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Writing systems

@Fowler&fowler: Can you help me out here? I can't figure out what sense to make of either of your edit summaries when you removed the entire writing section from the article. For example, "I'm sorry, it is also UNDUE; you can find sources for the craziest assertions these days." What crazy assertions are in the text you removed? Are you disagreeing that Urdu is traditionally written in a Persian-derived script? Is the information about a handwritten newspaper in Chennai false? Is the paragraph about the 19th century false?

Then, regarding "The plain fact of the matter is that Urdu script is pretty much dead in India, but it is not dead in Pakistan", the third paragraph appears to agree with you about the situation in India, and then we have the first and second paragraphs to cover the Urdu script. So what, exactly, are you taking issue with? Meanwhile, you've left the article giving the impression that Urdu isn't written, because what article about a major world language with a huge body of written work doesn't discuss how it's written? Largoplazo (talk) 05:12, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

User:Largoplazo, I just had a look at the section and found nothing wrong with it. Urdu is written in the Perso-Arabic script, with most modern newspapers being printed (I found the fact about the handwritten newspaper to be quite interesting). In colonial India, Urdu was indeed written in the Kaithi script (especially in Bihar and Bengal) and today, some Urdu books are printed in Devanagari so that Hindi speakers can read them (both Urdu and Hindi are standardized registers of the Hindi-Urdu/Hindustani language as explained in this article by Professor Afroz Taj of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). Apart from writing, it is worth noting that many Pakistani videos, such as those on YouTube for example (such as this cooking show or this vlog), write that the video is in Urdu/Hindi in the title since the spoken language is the same. I hope this helps. With regards, AnupamTalk 05:30, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Largoplazo: A writing system should be about the writing system, i.e. how the letters from the Arabic alphabet were adapted first in Persian and then in Urdu, how phonology affected the writing system, e.g. how a letter such as ث (Arabic thaa, pronounced as in the English "th" in thistle, which has no equivalent sound in the Indo-Aryan languages, came to be pronounced as "s," but the vestigial spellings of words that came from Arabic remained, cluing people to the Arabic origin of those words, and so forth. How will Urdu written in Hindi or English capture that? I'm tired right now; it's way past my bedtime. So, I'll reply in detail tomorrow, but this section reads like it is written by someone who doesn't know much about the writing system, and its evolution, but is telling stories (the newspaper in Madras etc) to avoid talking about the topic on hand. Good night. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 05:42, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Obviously, an article about a literary language (= a language which serves as medium of formal and informal writing) should have a section or a subpage about its writing system(s). The subpage exists (Urdu alphabet), and is about the Perso-Arabic writing system (especially its technical aspects), so a short summary is ok and sufficient here. Urdu was occasionally written in other scripts (especially when Modern Stadard Hindi had not yet been established), so that's a noteworthy historcal detail.
The modern experiments of writing Urdu in Devanagari script are interesting, and clearly show that Urdu is not just "Hindustani written in Perso-Arabic script". Urdu remains Urdu as long as its speakers self-identify with the Urdu language and make compentent use of Urdu-specific vocabulary, regardless of the script used. I have changed the source by Rizwan Ahmad for better verifiabilty, but I would prefer to have at least one more source to support the notability of the topic for mentioning it here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Austronesier (talk • contribs) 08:44, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler: You're conflating language with writing system, the Urdu language with the Urdu alphabet. This article being about a language, it needs to cover the writing system or systems that are used to write it. All of that is absolutely pertinent to a language, including whether the language is written in multiple scripts. You can check that out in the article on any language, including languages written in multiple systems, whether consecutively or concurrently, such as Mongolian language#Writing systems and Mongolian writing systems; Turkish language#Writing system; Vietnamese language#Writing systems; Inuktitut#Writing; Uzbek language#Writing systems; and Sindhi language#Writing systems.
The deeper details of the development and execution of a particular script are also important—and, in this case, those are covered for the Urdu alphabet at, appropriately, Urdu alphabet.
Your understanding of what information about how a language is written belongs in an article about that language is, in principle, mistaken and, in fact, at odds with the way the writing systems of languages are addressed in articles about those languages across Wikipedia.
On the other hand, I agree with you entirely about the removal of the section here on Literature. That's a different matter altogether. Largoplazo (talk) 13:12, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

@Largoplazo and Austronesier: I wasn't looking to remove the section permanently; I wanted to remove the POV in it, which is mostly all its current content. I thought, "Until such time as someone rewrites it, and it might eventually have to be me, it is better to have no information than the wrong information (as Jimbo said somewhere long ago.)" Here is the sequence of my thoughts, written in a precise if humorous vein. The section has three paragraphs.

  • The first tells us about styles of printing and calligraphy, not script. (Probably just as well, for the error-ridden Urdu script page does not need to be distilled for nuggets of fragile reliability.)
  • The second paragraph is about the Kaithi script. It cites Christopher King's book.
  • The book's first reference to Kaithi is on page 56. It says:

    One of the clearest statements of the utilitarian principle guiding those who endorsed the vernaculars came, ironically, from an advocate of Persian, Judge Morris of the Patna City Court. Should Persian be done away with, he wrote, the choice would lie between Urdu in the Persian script or Hindi in the Nagari or Kaithi script. In that case, the government should adopt Hindi ‘upon the principle of studying the convenience of the larger body of the people."

