Talk:Hindustani language/Archive 5

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POV template

All the citations above are included in the last version that I wrote. In the first footnotes there, it is clear from both Masica and Cardona/Jain's Indo Aryan Lanugages that the name Hindustani is not used any more. It is an obsolete name. It is archaic. It is only informally used for the common syntactic and lexical base of the Indo-Aryan vernaculars of the Upper Ganges Valley. All the quotes that you are repeating here for the ad nauseam are already there in that version. If you want to creat a new page on Hindi Urdu (which is not piped to Hindustani) be my guest. But the term Hindustani is not used for a living language. I will be putting POV templates on the page. Please do not remove it. I know what I'm doing. And I will purue other forms of dispute resolution on Wikipedia. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:42, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

I have already discussed this in Talk:Hindustani language#topic of article and quoted "Urdu" in Cardona and Jain eds.(2003) which I am quoting again here for you:

Hindustani officially disappeared after 1947; neither Schedule VIII of the Constitution of India, which enumerates the languages of India, nor the official documents of Pakistan make even a cursory mention of it (G. C. Narang, personal communication). Unofficially, the Hindustani lingua franca is a fully functioning vernacular link language in India, Pakistan and among the South Asian diaspora." (p. 319) which basically means after the independence the term 'Hindustani' ceased to be used, and was replaced by "Hindi" and "Urdu" in India and Pakistan respectively, not that "Hindustani" ceased to exist but it just that people stopped using that term.

— page 319.

As stated clearly in the quote, Hindustani has disappeared "officially" but "unofficially" is a fully functional language. Period!- Sattvic7 (talk) 15:58, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

A vernacular link language is already mentioned in my version, with that same quote. Do you seriously think I have not read that page? Hindustani is not the name of a living language. Why do you think Cardona and Jain's book have two separate chapters on Hindi and Urdu but none on Hindustani? Where does Ruth Laila Schmidt's article mention Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu except in the historical vernacular context? If you want to give the historical evolution of Hindi and Urdu, do so in the Hindi and Urdu pages. Just as all the books do. Please do not create content forks here. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:05, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Please also note the blatant POV-promotion by Hindi-POV promoters in this content forking: Hindustani phonology, Hindustani grammar. For all the protestations of it being the mutually intelligible common vernacular of Hindi and Urdu there is nothing there in the Urdu script. Zero. Zilch. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:19, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: Please do not connect things which are not connected, just in order to make it appear like a kind of conspiracy by "Hindi-POV promoters". Hindustani grammar was subject to a recent partisan POV-stunt, and I just have fixed it. –Austronesier (talk) 16:47, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

I note that the version of the Hindustani phonology article that User:Fowler&fowler linked is a very old revision, dating back to 18 October 2007. The current revision is up to date with both Devanagari and Nastaleeq. User:Fowler&fowler's claim, therefore, is not substantiated. Anupam^Talk 16:52, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: You have on several occasions (e.g. [1]) implied with your comments that the other editors in this discussion lack the appropriate competence in the subject of this article. In this context, can you please explain the following two related statements which you have made earlier in the discussion:

"It is inappropriate to give Hindustani the labels of a normative language variety (Central Indo-Aryan)"

"It is most emphatically not a Central Indo-Aryan Language."

More spefically I ask: 1. What has the genealogical classification of a language ("Central Indo-Aryan") to do with a "label of a normative language variety"? 2. Can you a provide source which classifies Hindustani anything other than "Central Indo-Aryan"? Thank you. –Austronesier (talk) 16:24, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler::I understand your concern regarding Hindi-POV promoters, it can indeed be discussed here and I will definitely support a neutral POV provided it is backed by reliable sources. As for your claim that Hindustani is "dead" or "not a living language", it stands as a fallacy. Hindustani exists as a fully functioning living language except with a different nomenclature. If you think otherwise, I am absolutely sorry for you! - Sattvic7 (talk) 16:45, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: I made that remark in reply to Sattvic who was claiming Awadhi language also to be in the list of vernaculars that had contributed to Hindustani. (I have since then become aware of the extent of WP:OR, WP:SYNTHESIS, and POV-promotion in all the Hindustani-related pages, all created and maintained by the same people.) I was suggesting that nowhere in a broad-field modern source will you find the characterization "Hindustani is a Central Indo Aryan Language." Masica discusses only Old- Middle- and New Indo-Aryan. Cardona's article on Indo-Aryan languages in Britannica makes no mention of it. "North Central Indo Aryan" is found in two pages of Cardona and Jain's edited book, mostly in Michael Shapiro's chapter on Hindi. I am suggesting that Central Indo-Aryan languages is a bogus OR page, all created by the same people, all based on Grierson's Western Hindi (which Hindustani was) and Eastern Hindi (which Hindustani was not, but Awadhi is). Who do you think uploaded Grierson's linguistic map from the Imperial Gazetteer of India in December 2019? It was me. See the map in last version that I wrote (or see it File:Prevailing Languages Imperial Gazetteer of India 1909.jpg here and notice that Hindustani is at the upper end of Western Hindi and Awadhi at the northern end of Eastern Hindi. Seriously, Austronesier, what sort of silly quiz are you attempting to waste my time with? (Please also read Masica's chapter by chapter review of Cardona and Jain, and of Michael Shapiro in particular.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:29, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

