Progress Of Indic Languages Vs English

[Guest]

what is the origin of the word "Thaga" (thug)?

It starts appearing quite early in literature. Like Kabir's (~14th c) is full of this word - "mAyA maha-<b>Thagini</b> ham jAnI" (maya is maha-thagini I have known)and "kaun <b>ThagawA</b> nagariyA looTal ho?" (which thug has looted away the town?)

Does this word appear in Sanskrit sources too?

Is this word found in South in this or other forms?

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->what is the origin of the word "Thaga" (thug)?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wackypedia says:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Thuggee (or tuggee, ठग्गी) (from Hindi thag ‘thief’, from Sanskrit sthaga ‘scoundrel’, from sthagati ‘to conceal’)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Is this word found in South in this or other forms?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No i don't think so, Tamizh uses Thiruda for thief, we use Dhonga in Telugu.

[Guest]

Bharatvarsh, but a thug and a thief are different. For thief, Sanskrit user 'chauraH' which lives in Hindi as 'chor'.

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Bharatvarsh, but a thug and a thief are different. For thief, Sanskrit user 'chauraH' which lives in Hindi as 'chor'. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
True there is chora in sanskrit heavy Telugu for thief, I checked the skt dictionary, it shows:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->sthagana (p. 363) [ sthag-ana ] n. concealment; -ayita vya, fp. to be concealed; -ikâ, f. kind of bandage; betel-box.

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/romadict....table=macdonell<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

yes...that will probably explain. stha-ga: one who goes in disguise. a bahurUpaka with a purpose of stealing/looting.

what about lUTa (loot) itself? loot is a very old world in Hindi.

'lampaTa' and 'luchchA' - are these found in telugu/tamiZh? First one is solidly in Sanskrit and continues in Hindi. for luchcha - not sure.

what about 'DAkU' (from which came dacoit)?

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->what about lUTa (loot) itself? loot is a very old world in Hindi.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->H लूट lūṭ [Prk. लुंटा; S. लुण्टा], s.f. Depredation, plunder, pillage, spoil, booty:--lūṭ-ā-lūṭ, or lūṭ-ā-lūṭī, or lūṭ-ā-lāṭī, s.f.=lūṭ-pāṭ, q.v.:--lūṭ-bāz,

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologi...ct&display=utf8<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->लुण्टाक luNTaaka m. dacoit

http://spokensanskrit.de/index.php?script=...te&direction=AU<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->'lampaTa' and 'luchchA' - are these found in telugu/tamiZh? First one is solidly in Sanskrit and continues in Hindi. for luchcha - not sure.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Luccha is a term of abuse in Telugu (well not a strong dose of abuse), I am not sure what it means since I never used it (my abuses are more in the Omkaara range).

Lampatam is there, but in sanskrit heavy Telugu, means:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->lampaTam n. 1 difficulty, trouble, entanglement. 2 hindrance, obstruction, clog, impediment.

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologi...ct&display=utf8<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not used in everyday speech.

I don't think Tamizh has them.

Also Telugu has looti through urdu influence, used sometimes in Telangana dialect, we don't use it much.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->what about 'DAkU' (from which came dacoit)? <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->H डाकू ḍākū [Prk. डक्कुओ, डक्कुउ; S. दंष्टृ+कः], s.m. One of a gang of robbers, a 'dacoit,' robber, highwayman, freebooter, pirate (=ḍakait; syn. baṭ-pāṛ).

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologi...ct&display=utf8<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
We use BandhipOtu for dacoit.

Bodhi what is rainbow in Bhojpuri, Satrangi/Indhradhanush/Meghdhanush?

We use Vaanavillu/Harivillu/Indhradhanussu.

Also I wanted to ask, are Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj etc at present considered dialects of Hindi or have gained a separate language status?

I have a hard time understanding them (as in Omkara) mostly because of the accent but also some of the words I have never heard before, like for example nool for innocent, bwood usually uses bekasoor, native word I know is nirdhosh, do you have any idea where nool comes from?

It is used in "O Saathi Re" from Omkara at 1:40:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=38p2K98OIG4

[Guest]

Thanks Bharatvarsh.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Luccha is a term of abuse in Telugu (well not a strong dose of abuse), I am not sure what it means since I never used it
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

It generally means a small-time chhota-mota pick-pocket scale thief.

however the original term in prakrit meant something entirely different. in Jain traditions, luchchaNa is a samskara. luchcha in that context means a sanyasi (shramaNa) who has pulled his (or her) hair oneself. (which is one of the steps in the process of tapascharya)

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->(my abuses are more in the Omkaara range).
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> I am trying to imagine.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->what is rainbow in Bhojpuri
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I have heard indradhanush (most frequent), and also ramadhanush (least frequent), and dhanuk. But I shall check with more authoritative sources and get back.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Also I wanted to ask, are Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Braj etc at present considered dialects of Hindi or have gained a separate language status?
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Bhojpuri, Braj, Bundelkhandi, Awadhi etc. are very much dialects today while Hindi is undoubtably the main language. A couple hundred years back Hindi of today or 'khadi-boli' of back then, was also one of the dialects like these. But because of the inherent flexibility it grew and was accepted as a common language by all dialects. The process was very natural.

The predecessor to khadi-boli was what is known as sadhukkadi boli - dialect of sadhus. There was a trend earlier that a large number of people used to just run away from homes and become sadhus. These sadhu-s used to roam around in groups. Since they came from all over the place - practically from whole India, a language evolved amongst them that was a khichadi of all sorts of dialects. This came to be known as "sadhukkadi". Kabir spoke this tongue in his discourses, so did Gorakh a few centuries before him and Nanak a few centuries after him. Even the writer of Bhaktamaal - whose mother tongue was telugu - used this sadhukkadi. So with that mixture, slowly developed a common khadi boli - and after much reformation in language, thanks to Bharatendu Harishchandra - we came at Hindi. (again, Harishchandra's mother tongue was Braja, with influence of Bangla since his family came from bengal)

Today, all these dialects are very alive, as peoples languages. At home vast majority will speak in these dialects. I always speak awadhi at home with my parents. Hindi remains the connecter language, and the medium of more intellectual and polished discourse.

