My thoughts on Urdu/Hindi: An artificial divide

Author's note: This post is still under completion.

An interesting Pakistani author (possibly of Indian origin from his writing) by the name of Abdul Jamil Khan has written a book called "Urdu-Hindi: an artificial divide" which has gained plenty of popularity amongst Indians.
As people know, anything about Pakistan that is dismissed as "Indian" or even linked as "Indian" gains popularity very fast in India or anything from a different South Asian country which is thrown under the "Indian" label causes joy amongst Indians, especially the expansionist ones.

I haven't read the book, save for a few pages from the first chapter, so I cannot comment on the entire book. However, everywhere I search this book on the internet, I read the same description of the points he makes in his book:
• Hindi evolved not from Aryan Sanskrit but from Pre-Aryan Dravidian and Austric-Munda rooted in Middle-East/Mesopotamia;
• Hindi’s script evolved from Aramaic system of writing similar to Greek;
• Urdu has not evolved as an offshoot of a prototype Indo-European language but it has its roots in Mesopotamian and Sumerian civilization;
• The ‘myth’ of Indo-European family of languages was created by Germans to satisfy their own theory of a superior German/Aryan race;
• Ancient Africa served as the melting pot of languages.

I'd like to give my personal views on each point of his hypothesis (however crazy it may sound) based on all the knowledge I have on the subject of linguistics which I'm well read on.

*On his first point regarding Hindi being of non-Indo-European origins, I cannot personally counter that claim since I am no qualified linguist, however based on the knowledge I have so far, I can see no evidence to this claim.
Linguists classify Hindi & Urdu as Indo-European languages because of their grammatical structure which counts more than anything else.
Both these languages display the use of gender like most Indo-European languages and are non-agglutinative, which means they do not represent actions or ideas in shortened suffixes (and prefixes in the case of certain agglutinative languages).

Mr Jamil Khan's hypothesis uses hardly any grammatical evidence, but instead simply what appears to be loanwords, borrowed consonants particularly from Dravidian languages.

He also mentions Hindi & Urdu being Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) languages, which is a trait common to most Indo-European languages.
This only goes against his claims of trying to link the two languages to Mesopotamian or Dravidian languages, which are definitely agglutinative, not SOV.

I agree with his 1.3 classification section regarding myths surrounding languages, however what he seems to be doing is no different, except by pushing in a different direction of his own.

Since he hardly uses any grammatical evidence, his theory has really has no basis.

*The claim that Hindi has it's script borrowed from Aramaic is possible according to many, since many Alphabets worldwide seem to be based on scripture used in the middle east, such as the Phoenician writing system.
However, Mr Jamil Khan is not the first to claim this.

*The author claims the Indo-European (IE) hypothesis was started of in Nazi Germany. This is an outright lie.
Hitler's belief of the Aryan race was promoted during the rise of the Nazi party in the early 19th century, whereas the IE family was proposed as early as the 18th century.
The first proposal for the existence of a common Indo-European was by Sir William Jones

Mr Jamil Khan then touches on Sir Willaim Jones's proposal, which contradicts his later statements of Nazi Germany having been the founder of Pan-Aryan nationalism.



*On ancient Africa being the 'melting pot' of languages, there's mistakes and truths on that. Firstly Africa is a diverse place when it comes to languages. Various, unrelated language families there exist as is for most continents of the world save for maybe Europe which is almost entirely Indo-European speaking.

'Melting pot' usually means cultures and races coming together and combining into new races and cultures. I do not know what the author means in this context. If he means many languages breeding into single languages, that is not always possible. Languages that are not genetically related unless they have corresponding structures which are entirely coincidental.

Outside of these points, I'd like to draw on is the other bias/inaccuracy/serious flaw I see in his material that I've read so far:
-The claim of Urdu & Hindi being the 'natural' common language of the subcontinent and Dividing Hindustani somehow divided the populations. Never in the recorded history of the subcontinent was there a single language people spoke. Even today India is so diverse linguistically (Pakistan too, but to a much lesser degree), so dividing a single language such as Hindustani into Urdu and Hindi can hardly have an impact on the majority of the people since neither Hindi nor Urdu was their first language.