I will be taking a couple of days off from this Keystone Cops discussion and will go through all the bogus Hindustani-related articles on WP. eg Hindustani phonology, Hindustani grammar. During this time please do not remove the POV template as it obviously applies to a much wider OR and SYNTHESIS on Wikipedia than just this article. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:39, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: Dear, you only seem to be diverting attention, someone with a even basic knowledge of linguistics and language can point out that that you have zero knowledge on this topic!- Sattvic7 (talk) 17:54, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not care about what zero or nonzero knowledge, only the sources. You better find yours. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:58, 9 January 2020 (UTC) PS At the very least, I will be recommending that all the "Hindustani" related pages except this one be moved to Hindi-Urdu-this-or-that, and that Hindi-Urdu not be piped to this page. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:04, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Really? I have made my arguments all backed by citations (with quotes). It is, my friend, you with your wishful theories beating about the bush. Here are the citations that I earlier provided to show you that Hindustani is "Central Indo-Aryan" and I also cited Cardona(2003) to prove that Hindustani is not dead language. But I should've know that I was beating a dead horse. In my opinion, the template should be removed as soon as possible, we all are just wasting our time. This discussion is gonna go nowhere from here. - Sattvic7 (talk) 18:16, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: You are very quick in making bold accusation about POV-pushing and OR, but at the same time fail to fully check the very sources you cite. As for the Central branch of Indo-Aryan, please see for yourself in Masica's book (p. 454ff.) –Austronesier (talk) 18:28, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

I've just looked at the later sections, which in all honesty I had not earlier. They are chock full of original research (such as the writing system section) and errors (such as in nastaaliq scripts) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:07, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

I have added two more tags. If the interlocutors here are such geniuses, please tell me what might be the matter with the sample texts in Urdu in the Writing Systems sections. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:09, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: Nick Masica, whom I have known for many years, whose gifted copy of The Indo-Aryan languages I am privileged to possess, can read and write Urdu at a tolerably high level of functioning. My interlocutors here and the authors of this page, however, are entirely innocent of the writing system of Urdu, which was the same as that of Hindustani when it was the official langauge of India under British rule. Please don't waste my time further by looking up a mention in an appendix that lists New Indo-Aryan languages is the classification systems of at least six linguists, most of which have Grierson's Western Hindi and Eastern Hindi, same as in my map. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:20, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: You had "wasted your time" before to contest that "Hindustani" is a "Central Indo-Aryan" languages, and also to falsely claim that the concept of "Central Indo-Aryan" is OR and bogus. So you should also waste your time to verify or falsify it via the very valuable overview given by Masica (1991), which mentions the "Central" branch/subgroup of Indo-Aryan as part of mainstream scholarship starting from Grierson up to the time the book was written. It is ridiculous to dismiss academic research cited in a reliable source as "original research".[2] Of course it is, just as any non-plagiatory reseach is. So when kwami created the page Central Indo-Aryan languages, he did not so based on some purported Hindi-POV, but based on what can be found in many reliable sources. Glottolog lists the same grouping as Indo-Aryan "Central zone". Don't belittle academic research just because it does not match with your monolithic POV. –Austronesier (talk) 21:20, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

References

Here is a nice quote from a text in a tertiary source. It starts:

Hindustani language, lingua franca of northern India and Pakistan. Two variants of Hindustani, Urdu and Hindi, are official languages in Pakistan and India, respectively.

This is not really a far cry from the current version of the lede, which – among other things – is so vehemently contested by a single editor. Less elaborate maybe, but the "template" is the same: lemma is "Hindustani", a living language, with two standardized variants called "Hindi" and "Urdu". The same text ends as follows:

More than 100 million individuals, including more than 50 million people in India, speak Urdu; many of these individuals may actually use Hindustani for ordinary communication. Approximately 550 million people speak Hindi, and sizable portions of this group, especially those who live in cities, are known to use Hindustani rather than Sanskritized Hindi in ordinary speech. Thus, while Hindustani may not survive as a literary language, it continues to thrive as a vernacular.

These quotes are from Encyclopædia Britannica, entry "Hindustani language". @Kautilya3: See, we actually can trust Britannica; less trustworthy, however, is Britannica + cherry picking. –Austronesier (talk) 16:59, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

I am in agreement with User:Austronesier that the article currently reflects what reliable sources state with respect to the Hindustani language. Anupam^Talk 17:47, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I have read the EB article in full after Fowler persuaded me about it, and I think it is mostly ok. The only problem I have with it is that it overstates the "Muslim hegemony" a bit. It is hard to see how the "Muslimness" mattered; the "foreignness", may be. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:31, 10 January 2020

Proposal

Note:Please do not comment in this section; do so only in the subsection below.

Thesis: There is no living "Hindustani language."

The reason why I am here

I became interested in the page Hindustani language over a month ago when I began to think about polishing and updating a page Company rule in India for eventual submission as a Featured Article Candidate. I could see right away that the Hindustani language page had been subject to major OR, Synthesis, and POV promotion. Hindustani is a historical term. It was applied to a language, which was mostly identified with Urdu, during both Company rule in India and British Raj days. Although the term "Hindustani," had been used before occasionally, it began to see wider and more systematic use after the Anglo-Maratha wars when the Company acquired the Ceded and Conquered Provinces (the old United Provinces minus Oudh/Awadh). Lord Wellesley proposed that all Company civil servants should have basic tools of communication with the new and very large populations whose responsibility of governance now rested on their shoulders. Knowledgable people at the Company thought that a simplified version of the Urdu language of the Mughals would be that language. At Fort William College in Calcutta, a basic course in this simple language was created and Company officials were thereafter required to take the course and pass an exam. The term "Hindustani," was typically not applied to Urdu poetry (say, of Mir Taqi Mir, which was highly Persianized) but more for the proposed language of legal documents (wills, land sales, etc). It remained so until the British left. I have several such documents from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In fact, Urdu Prose, and later Hindi itself, both prose and poetry, in the form now defined, arose at Fort William College. In the first half of the 20th century, Gandhi and some other Indian nationalists—worrying about an eventual successor state to the British Raj, its languages of administration, and some way of accommodating Hindi—proposed that an even more simple version of the Hindustani that could either continue to be written in Perso-Arabic or in the rapidly but newly standardized Hindi in Devanagari. With that conviction, Gandhi began to learn the Perso-Arabic script (and by the early 1930s was writing simple letters in it) and also started the Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha, an organization for promoting Hindi in South India (see the history of the page.) In the end, however, it was not Hindustani, but Hindi that became the official language of India, and the subject of major promotion by the state. That was it. Very rapidly the term "Hindustani" disappeared. (See David Lelyveld's brilliant article: Colonial Knowledge and the Fate of Hindustani, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct., 1993), pp. 665-682 (18 pages), JSTOR url.) Neither the governments of India nor Pakistan has made even a cursory reference to Hindustani after 1947. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:55, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Dictionaries, grammars, and usage manuals