Now there is emerging an unfortunate angle. A recent trend shows that some people of bhojpuri region are now taking offence at it being called a dialect. Bhojpuri intellectuals (with money coming from Fiji, Mauritius, Suriname, Holland etc.) these days call Hindi as a threat (not so much English or Urdu!!!) to the survival of their language. There was an ugly scene in the last years International Bhojpuri Conference at Varanasi, when chief guest (a known Hindi literature leader from the region) began speaking in Hindi and these boneheads shouted him down for not speaking in Bhojpuri. So he left in mid address.

A parallel film industry has also opened up in all these dialects, especially in Bhojpuri but also in others. Many of these films often do a brisk business throughout UP, Bihar, but also in MP, Chhattisgadh, Jharkhand and parts of Bangal. Santhali and Maithili are two more important dialects in the same league.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I have a hard time understanding them (as in Omkara) mostly because of the accent but also some of the words I have never heard before, like for example nool for innocent, bwood usually uses bekasoor, native word I know is nirdhosh, do you have any idea where nool comes from?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

If they speak slowly it is very easy to understand for any Sanskrit-leaning language speaker. But unfortunately some of these are spoken fast making it hard for the other to understand. The other thing is the conditioning to the words. Like in telugu we have lu, du, mu, vu in the end of the words, these dialects have also special sounds that are often appended to the root words. So once one gets an understanding of what will that sound be for each dialect, it becomes easy. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->

<b>nool</b>: I have not heard it used very frequently. But it comes from sanskrit 'Naval' meaning new, fresh, spot-less, therefore innocent. (usage Naval Chandra - new moon)

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A parallel film industry has also opened up in all these dialects, especially in Bhojpuri but also in others. Many of these films often do a brisk business throughout UP, Bihar, but also in MP, Chhattisgadh, Jharkhand and parts of Bangal. Santhali and Maithili are two more important dialects in the same league.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Thanks for the info.

This I would say is a good thing, we need less of Bollywood influence.

I do not know why outside of South, vernacular industries were obliterated by Bollywood, would be interesting to study.

It's good that nowadays there is some come back.

Gives some info about the development of Hindi in Surinam:

http://www.saxakali.com/indocarib/sojourner7a.htm

[Bharatvarsh]

Silappatikaram, any good translation in English?

My uni had the asshole "Kalaignar" Karunai's translation but it has gone missing.

Also Manimekalai.

[Bharatvarsh]

Another word is:

ThElu (swim, float in Telugu) = ThEl (swim in Gujarati)

Dictionary shows this as not derived from Sanskrit in Telugu:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->telu (p. 0555) [ tēlu ] telu. [Tel.] v. n. To float. To swim. To bathe.

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/romadict....ple&table=brown<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think its Tairna in Hindi.

[Hauma Hamiddha]

>Silappatikaram, any good translation in English?

Translation of VRR Dikshitar

>Also Manimekalai.
Translation of KS Aiyangar

these two are the best translations in my opinion.

[Bharatvarsh]

Thanks HH.

In Punjabi they use hanju for tears, does anyone know it's origin, i checked the dictionaries but couldn't find it, Hindi uses aasu which is from sanskrit.

[Bharatvarsh]

Proud "heritage" bestowed upon us by Urdu:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->UPROAR OVER URDU


The national demand for cow-protection and passing of processions before the mosques had challenged some unjust privileges which the residues of Islamic imperialism had continued to retain in the name of their �religion�. These demands, however, were not likely to damage their economic or social status in any manner. They could laugh in private at their strategy of trouncing the Hindus and seeking mass Muslim support, while pulling long faces in public. But the next thing that happened looked like hitting them where it could really hurt. That was the so-called Hindi Resolution passed by the Government of U.P. in April, 1900. The residues of Islamic imperialism now raised a howl as if heavens had fallen.


So long as Muslim rule had prevailed in many parts of the country, Persian had been the language of government and administration. All public services had been the monopoly of Muslims, mostly of foreign descent, except at the lowest levels where some Hindus were also allowed to serve after learning Persian. The ranks of the foreign Muslim fraternity had continued to be reinforced by fresh arrivals from all over the Islamic world. The vast majority of natives, Hindus as well as Muslim converts, had been helplessly dependent on scribes who knew Persian, whenever and wherever they came in contact with the administrative machinery.


The situation changed with the change of masters. The British replaced Persian by English in the higher echelons and by Urdu at the lower levels. The residues of Islamic imperialism had resented this change also but got reconciled to it because their privileged position in public services had not been affected. They began feeling uncomfortable only when Urdu also started getting replaced by local languages like Bengali, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu, etc. Muslims were not in a majority in these provinces except in Bengal, where also there was hardly any Muslim middle class and the Muslim peasantry had never known any language other than its native Bengali.


Meanwhile, pressure of public opinion was building up in Bihar, the Central Provinces and U.P., where Hindi, the mother tongue of the common people, had all along received a step-motherly treatment. Urdu was replaced by Hindi in the Central Provinces in 1872, and in Bihar in 1881. But the Government of U.P. continued to cold-shoulder Hindi due to the influence of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and his Aligarh lobby. It was only after 1894, when Antony MacDonell became the Lieutenant Governor, that a long-standing and just demand of the local people came up for an active review. But even a sympathetic Governor could not go the whole hog in favour of Hindi. He converted the language controversy into a competition of rival scripts. Nagari script was now placed on par with the Persian script, and both were made compulsory for all those who aspired for government service at certain levels where English was not essential.