The use of both languages as common forms of communication around Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, other parts of South Asia and parts of the Arabian/Persian Gulf region is a recent practice.
At no time before the Eighteenth century was Urdu used in the region of Pakistan or other parts of South Asia as a lingua Franca.

In short how can you use one or two commonly used languages to represent the people of an entire diverse region?

The Europeans previously used French to reach a common level of understanding one another a few centuries back and now they use English. Can either one or both of these languages be used to represent Europeans on linguistic, cultural or racial grounds as a whole?

As stated before, I read the first few pages of his book here .
A small note to add is that the overuse of Hindi in India and Urdu/Undri in Pakistan as a common language has caused rebellion in the past and still does. When I write overuse, I mean to say that these two languages are being enforced on those who do not speak it as a first language, at the expanse of their native languages.
So using these two or any two languages to represent a diverse region as the subcontinent cannot be taken seriously.

-More pro-Indian bias can be seen at his mention of the mythical "partition of India" already disproven here.

-The author mentions Aramaic to be the "mother" of Arabic, which no other linguist to my knowledge claims. According to linguistic knowledge, Aramaic is a cousin to Arabic, both being derived from a Proto-Semitic language. Refer to the chart below:


-His claim for Semitic & Persian influences on Urdu/Undri being 'ingredients' of the language further discredits his hypothesis on linguistic lines, since borrowed words in a language are not included in it's structural study in the process of it's classification.
More so, borrowed words are a frequent occurrence in almost every language known. Urdu or any other language can randomly borrow words from related or unrelated languages to enhance it's vocabulary; provided there is no grammar conflict with the language and the foreign/alien word it is borrowing.
That being said, all the Arabic words in Urdu are borrowed free of conflict with Urdu's Indo-European grammar and can easily be replaced with words from almost any other language family, again, provided there is no grammar conflict.

Examples are Turkish and Farsi borrowing from Arabic. Plenty of Arabic loanwords can be found in both these languages.
Yet they are considered unrelated because their grammatical structures differ. Farsi belongs to the Indo-European family (like Hindi & Urdu) as Arabic belongs to the Afro-Asiatic family, as Turkish belongs to the Altaic family.

And yet no one who screams of Urdu/Undri being a "mixed language" seems to take this into consideration.
By the logic of the author the modern English language has roots in Japan and he middle east because of loanwords like 'tycoon' from Japanese or 'bazaar' from Arabic.

-The claim that only about 7-10% of Urdu's vocabulary is derived from Sanskrit is irrelevant, since linguistics does not allow classification of languages based on their vocabulary, but rather the grammar they are laid out in.
Not only that, but such kind of classification as done by Jamil Khan, goes completely against the rules of the scientific study of languages themselves.

Languages with common sounding words are proposed relatives, but if you don't have corresponding grammar, the words are accepted as borrowed and/or coincidental. Languages with similar grammar, but lacking common root words and having distinct geography are regarded as having coincidental similarities; hence unrelated to each other.

Other observations that I find in his book which are interesting but hardly credible. In his first chapter where the author tries to 'prove' a Mesopotamian origin for Urdu & Hindi, he also tries to draw what seems to be genetic similarities between Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Altaic, Uralic & Dravidian.
Possible genetic similarities between these language families have been proposed by linguists before, which has led to the Nostratic theory .

If there is any credibility in this theory, it still won't prove Mr Khan's claims of Urdu & Hindi's "Dravidian, Mesopotamian roots", but rather a possible common origin between Dravidian & Indo-European languages alongside Semitic, which is a part of the Afro-Asiatic language family:


Below is a basic chart of the proposed Nostratic family:

There was no 'partition' of "India"

THERE WAS NO “PARTITION”: For Britain ” ‘Indian’ Empire” included Somalia, Iraq, Burma, Singapore etc. For the French “India” included Vietnam (Indo-China). For the Dutch “India” included “Indo-n-asia”.