• Evidence:Living languages have grammars, dictionaries, usage manuals. There has not been a single Hindustani dictionary or grammar or usage manual published since 1947. Contrast the post-1947 period with 1796 to 1947 below. Note also, in most references below "Hindustani" is identified with something more akin to Urdu than Hindi:
• A Grammar, of the Hindoostanee Language, Or Part Third of Volume First, of a ... by John Borthwick Gilchrist Publication date 1796
• Hindoostanee philology; comprising a dictionary, English and Hindoostanee; with a grammatical introduction by Gilchrist, John Borthwick, 1759-1841 (Please examine the entries for the Hindustani words for "advantageous" through "adventurous". Most Indians who are Hindi speakers will not know the Hindustani equivalent, because what was common knowledge in 1800 is not any more.)
• Grammar of the Hindustani Language. London, Cox & Baylis 1813 by John Shakespear, Publication date 1813
• John Shakespear, Dictionary of Hindustanee and English, 1834
• A grammar of the Hindústání language in the oriental and Roman character by Forbes, Duncan, 1798-1868 Publication date 1855
• Duncan Forbes, Hindustani English Dictionary, 1866
• The syntax and idioms of Hindustani : or, progressive exercises in translation, with notes and directions and vocabularies by Kempson, Simon Matthews Edwin, 1831-1894 Publication date 1890
• A grammar of the Urdu or Hindustani language by Dowson, John, 1820-1881 Publication date 1908
• The modern Hindustani scholar; or, The Pucca Munshi by Pahwa, Thakardass,Publication date 1919
• Even The Hindustani Dictionary by J T Platts, Publication date 1881 which has the Devanagari script for Hindi words has a lexicographic order of Arabic/Persian/Urdu. In other words, a Hindi speaker today will not know how to use the dictionary, as they would need to have working knowledge of how this ordering works not only at the beginning of a word, but for every successive letter of a word. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:49, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Since @Kautilya3: had mentioned Tariq Rahman, what Hindustani was is eloquently summed up in the conclusion of Tariq Rahman's article, "British Learning of Hindustani":

Hindustani was the name the British gave to Urdu in India. They imagined it as an India-wide language; a lingua franca which it probably was not before their arrival. They spread it all over the country by using it in the army, to talk to servants and subordinates. They also spread it wide by using it in the courts of law, the lower levels of administration and teaching it formally in schools all over north India. Moreover, they wrote primers, phrase books, dictionaries and grammars in it thus making it the most commonly known Indian language in their Indian empire. ... The second aspect of the British understanding of Hindustani is that they equated with Urdu and favoured the Perso-Arabic script for writing it. They did not favour the highly Persianized variety of it but, on the whole, their Hindustani was closer to easy, or commonly spoken, Urdu than it was to either the vernaculars of the Hindi belt or Sanskritized Hindi. This particular understanding was felt to favour Muslims, as Urdu was associated with Muslims, by Hindu nationalists who later opted for Hindi instead of Hindustani despite the widespread intelligibility of the latter.

Also pinging @RegentsPark: @Sattvic7: @Uanfala: @Anupam: @Kwamikagami: @Austronesier: @Saqib:, @Mar4d: Fowler&fowler«Talk» 06:36, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

You said, "Living languages have grammars, dictionaries, usage manuals". That is not in general true. Again, you don't know what a "language" is, so none of your arguments count for anything, no matter how many sources you have. According to your logic, English is not a language, because the dictionaries, usage manuals etc. are all for RP, GA etc. — kwami (talk) 19:15, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Proposal

There is no broad-field source, neither Colin P. Masica, in his book, The Indo-Aryan Languages, Cambridge University Press, 1993, nor George Cardona in his long Britannica article on Indo-Aryan Languages nor the articles on Hindi and Urdu respectively by Michael Shapiro and Ruth Laila Schmidt in Jain/Cardona edited Indo-Aryan Languages, Routledge, 2003, has anything on "Hindustani grammar," or "Hindustani phonology." Masica says in his glossary at the end of the book, p 430:

‘Hindustani’ - term referring to common colloquial base of HINDI and URDU and to its function as lingua franca over much of India, much in vogue during Independence movement as expression of national unity; after Partition in 1947 and subsequent linguistic polarization it fell into disfavor; census of 1951 registered an enormous decline (86-98 per cent) in no. of persons declaring it their mother tongue (the majority of HINDI speakers and many URDU speakers had done so in previous censuses); trend continued in subsequent censuses: only 11,053 returned it in 1971, mostly from S India; [see Khubchandani 1983: 90-1].