It was only a small concession. The Muslims were still free to write Urdu in Persian script. But even this small concession to the common people was too much for the residues of Islamic imperialism. They raised a strong protest that their �lofty language� was being �brought down� to the level of �Hindî gandî. They pointed out that Hindus had been learning Urdu all these years, and that it was only their �hatred� for Islam and the Muslims which was leading them to neglect it in future. They added that next to Arabic and Persian, Urdu was the language of their �religion and culture�, and that Urdu could be written only in the Persian script. And they concluded that while the �prosperous and wily� Hindus had many avenues of employment, the �poor and simple� Muslims were solely dependent on government patronage.


MacDonell was not impressed. He told the Muslims that they already had their communal quota in terms of which a mere fourteen per cent of the provincial population had monopolised thirty-seven-and-a-half per cent of government jobs. But the Muslims were far from being mollified. They became extremely agitated under the leadership provided again by the Aligarh lobby. A pathetic couplet, composed by Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Secretary of the Aligarh College, now started circulating among the Muslims all over the province:

chal sãth ke hasrat dil-i-mahrûm se nikle,
ãshiq kã janaza hai zarã dhûm se nikle.
(Walk with [the bier] so that the longing [for love] may not linger in the hollowed heart. This is the funeral procession of your lover. Let it proceed with some song and dance.)
 

URDU HAD REMAINED A FOREIGN LANGUAGE


Before we pass on to the storm raised over Urdu by the residues of Islamic imperialism, we should like to quote what Professor Aziz Ahmad has said about this language. He writes: �The poets of Delhi, proud of the �pure� Urdu of the imperial camp, rejected the Dakani principle and practice of borrowing extensively from the Indian languages, especially if these borrowings were related to Hindu religion, culture and world-view� In this process imagery was drawn exclusively from Persian precedents, i.e., from the unseen and unexperienced sights, sounds and smells of Persia and Central Asia, rejecting totally the Indian sights, sounds and sensuous experience as materials regarded not sublime enough for poetic expression� It was a desperate unconscious clinging to the origins of the symbols of Muslim India�s cultural experience which had begun abroad, and an instinctive fear of being submerged into the Hindu cultural milieu. These modes of aesthetic appreciation, rooted so deeply in the essence of universal Islamic culture, remained more or less incomprehensible to the Hindu mind. Its reaction has been summed up by [S.K.] Chatterjee: �Throughout the whole range of Urdu literature in its first phase� the atmosphere of this literature is provokingly un-Indian - it is that of Persia. Early Urdu poets never so much as mention the great physical features of India - its Himalayas, its rivers like the Ganges, the Jamuna, the Sindhu, the Godavari, etc; but of course mountains and streams of Persia, and rivers of Central Asia are always there. Indian flowers, Indian plants are unknown; only Persian flowers and plants which the poet could see only in a garden. There was a deliberate shutting of the eye to everything Indian, to everything not mentioned or treated in Persian poetry� A language and literature which came to base itself upon an ideology which denied on the Indian soil the very existence of India and Indian culture, could not but be met with a challenge from some of the Indian adherents of their national culture; and that challenge was in the form of highly Sanskritized Hindi�.�2
 

YET URDU WON A VICTORY


This was the language which the residues of Islamic imperialism wanted to impose upon the common people, Hindus and Muslim converts, till the end of time. Some years earlier, they had organised a Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental Defence Association of Upper India. Mohsin-ul-Mulk converted this body into an Urdu Defence Association. It was decided to call a conference of leading Muslims from all over North India to discuss the Hindi Resolution and to draft a representation to the Lieutenant Governor. Meanwhile, leading Muslims had spread out in the district towns of U.P. to whip up a mass hysteria. The cries of �Islam in danger� were heard as far as Lahore in the Punjab, Dacca in Bengal, Bombay in Maharashtra, and Madras in South India. Finally, a conference was held at Lucknow in August, 1900. It was attended by 400 delegates from the Punjab, Bombay Presidency, Central Provinces, U.P. and elsewhere. The Mullahs, landlords, merchants, lawyers, journalists and others who had flocked to the conference called upon the �Muslim masses� to defend their �religion and culture� with all their might. Mohsin-ul-Mulk thundered: �Although we have not the might of the pen our hands are still strong enough to wield the might of the sword.�


Nothing came out of the Hindi Resolution of the government. MacDonell was soon succeeded by LaTouche who wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, that MacDonell �went too far in acknowledging Hindi as a language�. For a long time afterwards, no bilingual examinations were held and no government orders were issued in the Nagari script. In fact, the number of Muslims in government services increased in subsequent years.


The cat came out of the bag in October 1906 when the residues of Islamic imperialism, who had held another conference in Lucknow in the meanwhile, drew up a Memorandum to the Viceroy, Lord Minto. The Memorandum was presented by a delegation of 35 Muslim notables led by the Agha Khan. It was a prelude to the formation of the Muslim League, later on in the same year. The Memorandum reminded the British rulers that the Muslims had been the ruling class for a long time and requested that the government �give due consideration to the position that they [Muslims] occupied in India a little more than a hundred years ago�. It insisted that the �political importance� of the Muslim community be conceded. Political importance, in turn, was spelled out in the following words: �The political importance of a community to a considerable extent gains strength or suffers detriment according to the position that the members of that community occupy in the service of the State.�


Professor Francis Robinson sums up the situation when he says that �Aligarh College and the All India Muslim League were founded to preserve a strong position, not to improve a weak one� and that �It was the threat of becoming backward, rather than backwardness itself, which encouraged U.P. Muslims to organize for politics, and their power in the province helped them to do so with effect.�3 Backwardness in this context meant becoming equal to the rest of their countrymen - a prospect which the residues of Islamic imperialism have always dreaded as worse than death.

http://voiceofdharma.com/books/muslimsep/ch9.htm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
To cite an example, listen to this newsanchor:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zBLCcyAmSkE

I understand Hindi quite well but besides a few words I can't understand nothing in what the anchor guy is saying.

