the very development of the language and cast a blind eye to the fact that the Hindi we speak today is no more Sanskrit than the English we speak today is Latin. Sanskritized Hindi is NOT some extinct language that we need to ‘preserve’. As a point of academic interest, we could maybe maintain a distinction, of course, but believing that you are doing some sort of linguistic preservation by trying to uphold Sanskritized Hindi is just plain delusional. Of course if the situation merits it, choose a more Sanskrit register—Mahabharat’s characters, assuming they existed, never spoke Hindi, let alone a Sanskritized one. But it makes sense for them to speak SH on television as the language of that time couldn’t have had the influence of Urdu, Persian, Arabic etc.

Proponents of SH lament the influence of the Mughal empire on Hindi, which brought about a significant change in the language. Hindi, according to them, should only be the Sansritized version. It’s bad enough that Sanskrit has to bear all the faux-linguistic stupidity that is piled upon it, but please keep religio-political propaganda out of a language that a significant proportion of our population speaks.

This is also probably why most organizations that seem to work for the promotion of Hindi never manage to reach their target audience. They seem to be full of a bunch of snobs forever stuck up with some antiquated version of the language that nobody uses nor associates with.

You want to know why I care? I like Hindi. I like the language, and would want it to be promoted so that more people can associate with it (that’s different from shoving the language down or up people’s alimentary canal just so that they speak it). But as long as people stick around with this atavistic attitude, I am only going to cringe at the thought of being associated with a pro-Hindi organization.