• In Google Scholar, the number of sources that use "Hindi-Urdu," but DO NOT use "Hindustani" are: 13,000
• The number of sources that use "Hindi-Urdu" AND "Hindustani" are: 2,270
• The number of sources that use "Hindustani language," are 893

I have a very simple proposal.

• Proposal Move the pages (and remove the redirects at the target pages):
  • Hindustani grammar to Hindi-Urdu grammar; (Note the references used in Hindustani grammar: they are all either to Hindi or Urdu, but none to Hindustani.) The Hindustani grammar books written during the British period (see above) abound in Urdu; Indians who speak the Hindi of Bollywood songs and conflating it with Hindustani will not understand them. So full they are of Urdu.)
  • 1. Hindustani phonology to Hindi-Urdu phonology
  • 2. Hindustani orthography to Hindi-Urdu orthography (Please note the difference between the Wikipedia page Hindustani orthography, which is a rudimentary list of the writing systems of Hindi, Urdu, Romanized Hindi-Urdu, and Hind-Urdu for Braille. Contrast that with orthography described in a typical book on Hindustani (Hindustani manual by Phillott, D. C. (Douglas Craven), 1860-1930. Publication date 1918) published during the Raj: see the introduction to the orthography here and the more detailed in Appendix D and E here.)
  • 3. Hindustani etymology to Hindi-Urdu etymology
  • 4. Hindustani people to Speakers of Hindi-Urdu
  • 5. Hindustani kinship terms to Hindi-Urdu kinship terms
  • 6. Move sections 2 to 12 of this article to Hindi-Urdu (remove the redirect there); leave the lead in some version of this edit of mine, in which footnotes 7 and 8 from the two most important broad-field sources for Indo-Aryan languages, state clearly that the term is seldom used these days. I am happy to discuss the fine details of the phrasing of the lead, but the clear statement of the term "Hindustani" being a historical term has to be upfront and center in the lead. The history section can be rewritten later. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:22, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

In a new version of the proposal, 6. would be changed to an alternate version 6a in which,

• Hindustani language would be a dab page with two entries:
  • a) Hindi-Urdu (undirected now to Hindustani language) and
  • b) Hindustani language in British India (see discussion below. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:17, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Comments on the Proposal

• Hi Fowler, the 2011 edition of Tariq Rahman's book is available on researchgate. Quoting from his first chapter:

At present the names of this ancient language are Urdu and Hindi. However, the term ‘Hindustani’—used mostly by the British for this language—is still used for the spoken language of the popular, urban culture of North India and Pakistan. George Grierson, the pioneer of the modern scientific study of the languages of South Asia, defines these terms as follows:... These definitions, coming from the British period, are as valid today as they were in the early twentieth century. However, the term Hindustani is not used much in either India or Pakistan. That was the middle ground which has been lost, and what has replaced it are the names for the opposite ends of the continuum: Hindi and Urdu....

So, the ancient spoken language (Hindustani) is still used. And, in fact, it is the only language used for speaking. The "middle ground" that has been lost is only in the nomenclature.

The Grierson quote says:

Hindōstānī is primarily the language of the Upper Gangetic Doab, and is also the lingua franca of India, capable of being written in both Persian and Dēvanāgarī characters, and without purism, avoiding alike the excessive use of either Persian or Sanskrit words when employed for literature. The name ‘Urdu’ can then be confined to that special variety of Hindōstānī in which Persian words are of frequent occurrence, and which hence can only be written in the Persian character, and, similarly, ‘Hindi’ can be confined to the form of Hindōstānī in which Sanskrit words abound, and which hence can only be written in the Dēvanāgarī character.

This validates your point that the scripts are important in order to bridge the divide. But apparently, both the scripts are needed. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 15:26, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

• Reading through the history of the British involvement in the 19th century (Ch. 8 of Tariq Rahman's book), it is also clear how the British made political-cultural mistakes. They took Hindustani, which the North Indians had been speaking for ages, writing it in Devanagari, and started identifying it with Urdu, which was no more than 100 years old. Francis Robinson's figures also make clear how this disadvantaged the Hindus (see the Table V on page 45). In 1857, Muslims made up 64% of all the judicial and executive service officials in U.P, despite making up only 15% of the population. By 1913, due to Macdonnell's insistence that the officials had to know both the Perso-Arabic and Devanagari scripts, things got inverted. Hindus now made up 60% of the same class of posts. The U.P. Hindus would have obviously felt that their language and their culture was being misappropriated and used in turn to subjugate them. Thus, the British created the divide, where none had existed before. This is hardly anything to glorify. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 16:15, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: The main thrust of my argument is that in the scholarly publications Hindi-Urdu is preferred to Hindustani by a very large margin to describe the common mutually understood grammatical and phonological base of the two languages which had its origins as a dialect of Western Hindi spoken in the upper Ganges-Jumna doab. (See above.) In any kind of naming on Wikipedia that is of paramount importance. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:17, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: Please also note the number of courses or programs in Universities which use Hindi-Urdu but not Hindustani in their description; there are no courses or programs on Hindustani. If it were a living language, don't you think it would be reflected in pedagogy? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:30, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

PS In other words, here on Wikipedia, move the stuff related to a living language to Hindi-Urdu-stuff. Leave Hindustani as a historical page about the language in the British period, the socio-political, pedagogic aspects (detailed above), warts and all. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:39, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

PPS You can read about this also in David Lelyveld's seminal article, "Colonial knowledge and the fate of Hindustani," that got the ball rolling in this field:

"The earlier grammars and dictionaries made it possible for the British government to replace Persian with vernacular languages at the lower levels of judicial and revenue administration in 1837, that is, to standardize and index terminology for official use and provide for its translation to the language of the ultimate ruling authority, English. For such purposes, Hindustani was equated with Urdu, as opposed to any geographically defined dialect of Hindi and was given official status through large parts of north India. Written in the Persian script with a largely Persian and, via Persian, an Arabic vocabulary, Urdu stood at the shortest distance from the previous situation and was easily attainable by the same personnel. In the wake of this official transformation, the British government began to make its first significant efforts on behalf of vernacular education. The earliest controversies over Hindi versus Urdu apparently took place among the British because some officials were anxious to uproot the Mughal gentry by replacing Urdu with a still unformulated standard of Hindi."