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Thayaar is used often in Thamizh, I never thought it sounded alien. Is that Urdu? Do they have 'th' sound in Arabic (I don't know, that's why I'm asking)? Even if not, it could still be Urdu from its Persian vocabulary, I suppose. Where did you find out that it's not indigenous, Bharata? <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sorry for late reply but didn't notice the question before, anyway here is where i found it:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->P taiyār, vulg. tayār (for A. t̤aiyār, 'sharp, quick'), adj. Ready, alert, willing; prepared, ready-made, finished, completed, complete; fully developed, plump, fat (as an animal, &c.); in full vigour, arrived at puberty

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologi...ct&display=utf8<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It always sounded foreign to me, so i looked it up.

Native as I said is either Sannaddh or Siddha.

[Shambhu]

<b>Tongue-tracker to crack India babel</b>

CHARU SUDAN KASTURI

New Delhi, Dec. 22: India is about to start a massive exercise to catalogue the nation’s myriad known and unknown languages for the first time since an incomplete British effort over a century ago.

The New Linguistic Survey of India (NLSI) also aims to salvage languages on the brink of extinction, officials in charge of the project said.

Although a count of mother tongues — languages and dialects — can be based on census data, a linguistic survey is necessary because little is known about most of these languages.

Several remain “unclassified”, their position on the language tree unclear. The confusion has been deepened by the fluctuating count of mother tongues as reported by the various censuses (see chart).

The NLSI, likely to start in early 2008, will span a decade and involve 12,000 surveyors. It will be conducted by several university departments and monitored by the Mysore-based Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL).

Briton George Abraham Grierson carried out the first and only recorded linguistic survey in India between 1898 and 1927. But he and his 100,000 surveyors did not cover southern India and skimmed over the Northeast, which has the highest density of languages in the country.

“The information is dated. Scholars have also raised concerns about the reliability of its data,” CIIL director Udaya Narayan Singh said.

Classified South Asian languages belong to at least four big families — Indo-European (most belong to the sub-group Indo-Aryan), Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan, he said. But several other languages have not been assigned a family, and next to nothing is known about them.

The NLSI’s priority will be classification, but with growing evidence that languages mutate, merge or simply disappear, the survey will also study their evolution. Linguists say dominant languages tend to eat into the geographical and demographic terrains of “minority” languages.

Of classified-language speakers in India, 73 per cent use mother tongues belonging to the Indo-Aryan family (573 languages), Singh said. Hindi, spoken by 33.8 crore people, tops the list. The Dravidian set (153) is spoken by 24 per cent. The 226 Sino-Tibetan and 65 Austro-Asiatic tongues are spoken by less than 1 per cent each.

“The extinction threat is faced by not just the smaller languages in each group but entire families,” Singh said.

The HRD ministry is providing Rs 200 crore and the UGC Rs 80 crore under the 11th five-year plan.


http://telegraphindia.com/1071223/jsp/fron...ory_8700894.jsp

[Bodhi]

Heritage of Urdu: partition and islami imperialism.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Kargil, Ladakh and Kashmir:
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Role of Urdu and divisive politics</span>
By Dr Kunal Ghosh

In India we usually call the Pakistan occupied part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir PoK. Baltistan is that part of PoK that is contiguous with the Kargil region of north western Ladkh. In turn the north-eastern part of Laddakh is contiguous with the western Tibetan plateau. The status of Baltistan and western Tibetan plateau are disputed between Pakistan and India and India and China. Baltistan, Ladakh and western Tibetan plateau are now under the control of three different countries, but peoples of these three regions are of the same race and speak the same language. Baltistan was part of Ladakh district before 1947. Fig 1 shows a map of the state of Jammu and Kashmir in which these three regions can be seen. The original Laddakh district is shown by a double line boundary. The approximate map of 25-year-old Kargil district is shown south of the Line of Control (LOC) by a single line. The town of Skardu that lies north-west of Kargil town across the LoC is the capital of Baltistan. Pakistan’s tourism promotion website refers to Baltistan as “Little Tibet” (see Fig 2, a page from Pakistani tourism website). Fig 3 shows an enlargement of Pakistan’s depiction of PoK and Baltistan within it. Baltis call their land by a Tibetan name “Baltiyul” which is derived from the original Tibetan script called ‘Balti’ that was prevalent in the area before Islamization (to Shia faith) took place in the 16th century during the reign of king Ghota-Cho-Senge. Islamization took place late in these parts, about three centuries later than in Kashmir valley. Thereafter the Arabic Nasq script was introduced. A Buddhist minority exists even now in Baltistan of PoK, although very thin on the ground. The part of Ladakh district that came to India has in its north-western part, around the town of Kargil, a Muslim majority. As one moves in the south-easterly direction the Buddhist population increases and in Zanskar and Leh they become a majority. Buddhists of Ladakh retained the traditional script called Bodhi (alternatively, Ladakhi) of Tibetan origin and they call their language Ladakhi. The Nasq (Arabic) script became popular with Muslims, and since it came to India via Persia, it is often called Persian script. The language written in Nasq is called Balti. In a sense the relationship between Nasq-Balti and Bodhi-Ladakhi is similar to that between Nasq-Urdu and Devnagari-Hindi.

Initially the sparsely populated Ladakh region consisted of a single district called ‘Ladakh’ (as shown in Fig. 1) with its capital at Leh. When Sheikh Abdullah was brought out of imprisonment and re-instated as the Chief Minister in the later half of the 1970s, he created a few new districts and sub-divisions along communal lines in different parts of the state. A Muslim-majority sub-division called Gool was carved out of composite Reasi sub-division in Jammu region and Ladakh district was bifurcated into Muslim-majority Kargil and Buddhist-majority Leh. Further, Buddhist-majority Zanskar subdivision was mischievously included in Kargil district instead of in Leh district. So now there remains no district called Ladakh, which was the original name. However, the whole composite region is still called Ladakh, as before, and that has significant legal implications.

