Hindi
-
BJP slips on Hindi; Tamil Nadu stands firm
Quoting Garga Chatterjee on how Hindi was pushed against Urdu in nineteenth-century Uttar Pradesh, the author argues that imposing Hindi is a bad idea and that Hindu nationalism, a many-headed…
-
Did the Brits “Indianise” the NorthWest?
Asking whether the British ‘re-Indianised’ the north-west, the author argues Sindh, Balochistan and the Frontier saw long Iranian and Muslim influence, while British patronage of Hindi, canal colonies and middle-class…
-
Browncast Episode 32: Indian Linguistics Podcast
On Browncast Episode 32, a panel of linguists surveys language in South Asia, including Sanskrit as a literary lingua franca until the late medieval period, regional dialects, and English’s emergence…
-
The many ways of being Brown Diasporic
The author admits he cannot follow half of Zach’s posts because of their South Asian pop-culture and Hindi-Urdu references, and uses this to show that diasporic brown people differ widely,…
-
Beware of Hinditvas
Zach defends his earlier criticism of Hindi as an artificial language, dubbing his critics ‘Hinditvas’, and says liberal Pakistanis are equally hypocritical about Islam. He blames both Nehru and Jinnah-style…
-
Aunn Zara (pitch-perfect Punjabi)
On Aunn Zara’s Punjabi in a Pakistani drama, the poster surveys South Asia’s four great languages: Punjabi recovering after Partition, Bengali strengthened by independent Bangladesh, Hindi spreading, and the resistance…
