Hindi - History

History

Further information: History of Hindustani

The dialect upon which Standard Hindi is based is khadiboli, the vernacular of Delhi and the surrounding western Uttar Pradesh and southern Uttarakhand region. This dialect acquired linguistic prestige in the Mughal Empire (17th century) and became known as Urdu, "the language of the court." As noted and referenced in History of Hindustani, prior to the independence of India and Pakistan, it was not referred to as Urdu but as Hindustani. After independence, the Government of India set about standardising Hindi as a separate language from Urdu, instituting the following conventions:

  • standardization of grammar: In 1954, the Government of India set up a committee to prepare a grammar of Hindi; The committee's report was released in 1958 as "A Basic Grammar of Modern Hindi"
  • standardization of the orthography, using the Devanagari script, by the Central Hindi Directorate of the Ministry of Education and Culture to bring about uniformity in writing, to improve the shape of some Devanagari characters, and introducing diacritics to express sounds from other languages.

The Constituent Assembly adopted Hindi as the Official Language of the Union on 14 September 1949. Hence it is celebrated as Hindi Day.

In the year 1881 Bihar accepted Hindi as its sole official language replacing Urdu and thus became the first state of India to adopt Hindi.

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