<b>Language and script </b>
Between Balti and Ladakhi all verbs and 90 per cent of words are in common (Kazmi 1996). The following tables from Kazmi (1996) give an illustrative sample.

These tables serve to illustrate two important features. Firstly, the languages of Baltistan. of PoK and Ladakh of India are practically identical and should be classified as two dialects of the same language. They are given two different names because they are written in two different scripts. Secondly, they are a world apart from the north Indian languages such as Kashmiri, Urdu, Hindi etc of the Indo-European family. The centre of Balti is the Skardu town of POK and the centre of Ladakhi is the Leh town of Laddakh. The Kargil town of Ladakh lies in between geographically. Hence its language too should be somewhere in between Balti and Ladakhi. This implies that the Kargil speech and Leh speech are practically indistinguishable.

<b>Education</b>
Traditionally, the Buddhist Gompas taught one son of every family how to read the scriptures. Western education was started first by Moravian Mission in Leh in 1889. The subjects taught were Ladakhi, Urdu, English, Geography, Nature Study, Arithmetic, Geometry and Bible Study. It is to be noted that mother tongue Ladakhi and two other useful languages were included in the curriculum (Wikipedia 2006).

After Independence, the Jammu and Kashmir government started opening schools that taught the pupils in Urdu medium till age 14 and thereafter switched to English medium. It is obvious that the Jammu and Kashmir government made a deliberate policy of dropping the mother tongue. On the other side of LoC Pakistan government was doing the same thing by imposing Urdu on the Balti-speaking people of the so-called ‘Little Tibet’ of Baltistan (Kazmi 1996). Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) was started in 1988 that campaigned to shape public opinion for education reform. As a result of their movement, the mother tongue started replacing Urdu as the medium since 1993. The Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) came into existence in 1995 after the act concerned was passed in the Legislative Assembly.

Urdu and the Arabic script have had a long spell since 1947, owing to the language policy of the state government. Hence it is likely that in Kargil district the script is Arabic (Nasq) in the Muslim-majority north-western parts and Bodhi in Zanskar, the Buddhist-majority south-eastern sub-division. The language is either called Balti or Ladakhi, depending on the script used. Since 2001 a series of steps have been taken, which spells doom for the language of Kargil, and makes separation of Kargil from Ladakh and its merger with Kashmir almost inevitable.

<b>Impending separation</b>
Since 2001 the Indian army has been opening Urdu-medium primary schools in Kargil to promote literacy, as a part of its Sadbhavana (meaning goodwill) program (Jha 2001). Evidently this was on advice from Jammu and Kashmir government, while the Central government was oblivious and lacked any coherent language policy. It should be noted that SECMOL’s mother-tongue-first policy, which was supported by LAHDC, had been in place for previous 8 years. Yet the Indian army followed a policy that ran counter to SECMOL’s. Why didn’t the army start schools in Balti medium in Kargil? There is only one answer to this question. There is an all pervasive language ideology permeating the Central government, Jammu and Kashmir Government and the Indian Army. It says, “Urdu is the language of the Muslim”.

(The author is a Professor and can be contacted at Aerospace Engineering, IIT Kanpur; email: kunal@iitk.ac.in)

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.p...pid=188&page=30
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Above has tables showing words in Balti and Ladakhi with English meanings.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Kargil, Ladakh and Kashmir:
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Role of Urdu and divisive politics—II</span>

Unfortunately and ironically, Pakistan is also an adherent of this ideology and had tried to impose Urdu on Bengali Muslims of erstwhile East Pakistan, leading to break up of Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh.

Imposition of Urdu would break a linguistic continuity and distance the people of Kargil from Leh. In July 2003, the Congress-PDP (People’s Democratic Party) coalition government created a separate development council for Kargil, with a strange name, “Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council for Kargil”. The PDP, headed by father and daughter duo, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Mehbooba Mufti, appointed a seven-member committee to prepare a position paper on self-rule of Jammu and Kashmir (Chatterjee 2006). In a recent speech in New Delhi, Mehbooba outlined her ideas about self-rule: “PDP would like the state to be divided into three regions, Leh-Ladakh, Kashmir and Jammu, each having its own legislature (Chatterjee 2006).”

Mehbooba has coined a new term ‘Leh-Ladakh’. She is silent on Kargil. The implications are ominous. Presumably Kargil would be merged with Kashmir under one legislature. It should be noted that as a whole Kargil district of Ladakh has a Muslim majority, although its Zanskar sub-division is predominantly Buddhist. The process of separating the Muslim-dominated area of Ladakh from Ladakh started early and developed in four phases so far. The following are the ‘landmark’ events in this process:

<b>First Phase: </b>
As has already been mentioned, it was Sheikh Abdullah who set the ball rolling by creating the separate Muslim-majority district called Kargil. Since then a terminological shift has been promoted in the mass media. A practice has developed in the media to identify Leh district alone as Ladakh, and treat Kargil as a separate entity outside Ladakh. The latest war between India and Pakistan is called Kargil war, instead of Ladakh war. A popular misconception has been promoted all over India as if Kargil is not a part of Ladakh.

<b>Second Phase: </b>
In 2001, this process received a windfall in the form of the “Sadbhavna” programme, launched by General Arjun Ray of the Indian Army, in Kargil district (Hindustan Times 2001). The programme is a praiseworthy initiative aiming to win the hearts and minds of the people. However, as a part of the programme Urdu-medium schools are being opened in the region and that is unfortunate, because the people of Kargil are primarily Balti-Ladakhi speakers. There is a linguistic continuum from Pakistan-occupied Baltistan (a part of the northern areas of Jammu and Kashmir, with Skardu as capital) to Ladakh and further east into Tibet. Ladakhi is a regional variant of western Tibetan and Balti of Baltistan in turn is a variant of Ladakhi. Kazmi (1996) a citizen of Baltistan (PoK) observes the following on the relationship between Balti and Ladakhi:

“Apparently, Balti is, at the moment, cut off from its sister languages of Ladakh but has 80-90 per cent of nouns, pronouns, verbs and other literary and grammatical characters in common…. We can, however, term Balti and Bodhi of Ladakh as separate dialects, but not separate languages.”