In other words, we cannot use Hindustani in any major way for a "geographically defined dialect of Hindi;" instead, we should keep the term "Hindustani" for Urdu as promoted by the British during the period 1800 to 1947. We especially cannot use the term for the language of Bollywood songs, with an occasional smattering of Urdu words. The British manuals on Hindustani listed above make it abundantly clear that a Bollywood aficionado (not well-versed in the Urdu script) would be clueless in the face of their prospective use. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:04, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I will leave aside the six page-move proposals because I don't have a strong opinion on those, and they will anyway depend on what happens to this page. Your proposal seems to be to split this into two pages, one on Hindustani, which will mainly cover the British time standard, and another on Hindu-Urdu, which will deal with the common substrate language. I would regard that as WP:POVFORKing. Multiple sources, including the Encyclopedia Britannica, say that these two are the same. You can rightly argue that the British standardisation of Hindustani should be covered in more detail on this page. You are also welcome to state that the British viewed their Hindustani as simplified Urdu. But the sources say that it was the common vernacular of North India. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:38, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

@Kautilya3: No, they won't depend on what happens to this page because no paper or book has been written on Hindustani grammar that is not from the British period, or the mention of "Hindustani grammar" in it is to something in the British period. The publications that mention "Hindustani grammar" but do not reference "Hindi grammar" or "Urdu grammer" number 125 Those that either mention "Hindi grammar" or "Urdu grammar" but do not mention "Hindustani" number 1,330. That is a 10 to 1 ratio. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:41, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Samples of OR, Synthesis

Please do not comment in this section; please do so in the section below.

Samples of OR etc

We have a page on Wikipedia Central Indo-Aryan languages. It is being referenced on this page to demonstrate that both Hindi and Urdu, Hindi-Urdu, and Hindustani are "Central Indo-Aryan Language." Here is how this page has been written: (Map) In 2008 Dbachmann made a map marking regions where Hindi was spoken as a native language, mother tongue, or first language: Dbachmann's map Until 2014 the map remained more or less the same as can be seen in this map of Irshad Ahmad However, in 2015, User:फ़िलप्रो changed it to this map of Central Zone (Hindi), two weeks later User:फ़िलप्रो appropriated the families to the north in this felicitous edit. This then became the all-important figure. It is now cited to Schwarzberg's map in a Historical Atlas of South Asia. You can view it here That in turn is based on the map of Grierson's categories shown here in print and shown in File:Prevailing Languages Imperial Gazetteer of India 1909.jpg which I uploaded from the Imperial Gazetteer of India in early December 2019 Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:09, 10 January 2020 (UTC) Summarizing, the strategy is the following: In these maps, Hindustani is shown in a small region in the north of the "Western Hindi" subregion. But Hindi (much less Hindi-Urdu) covers a much wider region. In Schwartzberg's map, it/they constitute 34% of the speakers of Indo-Aryan languages. In particular, Eastern Hindi, which in Grierson's categories is in Indo-Aryan languages Mediate group, not Central, is also included in the Central group, by fattening the Central on the map!! (See File:Hindi_Indoarisch.png again! And compare it with Wikipedia's own map File:Hindustani map.png. You see what is happening? The usage of Hindustani (for the dialects of the upper Ganges-Jumna doab) is being fused with the usage of "Hindustani" (during British times) for the core region where a prose version of Urdu was employed in Government work and legal documents. If you think I am citing primary sources, I am happy to quote you a sentence from the Official Status section of this article: Hindustani was the official language of the British Raj and was synonymous with both Hindi and Urdu. The third citation, which is actually a chapter written by Daud Rahbar on "Gandhi and the Hindi-Urdu question," on page 224 has exactly the same categories: Subject to subsequent revision, the following is the proposed list of eleven volumes for the Linguistic Survey of India. Vol. I, Introductory Vol. 11. Mon-Khmer and Tai families. Vol. II. PartI. Tibeto-Burman languages of Tibet and North Assam. Part Bodo, Naga, and Kachin groups of the Tibeto-Burman languages. Part III. Kuki-Chin and Burma groups of the Tibeto- Burman languages Vol. IV. Dravido- Munda languages. Vol. V. Indo-Aryan languages, Eastern group. Part I. Bengali and Assamese. Part II. Bihari and Oriya. Vol. VI. Indo-Aryan languages, Mediate group (Eastern Hindi). Vol. VII. Indo-Aryan languages, Southern group (Marathi). Vol. VIII. Indo-Aryan languages, North-Western group (Sindhi, Lahnda, Kashmini, and the ‘Non-Sanskritic’ languages). Vol. IX. Indo-Aryan languages, Central group. Part I. Western Hindi and Panjabi. Part Il. Rajasthani and Gujarati. Part III. Himalayan languages. Vol. X. Eranian family. Vol. XI. “Gipsy” languages and supplement.” Hindustani was not synonymous with Hindi and Urdu; David Lelyveld's article says clearly it was identified with Urdu. the entry from Platts above suggests the same. Finally, Hindustani is also being fused with the current day mutually comprehensible/intelligible constituents of Hindi and Urdu. (This is the major proportion of the OR/POV).

