Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, where it is also an official language alongside English. In India, Urdu is an Eighth Schedule language whose status and cultural heritage is recognized by the Constitution of India; it also has an official status in several Indian states. In Nepal, Urdu is a registered regional dialect and in South Africa it is a protected language in the constitution. It is also spoken as a minority language in Afghanistan and Bangladesh, with no official status.
Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Deccan, Northern India and Pakistan, and used as a lingua franca in both countries. Hindustani is a pluricentric language with two standard registers, known as Hindi and Urdu. Thus, it is also called Hindi–Urdu. Colloquial registers of the language fall on a spectrum between these standards.
Malayalam, the lingua franca of the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puduchery, is one of the six classical languages of India. Malayalam literature comprises those literary texts written in Malayalam, a South-Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala. The first travelogue in any Indian language is the Malayalam Varthamanappusthakam, written by Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar in 1785. Malayalam literature has been presented with 6 Jnanapith awards, the second-most for any Dravidian language and the third-highest for any Indian language.
Deccani or Deccani Urdu, is a language spoken in the Deccan region of India and the native language of the Deccani people. A variety of Urdu, the historical form of Deccani sparked the development of Urdu literature during the late-Mughal period. Deccani arose as a lingua franca under the Delhi and Bahmani Sultanates, as trade and migration from the north introduced Old Urdu to the Deccan region. It later developed a literary tradition under the patronage of the Deccan Sultanates.
Indian literature refers to the literature produced on the Indian subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India thereafter. The Republic of India has 22 officially recognised languages.
A Persianate society is a society that is based on or strongly influenced by the Persian language, culture, literature, art and/or identity.
Urdu literature refers to the literature in the Urdu standard of the Hindostani language. While it tends to be dominated by poetry, especially the verse forms of the ghazal غزل and nazm نظم, it has expanded into other styles of writing, including that of the short story, or afsana افسانہ. Urdu literature is mostly popular in Pakistan, where Urdu is the national language and India, where it is a recognized language.
The Qutb Shahi dynasty was a Persianate Shia Islamic dynasty of Turkoman origin that ruled the Sultanate of Golkonda in southern India. After the collapse of Bahmani Sultanate, the Qutb Shahi dynasty was established in 1512 AD by Sultan-Quli Qutb-ul-Mulk, better known though less correctly referred to in English as "Quli Qutb Shah".
Indo-Persian culture refers to a cultural synthesis present in India and Pakistan. It is characterised by the absorption or integration of Persian aspects into the various cultures of South Asia. The earliest introduction of Persian influence and culture to the subcontinent was by various Muslim Turko-Persian rulers, such as the 11th-century Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi, rapidly pushed for the heavy Persianization of conquered territories in northwestern India, where Islamic influence was also firmly established. This socio-cultural synthesis arose steadily through the Delhi Sultanate from the 13th to 16th centuries, and the Mughal Empire from then onwards until the 19th century. Various Muslim dynasties of Turkic, local Indian and Afghan origin patronized the Persian language and contributed to the development of a Persian culture in India. The Delhi Sultanate developed their own cultural and political identity which built upon Persian and Indic languages, literature and arts, which formed the basis of an Indo-Muslim civilization.
Hindustani is one of the predominant languages of South Asia, with federal status in the republics of India and Pakistan in its standardized forms of Hindi and Urdu respectively. It is widely spoken and understood as a second language in Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Persian Gulf and as such is considered a lingua franca in the northern Indian subcontinent. It is also one of the most widely spoken languages in the world by total number of speakers. It developed in north India, principally during the Mughal Empire, when the Persian language exerted a strong influence on the Western Hindi languages of central India; this contact between the Hindu and Muslim cultures resulted in the core Indo-Aryan vocabulary of the Indian dialect of Hindi spoken in Delhi, whose earliest form is known as Old Hindi, being enriched with Persian loanwords. Rekhta, or "mixed" speech, which came to be known as Hindustani, Hindi, Hindavi, and Urdu, also locally known as Lashkari or Lashkari Zaban in long form, was thus created. This form was elevated to the status of a literary language, and after the partition of colonial India and independence this collection of dialects became the basis for modern standard Hindi and Urdu. Although these official languages are distinct registers with regards to their formal aspects, such as modern technical vocabulary, they continue to be all but indistinguishable in their vernacular form.