As far as script duality for the same language is concerned, the Balti-Ladakhi pair is similar to the Urdu-Hindi pair. However, there are major differences. Excepting verbs and pronouns, almost all vocabulary of Indian origin (Sanskrit and non-Sanskrit) has been expelled from Urdu and replaced by Persio-Arabic (Ghosh 1994, Ghosh and Kumar 2005). That is not the case with Balti as vocabulary of Tibetan origin is very much retained. The differences between Balti and Ladakhi are mostly regional. Between Urdu and Hindi that is not the case, and the differences between them are extensive and an all-India phenomenon.

Whatever view one takes, the language of Kargil is either Balti or Ladakhi. Both Balti and Ladakhi are well-developed languages of Tibeto-Burman origin. Maharaja Hari Singh imposed Urdu on a Kashmiri speaking populace by starting Urdu primary schools. At least Kashmiri and Urdu belong to the same North Indian family of languages and there is some remote affinity. For instance, the verbs and pronouns are derivatives of Sanskrit words in both Kashmiri and Urdu, as the table shows:

English Sanskrit Kashmiri Urdu
You twam tsa tum
He sah sa wah
Eat khad khun khana
Do karan karan karna

On the other hand, Balti/Ladakhi being of Tibeto-Burman family is as far from Urdu as chalk is from cheese. Verbs, pronouns, nouns, adjectives are all different. The uninformed and short-sighted move of General Arjun Ray has interrupted a linguistic continuity from Baltistan of PoK to Ladakh of India to western Tibetan plateau. In fact imposition of Urdu on Kargil is bound to affect the morale of Balti people in PoK who are struggling against Urdu imposition themselves (Kazmi 1996). And it is likely to demoralize people of Leh who are trying to earn a place for their language in the state of Jammu and Kashmir and who too may be the next victim of Urdu hegemony.

<b>Third Phase: </b>
The third phase started when the present PDP-Congress coalition came into power in Jammu and Kashmir in 2002. The Common Minimum Programme (CPM) of the coalition says (Hindu 2002):

“The government shall grant full powers to the Autonomous Hill Council for Leh, which has hitherto been deprived of its legitimate powers. Efforts will be made to persuade the people of Kargil to accept a similar Autonomous Hill Council for Kargil.”

When the CMP was written, there was no Autonomous Hill Council for Leh. There was only the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC). Why did the two parties use this mischievous and deceitful language? What was the ulterior motive? There is only one conclusion that can be drawn. Both Congress and PDP were conspiring to politically separate the Muslim-majority Kargil from Buddhist-majority Ladakh. Another interpretation is possible—PDP set this as a condition for alliance and the Congress swallowed it for its greed of political power. It is noteworthy that there was no demand for a separate council from the people of Kargil. Even then, a separate council was being foisted on them from above. The intention was to create a religio-political division where only a religious difference with strong syncretic and even marital links between Buddhists and Muslim existed. This action of the Congress is comparable to its political move in Kerala in the 1950s and 1960s, whereby the ban on the Muslim League was removed, a coalition government with it was formed and eventually a Muslim-majority district of Malappuram was created.

The promise of the CMP was fulfilled in July 2003 when the coalition Government formed the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council for Kargil (LAHDC for Kargil). A strange name indeed! It formed also the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council for Leh (LAHDC for Leh). Why such strange and tortuous names? If we call ‘Kanpur Development Authority’ by the name Uttar Pradesh Development Authority for Kanpur’, it would be considered absurd. According to a bill passed in Jammu and Kashmir Assembly an autonomous council is legally valid only for Ladakh. Hence an entity called “Autonomous Development Council for Kargil’ would be legally invalid. This explains the ridiculous contortions in nomenclature which is seemingly legally valid (although I am not sure and it should be challenged in a court) and at the same time serves the purpose of separation of Kargil. The religion-based division of Ladakh has been extended to a sub-division of Kargil—only three council seats out of 30 have been allocated to the overwhelmingly Buddhist Zanskar subdivision. The aggrieved people of Zanskar, both Buddhists and Muslims, boycotted the July 2003 election to LAHDC-for-Kargil (Hindu 2003).

<b>Fourth Phase: </b>
The fourth phase has started with the declaration of Mehbooba Mufti outlining her ideas about so-called “self-rule”. Leh-Ladakh would get a separate Legislative Assembly. But Kargil will likely be joined with Kashmir under the jurisdiction of the Legislative Assembly at Srinagar. If this scenario comes true, then the following is likely to happen:

Leh-Ladakh Assembly will function in Ladakhi and Jammu Assembly will function in Dogri. Kashmir will continue to be administered in Urdu. It cannot possibly switch over to Kashmiri with Balti-speaking Kargil on tow. So people of Kashmir will once again be deprived of the right to education and administration in Kashmiri, their mother tongue. It should be remembered that Kashmiris have always described Kashmiri as their mother tongue, and not Urdu, in census after census. (This should be contrasted with the fact that Muslims of Andhra and Karnataka declare Urdu their mother tongue, although what they speak can at best be called pidgin Urdu and they are more fluent in Telugu and Kannada.)

If Kashmir retains Urdu and abandons Kashmiri, Muslim-majority Doda district of Jammu is likely to demand to be separate form Jammu and merged with Kashmir. It would be persuaded to opt for Urdu written in Arabic script instead of Dogri written in Devnagari, although its speech is Dogri. Little differences with Dogri will be invented and separation will be demanded. PDP surely and even National Conference probably would encourage this tendency with Congress as always playing an opportunistic unprincipled role.