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:39, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

References

Response to proposal (vote)

• Oppose. Fowler, again, you do not appear to know what a "language" is (as evidenced by your wildly irrelevant objections above), so none of these proposals or claims really make any sense. Your real argument, if I have correctly parsed it under all the irrelevant clutter, is that you don't approve of the name. That is not a POV or OR issue, but a matter of COMMONNAME, and you could propose it as such. Note however that the same language would be the topic of the article even if it were moved to "Hindi-Urdu". That is, you won't be able to censor the discussion just because the name of the article has changed -- it will still be about the common national language of India and Pakistan, whether we call it "Hindustani", "Hindi-Urdu", "Urdu-Hindi" or something else. Also, I might object to your Hindi-centric bias in calling the language "Hindi-Urdu" rather than the more historically correct "Urdu-Hindi". — kwami (talk) 19:23, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Whether or not OR, SYNTHESIS, or POV-promotion will be done on the moved pages with Hindi-Urdu labels has no interest for me. But the term "Hindustani" cannot be used for the present-day use of Hindi-Urdu, which is mostly the constituents of the two languages that have a common base of grammar and phonology and are mutually comprehensible. No one has used Hindustani with that meaning since 1947, or the references are to books of the British period, or the references are so sparse as to be outliers. The Google scholar and other citations make it abundantly clear. Don't you think it is odd that Wikipedia has a page on "Hindustani grammar" which makes no reference to a book on "Hindustani grammar," only to Hindi grammars? No university in India, Pakistan, or the West, teaches a course on Hindustani-anything, only on Hindi-Urdu, Hindi, or Urdu. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:56, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

As for my bias, would you like to take me on real-time in understanding of Urdu, for example, its poetry? Would you like to read the poetry of contemporary poets of any literary merit, which after 1947 have all been from Pakistan, and among which are Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Munir Niazi, Nasir Kazmi, Ahmad Faraz, Iftikhar Arif, the great women poets Ada Jafri, Zehra Nigah, Kishwar Naheed, Fehmida Riaz, Sara Shagufta, Parveen Shakir, the younger ones Ali Akbar Natiq or Harris Khalique? (Pinging @Saqib and Mar4d:) I have largely written the India page and also the History of Pakistan. No one has accused me of an anti-Urdu bias? 21:05, 11 January 2020 (UTC) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:19, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Whatever the merits of fowler's proposal, accusing him of Hindi-centric bias is not fair (and, given fowler's history, rather ironic). --regentspark (comment) 23:47, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

It was meant to be ironic, given that he's accused anyone using the term 'Hindustani' of Hindi bias. I didn't think he'd take it as an actual accusation, merely a comment that his preferred term could be as easily accused of bias as his dispreferred term. — kwami (talk) 02:37, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose. My vote is about the package in toto, especially the sanctions on the redirects Hindustani XXX. This is a clear attempt to create a content fork to escape consensus, and to own the lemma "Hindustani" for a particular (and partially almost scientophobic) POV. I would agree to these page moves if a) the redirects Hindustani XXX remain untouched; b) "Hindustani" will remain as a common alternative name of "Hindi-Urdu" in the opening sentence (probably qualified as "obsolescent" – I know many will disagree with me here); c) the narrow concept of "Hindustani" as a past literary language remains part of the article, with due explanation that this is only one of two or more scholarly usages of the term "Hindustani". As an alternative to c), we could consider to turn "Hindustani language" into a dab, which points to "Hindi-Urdu" and to a new article "Literary Hindustani language" (or any other apt title), which latter should remain under constant community vetting by the participants of this discussion against unscientific POVs, such as Hindustani being a "mixed language", or not being a member of the Central (or Midland, depending on terminology) group of Indo-Aryan etc. –Austronesier (talk) 21:27, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: In the British period, Hindustani was not a literary language, but the second language after English that the British employed in governing India (the language of land records, of affidavits, ...). As such, it was taught in government schools in large areas of northern India and Pakistan until 1947. As David Lelyveld says in my quote above. The predecessors of the British, the Mughals had used Persian as the language of administration. Hindustani/Urdu had inherited most of the legal words from Persian, so changing from Persian to Urdu, in order to govern at the local level made sense for the British. Because of this, Hindustani became the lingua-franca of a large part of India. I would absolutely agree to (a). I would agree to (b) with the qualification that the second page in the dab woudl be Hindustani language in British India be added. I don't mind a dab page either. It could have Hindi-Urdu and Hindustani language in British India. (The use of British India is accurate as it would apply both to Company rule in India and the British Raj). The main point is that the term "Hindustani language" is not used for a living anything. No book, no article, is written today on Hindustani-anything unless it is a reference to the British Raj period. As I've already stated, no course is offered anywhere (in India, Pakistan, or the West) on the Hindustani language, Hindustani grammar, Hindustani orthography, only courses on Hindi-Urdu, Hindi/Urdu, Hindi or Urdu, which I have listed above. Just think about it. If a student wants to know something about Urdu grammar, they will be referenced on the Urdu page to Hindustani grammar. But that is a page that uses only Hindi sources! At least, when it will be moved to Hindi-Urdu grammar, a student will be less perplexed. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:16, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

The fact that you would still say The main point is that term "Hindustani language" is not used for a living anything, after that claim has been debunked by others here, shows that you either are not listening or cannot grasp facts that contradict your personal Truth.