Some truly educated historians and many educated Pakistanis in particular take deep umbrage and dislike the usage of the term “partition” because “partition” implies the division of a whole. As the maps show, the term “India” was very ephemeral and put in vogue by the British. Before British times, there was no such word. Because there never was a country called “India” there was no "partition"

“India is no more a country than the Equator“ Winston Churchill
Initially when Lord Clive of the East Indian company defeated Shirijud Daulah, he called it British Bengal. When the British formally came to the Subcontinent in 1857, they encountered more than 570 states. When they left the Subcontinent they left more than 570 independent states and two dominions, India and Pakistan. The states on the banks of the Indus decided to live together as Pakistan, as they had lived together for thousands of years. The states on the Gangetic plain banded together to form “Bharat”. The state on the Brahamaputra became its own state.
Maps showing various sovereign, independent states in the Subcontinent during the British Raj:

Each state had its own currency, laws, jails, flag, crest, passport, military, treasury, and British forces were not allowed to enter the state. Many were ruled by Muslims rulers like Hydrabad, Bhopal, Junagarh etc. Maps showing various sovereign, independent states in the Subcontinent during the British Raj.

The separation of Burma is not called “partition”. The independence of Sri Lanka is not called “partition”. the removal of Iraq from the British Indian Empire is not called “partition”. The independence of Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan is not called “partition”. Aden and Somalia became independent in the British Indian Empire and are not lamented as being “partitioned” off. For the French, separating Vietnam from their Indian Empire is not called “partition”. For the Dutch, removing Indonesia from Dutch “India” is not called separation.

The Western states had lived together in the Valley of the Indus for more than 5000 years together so it was natural for them to live together

THE BASIS FOR THE THESIS
“Pakistan” existed 5000 years ago. 5000 years ago Pakistan was probably not called “Pakistan”. China 5000 years ago was also called something else. Egypt 5000 years ago was called something else.

Kushan Parthian maps show different parts of the world.

The British Indian Empire included Somalia, Iraq, Aden, Burma and other states. Then there was the French “Indian” Empire, Dutch “Indian” Empire, “Portuguese” Indian Empire and even a Danish “Indian” Empire. Each one had a different meaning of “India”.The French “Indian” Empire included Vietnam etc. The Dutch Indian Empire included parts of the Subcontinent and Indonesia. Columbus called America “India” and the local inhabitants Indian. Other islands in the new world were called East Indies. South East Asia was called Indo-China

The French “Indian” Empire included parts of the Subcontinent and (Indo-China) Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos in it

The Dutch “Indian” Empire included Indonesia in it

Portuguese map shows. Notice Pakistan labeled Sindh and "India" as Hind. Also note that the name "Hind" is derived from Sindh. So yes, even the roots of the words "Hind" "Hindi" "Hindu" "Hindustan" all originate in present-day Pakistan. These words are a result of the corruption of the original name "Sindhu" meaning land of the rivers which was Pakistan's name in 3000 BC.



Independent princely states during 17th century British presence:

Map of Timur's empire, which included Pakistan, but not "India"

THERE WAS NO PARTITION
The Pakistan proposal “Now or Never” was not based on any partition. It was based on the Muslim majority areas coming together.

Countless maps of pre-47 Pakistan can be found including different time eras most of them excluding present-day "India"

“Notwithstanding [a] thousand years of close contact, nationalities which are as divergent today as ever, cannot at any time be expected to transform themselves into one nation merely by means of subjecting them to a democratic constitution and holding them forcibly together by unnatural and artificial methods of British Parliamentary statutes. What the unitary government of India for one hundred fifty years had failed to achieve cannot be realized by the imposition of a central federal government. It is inconceivable that the fiat or the writ of a government so constituted can ever command a willing and loyal obedience throughout the sub-continent by various nationalities, except by means of armed force behind it. Quaid E Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah: Founder of modern-day Pakistan and the Father of the state.