<b>Conclusion </b>
People of Baltistan (of PoK), Kargil and Leh, all parts of the original Ladakh district, speak the same language, but employ two different scripts, Ladakhi (Bodhi) and Arabic (Nasq). Pakistan has a long-standing policy of imposing Urdu while suppressing vernaculars. This stems from the language ideology that Urdu alone is the language of the Muslims of the subcontinent. The language policy of the Jammu and Kashmir government seems to be no different. It is busy suppressing the use of the mother tongue in Kargil district. This policy is unfair to the people of Kargil and particularly so to the people of Zanskar subdivision who are predominantly Buddhist. Clever steps are being taken to extend Kashmiri political hegemony over Kargil to reinforce the Urdu hegemony. The result would be separation of Kargil from Ladakh, where lie its racial and linguistic roots. Kargil people would eventually lose their language.

(The author is a Professor and can be contacted at Aerospace Engineering, IIT Kanpur, kunal@iitk.ac.in)

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.p...pid=189&page=26
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[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Urdu: Misrepresenting Indian Muslims
By Meenakshi Jain

The Mulayam Singh government’s approval of the proposed Muhammad Ali Jauhar Urdu, Persian & Arabic University at Rampur appears to be prompted more by considerations of electoral gain than national weal. It also betrays scant awareness of India’s linguistic history. Not one of the three languages selected for patronage has historically enjoyed wide usage among the Muslim masses, the vote bank targeted for appeasement. While Arabic and Persian were languages of the religious and administrative classes during the heydays of Muslim rule, even Urdu, a language of the subcontinent, had an elitist tag and was not the lingua franca of ordinary Muslims.

Several surveys conducted by the British attest to the limited base of these languages. William Adams in his report on the state of education in Bengal in the 19th century noted that the number of Hindus studying Persian (for government employment) in the province was 50 per cent higher than that of Muslims. The 1901 Census revealed that in the North-West Provinces and Punjab, just over one lakh of a total Muslim population of 63 lakhs was Urdu-literate. The quinquennial survey on educational progress for 1907-12 concluded that “Urdu is the recognised lingua franca of the Mohammedans of India. But it does not follow that it is everywhere the vernacular commonly used by them”. Indeed before separatist politics compelled Muslim leaders to proclaim Urdu as the language of the entire community, Arabic, Persian and Urdu were markers of elite hegemony.

The language of the populace was Hindi/Hindavi, a mixed language which evolved naturally from local speech forms in Hindi’s immediate region such as Braj, Bundeli, Khariboli, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, and also drew from the Persian and Arabic languages introduced by Muslim rulers.

A stream of religious leaders from Gorakhnath and the Nathpanthi yogis to Sufis like Baba Farid and sants like Kabir and Nanak used this language to disseminate their teachings. It also travelled south, where it was called Deccani. As a common language, it was written in both the Devanagari and Persian scripts.

Indeed before separatist politics compelled Muslim leaders to proclaim Urdu as the language of the entire community, Arabic, Persian and Urdu were markers of elite hegemony.

The mingling of the Sanskritic and Persian language streams in Hindavi continued for over 600 years, till the decline of Mughal power in the 18th century. Then, in a major intervention, the Muslim elite began systematically replacing Hindi words with Persian words, resulting in the birth of modern Urdu. This link between political decline and the rise of Urdu is crucial to understanding the genesis of the language. Faced with impending loss of status, Amrit Rai observed that the Muslim elite created Urdu to carve out an exclusive cultural domain to retain its distinctive position.

Urdu’s origins in Hindi were acknowledged even by Abdul Haq, a prominent leader of the Urdu movement, who said: “The language we speak and write and call by the name ‘Urdu’ today is derived from Hindi and constituted of Hindi.” A.M.A. Shushtery described Urdu as Hindi which had been “Iranised during Muslim rule”, and regretted that Urdu poets in imitating the Iranians had neglected “the original and natural source of enriching Urdu through Sanskrit literature.”

Noted scholar Muham-mad Sadiq concurred that Urdu poetry was cut off from its native land in infancy and fed from a foreign source. When, following the decline of Persian in India, Persian poets switched to Urdu, they imposed on it the forms, metrical system, imagery and figures of speech of Persian poetry. Urdu poetry was thus a mere extension of Persian poetry, unlike Hindi, Punjabi and Sanskrit poetry which grew from the soil and absorbed its social environment.

The “ceaseless importation from Persian” caused Urdu to be wholly identified as the language of Muslims even though it was an elite phenomenon. Syed Insha claimed that “what we mean by the idiom of Urdu is that it is the language of the Muslims”. Syed Ahmad Khan described Zaban-i-Urdu and the Persian script as “the insignia of the Muslims”.

The growing communal association forced several Hindu writers to abandon Urdu, most notably Premchand (1880-1936). Though he began his literary career as an Urdu writer and wrote his first five novels in that language, he began publishing Hindi translations of his Urdu short stories in 1915 and from then onwards wrote in Hindi alone.

Premchand confessed that the move was dictated by cultural circumstances rather than personal choice. His fifth novel, Bazar-e-Husn (The Brothel) could find no publisher despite his considerable reputation as an Urdu writer, but its Hindi version was eagerly accepted and there was a demand for more works. Premchand discussed the situation in a letter to his friend, Dayanarayan Nigam, “I am now practicing to write in Hindi as well. Urdu will no longer do. Has any Hindu ever made a success of writing in Urdu, that I will?”

Premchand’s contention that the few Hindu writers in Urdu before him had never been fully accepted by Urdu readers was confirmed by Grahame Bailey. In his History of Urdu Literature, published in 1928, he listed about 250 authors, of whom only eight excluding Premchand were Hindus, the rest Muslims. Muhammad Sadiq’s subsequent and more extensive work could list only 17 Hindu writers in Urdu, including journalists. Confirming Premchand’s feeling of communal bias in Urdu, Sadiq conceded that Muslims treated Premchand “more or less as an outsider”.