I'd expect Hindutva editors to object to the word "Hindustani" for having an Urdu bias more than the other way around.

As for readers being confused by the word "Hindustani" (has anyone ever complained that they don't know why they're here?), I just came across Schwitter (2002) Easy Hindi For The Tourist, where it says, "The contents of [this] Phrase Book are printed in the colloquial form of the Hindustani language, the language of the masses of India, as spoken and understood almost in every part of the country." Similarly, from Bhatia & Koul (2005) Colloquial Urdu, "so similar are the spoken varieties of both languages that some refer to them as a single language, Hindustani. ... colloquial Urdu/Hindi [is] generally considered as the lingua franca of the Indian subcontinent."

"Hindustani language" is indeed not a particularly common phrase, as it's normally phrased simply as "Hindustani". (For the same reason, "Hindi-Urdu language" is not a particularly common phrase either.) But it's hardly likely to cause confusion. E.g. Costanzo (2013) World Cinema through Global Genres says, "The movies from this part of the world are sometimes known as 'Hindi cinema' because most are made in Hindi, the Sanskrit-based version of the Hindustani language used in northwest India, although some expressions creep in from Urdu, the Persian-based version of Hindustani favored in Pakistan." Or, "Hindustani is that language which is generally used by people in North India for their daily conversation and social intercourse; and is the common base of Hindi and Urdu language." (Fatihpuri 2001 History of Pakistan movement and language controversy)

I'm purposefully quoting non-linguistic sources here to demonstrate that the word "Hindustani" isn't confined just to linguistic usage. — kwami (talk) 03:36, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: A couple of days ago you were all making fun of me for quoting from Britannica. You were quoting me long passages from recondite linguistics journals. Well, let's stick to just that. Let us search in Linguistics or Language journals. The reason that I had used "Hindustani language" is that "Hindustani" can be applied to many things: to Hindustani classical music, Caribbean Hindustani, Pidgin Hindustani (spoken in Fiji), none of which are referenced in this article. If you are attempting to make the case that the term "Hindustani" is used for a living language/vernacular/substrate in South Asia independent of its use during the British Raj or the 19th century, or in classical music, or to the languages of the Caribbean or Fiji, then you have to do a binary search which rules out those variables. But that can be done. We can also restrict our search to sources in Linguistics and Language. In the last 20 years, i.e. since the year 2000, the Google Scholar search for: "Hindustani" -"Hindi-Urdu" -"Urdu-Hindi" -classical -music -"19th-century" -Caribbean -Pidgin -British -Raj source:Linguistics OR source:Language OR source:Languages yields 65 references. A similar search for: "Hindi-Urdu" OR "Urdu-Hindi" -"Hindustani" -classical -music -"19th-century" -Caribbean -Pidgin -British -Raj source:Linguistics OR source:Language OR source:Languages yields 747 references That is an 11 to 1 ratio in favor of "Hindi-Urdu" or "Urdu-Hindi" (over "Hindustani") for describing a living language/vernacular/substrate in South Asia. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 06:18, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

The problem wasn't you referencing the EB, but taking it as an arbitrating authority. You claimed multiple times that "Hindustani" was not used to refer to the modern language, even after you'd been proved wrong. I proved you wrong yet again, and you decided my sources weren't valid so you wouldn't have to acknowledge my argument any more than you did the previous ones. Sorry, proofs aren't invalid just because you don't like them.

If we're going to exclude "Hindi-Urdu" from the "Hindustani" search, then we should exclude "Hindi" and "Urdu" from the "Hindi-Urdu" search. That leave us with 0 hits.[3] That's silly, of course (can I be sarcastic without you taking it literally?), but so is your search. The problem with it is that sources will often mention both terms, so excluding one of them will exclude many sources that use the term we're supposedly searching for. Raw numbers like these also don't tell us how a term is used, and says nothing about how current it is. If you use Ngram, you get entirely different results,[4] though I'm not going to argue we should follow Ngram either. I suspect the problem isn't really the name we give the article, but all the spurious, unscientific stuff that you're pushing along with it. If it were really just an issue of 'Hindustani' vs 'Hindi-Urdu', then the argument would center on common usage, bias and such issues, not on repeatedly denying basic facts that can be verified in almost any RS. — kwami (talk) 09:20, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Why would you take out "Hindi" and "Urdu" from "Hindu-Urdu?" Any search for "Hindi" OR "Urdu" will also show up "Hindi-Urdu" My search results show that all things being equal the term "Hindi-Urdu" is preferred in modern journal articles in Linguistics to the term "Hindustani" by a ratio of 11 to 1. If you want to include "Hindi" and "Urdu" (which in a binary search will be the set union, i.e. "Hindi" OR "Urdu," then you have to search for: "Hindi" OR "Urdu" "Hindustani" -"Hindi-Urdu" vs. "Hindi" OR "Urdu" "Hindi-Urdu" -"Hindustani" Those results are even more skewed. There are 747 journal articles that use "Hindi-Urdu" AND "Hindi" OR "Urdu" minus the usual variables (classical music, Caribbean Hindustani, etc) There are 33 journal articles that use "Hindustani" AND "Hindi" OR "Urdu" minus the usual variables (classical music, Caribbean Hindustani etc. That as I had expected is even more skewed: a ratio of 23 to 1. There is absolutely no contest that in modern scholarly sources the term for the living language/vernacular/substrate, the mutually comprehensible component of the modern standards Hindi and Urdu, is "Hindi-Urdu," not "Hindustani." Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:31, 12 January 2020 (UTC) PS You can see that in the sources used in the article Hindustani grammar. They are all to Hindi or Urdu. The only sources to "Hindustani" are in the following sections, both to the Raj-era books. Look I am aware that you guys have worked hard on the various Hindustani-related articles. I have no interest in changing the content of those articles, only the name. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:57, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose: Firstly, the arguments given for the proposal are typically appeal to ignorance. As for the 6(a) point, I think that Hindustani language in British India can be easily subsumed under Hindustani language#History (which currently is full of off-topic content on Mughals and Persian). As for the insist by Fowler&fowler that we should be leaving some version of Fowler&fowler's on lead of this WP, the major problems in doing so has been discussed already in our prior discussions which I am again summarizing here:

What Hindustani is not:

1. Hindustani is not a mixed language (see: Talk: Hindustani language#A "mixed" language?).

2. Hindustani is not a historical/dead language. It can only be regarded as an historical term under British Raj. (see: Schmidt, "Urdu" where it is mentioned "Unofficially, the Hindustani lingua franca is a fully functioning vernacular link language in India, Pakistan and among the South Asian diaspora").

3. Hindustani is not the language of Muslim conquerors. (see: Talk:Hindustani language#Disputable definition of Hindustani: A language of "Muslim Conquerors"? where I have already pointed out prominent writers being critical of the OED definition. Muslims from Central Asia came around 12th-13th century and described the native language spoken as Hindu-i, Hindavi, Dehalvi, while the popular literary languages of that era were Braj & Awadhi. Hindustani is almost never used to describe the language until British popularized the term. By this time, Urdu and Hindi, as separate literary traditions, had already started to diverge but Brtish rightly recognized the common base of both language and thus clubbed them as Hindustani which was allowed to be written in both Perso-Arabic and Devanagari. During independence movement, Hindustani had come to mean a neutral language that was as Cardona in E.Britannica describes "This search has its origin in national and Hindu movements of the 19th century down to the time of Mahatma Gandhi, who promoted the use of a simplified Hindi–Urdu, called Hindustani." After independence, Hindustani was reported as mother tongue as late as 1971 as per Masica (Appendix I) ).

What Hindustani is:

4. In modern context, Hindustani is the colloquial base of Hindi and Urdu. Thus, it is de-Sanskritized Hindi and de-Persianized Urdu. (see: Masica (Appendix I))

5. Under Birtish Raj, Hindustani could be identified to mean both Hindi(that used Devanagari) & Urdu(that used Perso-Arabic) (see under "Urdu" by Schmidt in Cardona&Jain eds.(2003): "In the early 1800s, the British chose the Khari-Bolī lingua franca, which they called Hindustani, as their medium for administration, and sponsored the composition of Hindustani prose texts in both the Persian and Dēvanāgarī scripts.") Hindustani was written in Devanagari as well as Persian script.

6.Unofficially, a fully functioning language that serves as lingua franca since the times of British Raj.

7. A Central Indo-Aryan language/Western Hindi language. (This is not disputable at all!) - Sattvic7 (talk) 06:55, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

@Sattvic7: The modern scholarly sources (by an overwhelming margin) prefer "Hindi-Urdu" to "Hindustani" for the colloquial base of Hindi and Urdu, for the "Central Indo-Aryan language" of your characterization. All the courses offered in universities in the US, Britain, and India prefer "Hindi-Urdu" to "Hindustani" by an even bigger margin. The proposal now is simply what is displayed at the bottom of the proposal section, or in my reply to Gotitbro below. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:25, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

• Wouldn't comment on the renaming of the ancillary articles but the initial suggestion that the languages shouldn't be considered as one based on the reading ability of scripts or understanding high literary traditions in a register appear spurious as evidenced by this proposal itself. Gotitbro (talk) 11:21, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

@Gotitbro: A lot of things were said initially. I apologize for my intemperate language. It has taken me time to clarify the issues. The proposal now is simply:

• Hindustani language would be a dab page with two entries:
  • a) Hindi-Urdu (undirected now to Hindustani language) and
  • b) Hindustani language in British India

The other Hindustani-related articles would be moved to Hindi-Urdu-related articles. The evidence for the usage is overwhelming. In some ways, it is similar to "Indology" and "South Asian Studies." 70 years ago, the former was preferred; now it is the latter. All university departments are called "Department of South Asian Studies," not "Department of Indology." It is similar to "Indian subcontinent" and "South Asia." Increasingly, the latter is the preferred term, except in Geophysics. In other words, these articles on Wikipedia are using obsolete terms. There are no courses taught anywhere on "Hindustani." But there are dozens taught on "Hindi-Urdu" in the universities in the US, Britian and India. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:20, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

I would not object if all the Hindustani sub-articles were moved to Hindi-Urdu sub-articles (if there is consensus to do so), but if that occurred, this article would also have to be moved to Hindi-Urdu for consistency. I do object to a dab page because the primary topic is Hindi-Urdu/Hindustani. An overwhelming majority of sources today refer to the language as such, e.g. Yamada Language Center at the University of Oregon. I hope this helps. With regards, Anupam^Talk 18:26, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose this as well. As others have noted, the language is the primary topic of Hindustani, not the music or the food. Making this page a dab would just be POV-pushing, and whatever the time period, it's the same language. The standard may have changed, but that's an issue for the history section, and can be split off from their if the section gets too long. If we make this a dab, then Hindi and Urdu would need to be dabs as well, as Urdu is just as ambiguous, and Hindi even more so. — kwami (talk) 19:53, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

k Irtapil (talk) 16:36, 9 March 2020 (UTC)