THE PROOF OF THE THESIS
How could a country be partitioned from "India" when it has existed for more than 5000 years as a separate entity. One hundred and Fifty years as part of the British empire does not make “India” a country

Pakistanis and historians detest the word that incorrectly describes the genesis of the country that has existed since time immemorial.

So why do people believe this whole falsified term "partition of 'India'" Indians have been involved in a massive propaganda campaign for the past 60 years including making movies, writing books, articles, promoting historic distortion.

Hitler had a saying. Speak a lie, keep repeating it and everyone will believe it.

The term “India” stems from the Arab usage of the word Hind from for the inhabitants who lived on the Sindhu (Indus) river. From Sindh to Hindh. In time all residents beyond the Indus were also called Hindus.

The Western states, Kalat, Bhawalpur, and provinces Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan, and NWFP banded together to form “Pakistan” and decided to live together as one country just like they had lived together for thousands of years before the British arrived in the Indus Valley Civilization that existed almost entirely on the banks of the Indus. The states of the Gangetic Civilization that existed on the banks of the Ganges banded together to live form Bharat(constitutional name of “India”). Pakistan had objected to the name “India” being used by Bharat.

These maps show the British Indian Empire which included many states. The other maps detail the condition of the Subcontinent on the eve of the British departure.There never was a country called “India.” The Arabs never ventured past Sindh. The nomenclature was for those on the river Indus as Sindhu or Hindu. ”India” is a colonial derivative of the word. During British Times vast areas of Asia came under the jurisdiction of Britain. Iraq, Somalia, Burma and 526 states in the Subcontinent were all part of the British Empire. When the British were leaving all the parts were made independent.Of these, Somalia, Iraq, Burma, and Pakistan are some of the countries that got liberated. There never was any partition because there never was a “whole” to divide.
At one point Afghanistan was also part of the British "Indian" Empire. Curzon’s retreat from Afghanistan, and its separation from the “Indian” Empire was not called “partition”.

The separation of Iraq from the Indian empire was not called partition. The separation of Aden from British India was not called partition. the separation of the gulf states from “India” was not called partition. The independence of Burma from the British raj in 1933 was not called “partition”. Why is the Pakistani independence called “partition”, as if it was part and parcel of a “whole”.

THE FOUR SUPERPOWERS OF EARLY HISTORY: China, Egypt, Iraq and Pakistan. The Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates delta, the Yangtze Delta, and the Indus, are the wombs of all civilizations on our earth. These river valley spawned and nurtured humanity. Imagine a world with four superpowers at peace with each other. Imagine a planet where each civilization was immersed in humongous construction projects, urban edification and trade. . How did these proto-world powers interact with each other? Imagine a civilization without any implements of war. Let us look into pre-history and peek into the “seeds” of time. Let us look at the valleys of the world that engendered the Superpowers of the ancient world..

PAKISTAN 5000 YEARS AGO:-The Indus Valley Civilization of South Asia was one of the inceptive civilizations on the planet. It was contemporaneous with the Chinese, Egyptian, and Sumerian civilizations. These were the times when the Egyptians were building huge monuments to their God-kings,the pyramids and the Sphinx. These were the centuries when the Chinese were building palaces for the Shun dynasty. These were exciting eons in the Holy lands too.

These were the centuries when Moses was battling the pharaohs, Abraham was building the Kaaba, David was ruling the kingdom, and Solomon was building the Temple of Yahweh. It was during these centuries that the Indus Valley Civilization flourished and reached its zenith in South Asia.

The IVC built well planned municipalities for its citizens. While the Egyptians spent three generations of their labor force (estimated between 20,000-10000) building useless mausoleum-pyramids to bury the God-kings, the Harappans were successful in eradicating, disease, hunger, and malnutrition.

The Harappans of the IVC did not build huge commemorative, deifying, dedicatory, cenotaphs. The Harappans of Meluhha-IVC built the finest cities of the third millennium BCE.

Because the Subcontinent was never “one” country, there are deep fissures in “Bharat.” The Kashmiris, the Naxalites, the Northeastern states, as well as East Punjab, and Tamil Nadu on the South all want to revert to the pre-1947 era.