Though it is conventional wisdom to accuse the British of fermenting the Hindi/Hindavi divide into the separate languages of modern Hindi and modern Urdu, the fact, as Amrit Rai pointed out, is that Fort William College, the alleged centre of this activity, was established only a century after the Muslim elite had initiated the drive. Fort William College also played no role in the creation of modern Urdu by the Aligarh School after the revolt of 1857 and its preoccupation with issues of separate identity. Once again, the concerns and interests of the Muslim elite masqueraded as the aspirations of the entire community. Mulayam Singh seems to be perpetuating a similar misrepresentation.

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.p...&pid=79&page=36<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The reaction as we can see was the Shudh Hindi movement among Hindus, it must also be remembered that inspite of the long Muslim rule most of the Hindi dialects remained largely Sanskrit derived (especially in villages).

Even Punjabi would at least be 70% Sanskrit derived as it is spoken today in Bharat (religious speeches being much more Sanskritised), the village speech is also more pure in Punjab as my mitra told me, he said in his village they use trikaal for evening and not sham or chitha for remember not yaad.

So it would be interesting to know why a more foreign heavy Khariboli was picked as the official language, I am guessing it must be due to Nehru and his love for all things Muslim and hatred for anything to do with Hindus, Savarkar championed Sanskritised Hindi as the connective language and was quite instrumental in getting rid of Urdu dominance in the Andamans during his imprisonment, even the Hindus were fawning over Urdu before he impressed upon them the need to give priority to their mother tongue and shudh Hindi. This is related in his book "The Story of My Transportation for Life" available here:

http://www.esnips.com/doc/b6d4f584-ddd7-46...tation-for-Life

As for myself, I am quite emphatic that besides English which today is needed because of it's dominant position in the world mother tongue and Sanskrit need to be taught (more than writing or reading Sanskrit, teaching people to speak should be a priority).

[Bodhi]

<!--QuoteBegin-Bharatvarsh+Dec 27 2007, 07:46 PM-->QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ Dec 27 2007, 07:46 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->So it would be interesting to know why a more foreign heavy Khariboli was picked as the official language, I am guessing it must be due to Nehru and his love for all things Muslim and hatred for anything to do with Hindus, Savarkar championed Sanskritised Hindi as the connective language
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Bharatvarsh, the khari-boli version of Hindi was also Sanskrit heavy only.
The Urdu-bastardized Hindi is not what Khari-boli was. It was just a accent-less dialect of North India, if you will, and still Sanskrit-nishtha.

That sanskrit-nishtha Khari-boli's acceptance as the media of intellectual and cultural discourse began much before Nehru - and as early as late 1800s and early 1900s. The credit for that goes to a prolific author and jornalist Makhan Lal Chaturvedi, and after him Hajari Prasad Dwivedi. M L Chaturvedi (after whom the first Univ of Journalism was established in India) ran several journals, wrote volumes and dedicated his whole life for the propogation of a natural Khari-boli Hindi. After independence, due to the influence of Harivansha Rai Bachchan (who was in the Nehru cabinet as the "Hindi minister"), Nehru had little impact on the tone of the official language, though Nehru probably preferred a persian-heavy Urdu-ized Hindi (or Urdu in Devanagari) as is evident from his public speeches. For writings he used English of course.

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Bharatvarsh, the khari-boli version of Hindi was also Sanskrit heavy only.
The Urdu-bastardized Hindi is not what Khari-boli was. It was just a accent-less dialect of North India, if you will, and still Sanskrit-nishtha.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
What I was trying to get at was as you once said before, Khariboli can be divided into two branches, the one near to the East (Varanasi etc) being much more Sanskrit heavy, but the official one chosen to me seems to have been from the West which has less Sanskrit because I remember when I studied Hindi we were taught kitab, sawal, jawab instead of pustak, prashna, uttar. Now I don't know why this was decided because the biggest chunk of Bharat that is usually not familiar with Hindi is the South (other areas having some contact through Bollywood and also their languages being closer to Hindi) and to people in the South it is much more easier to understand Sanskrit heavy Hindi than anything else (infact it would be much more easier for me to understand Bhojpuri if it wasn't so accent pronounced).

I guess this goes back to your old post:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->So, after very interesting and much heated debates, they agreed upon a language of less 'deshaj' content and dialectic tone - called Khadi Boli. For Khadi Boli too, there were two variants - that of Delhi/Punjab/West_UP or that of Varanasi/East_UP. The latter draws from Sanskrit vocabulary as the primary source, and the former from Farsi/Urdu. For different reasons, the former was chosen.

Then a talented young poet and professor, also having clout with Nehrus was picked up as the GOI's ambassador to promote this language as the national language, and formulate govt's policies. Dr. Harivansha Rai Bachchan. However, much of the literature as well as Doordarshan's Hindi continued to be Khadi Boli of Sanskrit leanings, until recently. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Besides the fact that Sanskrit was not revived, the less Sanskrit heavy Khariboli was rammed down our throats, to me that is a double whammy.

[Bodhi]

got it Bharatvarsh.

===========
Just switched off news channel where IK Gujral was delivering his condolence. Such Urdu.

I flipped through the Hindi news channels that are reporting the Bhutto assassination. Almost all are competing with each other on who can speak a better Urdu. Especially when they are interviewing Pakistani fellow, they make it a point never to use any Sanskrit or native word. So it must have been embarrassing for Star News lady, when Nawaz Sharif used word 'gambhIr'. I only found Punya Prasun Vajpayee on Samay channel to be using proper Hindi even when talking to Pakistani correspondents. Star News fellows are most Urdu-ized.