Apabhraṃśa is a term used by vaiyākaraṇāḥ since Patañjali to refer to languages spoken in North India before the rise of the modern languages. In Indology, it is used as an umbrella term for the dialects forming the transition between the late Middle and the early Modern Indo-Aryan languages, spanning the period between the 6th and 13th centuries CE. However, these dialects are conventionally included in the Middle Indo-Aryan period. Apabhraṃśa in Sanskrit literally means "corrupt" or "non-grammatical language", that which deviates from the norm of Sanskrit grammar.
The Hindi–Urdu controversy arose in 19th century colonial India out of the debate over whether Modern Standard Hindi or Standard Urdu should be chosen as a national language.
Rekhta was the Hindustani language as its dialectal basis shifted to the Delhi dialect. This style evolved in both the Perso-Arabic and Devanagari scripts and is considered an early form of Urdu and Hindi.According to the Pakistani linguist and historian Tariq Rehman, Rekhta was a highly Persianized register of Hindustani, exclusively used by poets. It was not only the vocabulary that was Persianized, but also the poetic metaphors, inspired by Indian landscapes and seasons, were abandoned in favor of the Persian ones i.e bahaar (spring) replacing barsaat.
The composite Turko-Persian, Turco-Persian or Turco-Iranian tradition was a distinctive culture that arose in the 9th and 10th centuries in Khorasan and Transoxiana.
Old Hindi, sometimes also called Old Urdu, was the earliest stage of the Hindustani language which was based on the Delhi dialect of Khariboli called Dehlavi, and so the ancestor of today's Modern Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu registers. It developed from Shauraseni Prakrit and was spoken by the peoples of the region around Delhi, in roughly the 13th–15th centuries during the Delhi Sultanate. It is attested in only a handful of works of literature, including some works by the poet Amir Khusrau, verses by the poet-saint Namdev, and some verses by the Sufi saint Baba Farid in the Adi Granth. The works of Kabir also may be included, as they use a Khariboli-like dialect. Old Hindi was originally written in a Nagari script and later in the Perso-Arabic script as well, in Nastaliq calligraphy.
Sufism has a history in India evolving for over 1,000 years. The presence of Sufism has been a leading entity increasing the reaches of Islam throughout South Asia. Following the entrance of Islam in the early 8th century, Sufi mystic traditions became more visible during the 10th and 11th centuries of the Delhi Sultanate and after it to the rest of India. A conglomeration of four chronologically separate dynasties, the early Delhi Sultanate consisted of rulers from Turkic and Afghan lands. This Persian influence flooded South Asia with Islam, Sufi thought, syncretic values, literature, education, and entertainment that has created an enduring impact on the presence of Islam in India today. Sufi preachers, merchants and missionaries also settled in coastal Gujarat through maritime voyages and trade.
Ganga–Jamuni Tehzeeb, also spelled as Ganga-Jamni Tehzeeb or just Hindustani Tehzeeb, is the composite high culture of the central plains of northern India, especially the doab region of Ganges and Yamuna rivers, that is a syncretic fusion of Hindu cultural elements with Muslim cultural elements. The composite Ganga-Jamuni culture emerged due to the interaction between Hindus and Muslims in the history of South Asia.
The Persian language in the Indian subcontinent, before the British colonisation, was the region's lingua franca and a widely used official language in North India. The language was brought into South Asia by various Turkic and Afghan dynasties from the 11th century onwards, notable of which were the Ghaznavids, Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Dynasty. Persian held official status in the court and the administration within these empires. It largely replaced Sanskrit as the language of politics, literature, education, and social status in the subcontinent.
Hindustani, also known as Hindi-Urdu, like all Indo-Aryan languages, has a core base of Sanskrit-derived vocabulary, which it gained through Prakrit. As such the standardized registers of the Hindustani language (Hindi-Urdu) share a common vocabulary, especially on the colloquial level. However, in formal speech, Hindi tends to draw on Sanskrit, while Urdu turns to Persian and sometimes Arabic. This difference lies in the history of Hindustani, in which the lingua franca started to gain more Persian words in urban areas, under the Delhi Sultanate; this dialect came to be termed Urdu.
Muhajir culture is the culture of the various Muslims of different ethnicities who migrated mainly from North India in 1947 generally to Karachi, the federal capital of Pakistan and before 1947 Karachi is the capital of Sindh. They consist of various ethnicities and linguistic groups. The Muhajirs are mainly concentrated in Karachi and Hyderabad.