    That seemed to be suggesting that Kaithi was associated with Hindi (or more likely with Bhojpuri).
  • I then searched the old standby, Platt's Urdu-English dictionary, still venerated far and wide (see Rauf Parekh, the editor of the last volume (the 22nd) of the world's largest monolingual Urdu dictionary, singing its praises in the Dawn). Well, Platts (eventually a professor of Persian at Oxford) says,

    H کايهیی कायथी kāyathī, kāʼethī [S. कायस्थ+इका], s.f. The modified form of the Devanāgarī character which is used by Kāyaths or (Hindū) scribes (esp. in and about Patna). (p 809)

  • So I thought, to be fair, what does the world's largest monolingual Hindi dictionary say? I delved into the multivolume Dasa's Shabdsagar (Nagari Pracharini Sabha, Varanasi 1965-1975). I found an entry on page 1046. It says: "कैथी संज्ञा स्त्री० [हि० कायथ] एक पुरानी लिपि जो नागरी से मिलती जुलती होती है । विशेष—यह शीघ्र लिखी जाती है और इसमें टेक या शीर्ष रेखा नहीं होती । इसमें एक ही सरकार होता है और ऋ, लृ, लू, स्वर तथा ङ् ञ ण व्यंजन नहीं होते । संयुक्तप्रांत तथा बिहार में चिट्ठी पत्री और हिसाब किताब प्रायः इसी लिपि में लिखे जाते हैं ।" Quick translation: feminine noun, an old script similar to nagari. Special note: it is a quick shorthand written without nagari's trademark extending head line ... it does not have the special characters, ... the nasals ङ् ञ ण ṅ ñ and ṇ" In the United Provinces and Bihar it is used for chiTThi patri (letter writing) or hisaab kitaab (accounting)
  • I went back to the Kaithi#Consonants section, but it was empty. It did have a column for ṅ ñ and ṇ though ...
  • Summing up, what was Kaithi? As far as I can tell it was a quick and dirty cursive Nagari-ish script employed for Bhojpuri, which the Kayasth scribes and accountants in the Patna area used as a shorthand. So, what was its connection with Urdu? Well, the Kayasths had been scribes for the Moghul (Persian) and the post-Mughal (Urdu) regimes, so kaithi, or kayathi ("of the Kayasths") became linked in the minds of some traditionalist Nagari promoters as tainted (not as pure as Devanagari, the script of the gods), and eventually kaithi lost out to (Dev)nagari.
  • At this point I realized I had already done more reliable work on kaithi than the authors of the Kaithi article had done. There was no point bothering with the Urdish or Urdagiri (attempts at writing Urdu, rough and ready, in today's kaithis (Hindi and English)
  • I had no compunction removing the garbage. QED Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:13, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm in agreement with Largoplazo and Anupam that the blanking of the paragraphs was wrong because the material is relevant and incisive. These kind of POV attack edit summaries are not acceptable for the academic setting of Wikipedia either. [1] LearnIndology (talk) 14:32, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler: Thank you for providing us with a rare glimpse into your thoughts. This is beyond every expectation after only having seen your edit summaries before, which did not betray such a depth. The insights e.g. about the misrepresentation of King (1994) are shareworthy at the earliest stage of a cleanup. "Trash" just leaves the onus of guesswork on the beholder. –Austronesier (talk) 14:37, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
You've researched Kaithi at length, yet I don't see that any of the information you've shared falsifies the assertion that "In 1880, Sir Ashley Eden, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal abolished the use of the Persian alphabet in the law courts of Bengal" or diminishes the significance of the official replacement of the Persian-derived alphabet in judicial settings. Reading these words more closely myself just now raises a separate concern, which is whether this is about Urdu at all or about Bengali—did Urdu have official status in Bengal to begin with, in place of Bengali? If it did, then I'm left at not understanding why what you've written above contraindicates the inclusion of the two-sentence discussion of Kaithi.
As many problems as there may be scattered throughout the text, you haven't convinced me that the entirety of it is trash, and I'm not convinced that enough of it is trash that WP:TNT applies in preference to tagging and discussing and/or fixing what's already there. I don't believe your scorched earth approach was called for. Largoplazo (talk) 14:50, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
@Largoplazo: Here's the relevant chapter from King (1994)[2]. ( no comments for now, will read it later )–Austronesier (talk) 15:02, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @Austronesier and Largoplazo: To be fair, King has a section (pp 65 to 67) on the Kaithi script. This is more nuanced. It says among other things:
More King on Kaithi

A few years later, however, Kaithi found a vigorous proponent in Browning’s successor, J. C. Nesfield. In 1875 Nesfield reported that he was about to change the curriculum of the government schools of Oudh to include Kaithi writing and Kaithi arithmetic along with Nagari in the lowest classes.” In the same year, he set about the creation of an improved Kaithi script ... Nesfield explained the reasons for his policy in some detail. In Oudh, he declared, no one used the Nagari script for either public or private business. Even Brahmans did not use Nagari for business matters, but only for copying out Sanskrit manuscripts. Though government schools in Oudh taught Nagari, in Nesfield’s opinion, they were wasting their time, for the students abandoned the script as soon as they left school. The government might as usefully introduce Chinese! Should the government desire a second script for court documents in Oudh, Kaithi rather than Nagari deserved the honour.” Nesfield’s eager partisanship for Kaithi, reminds us of Shore’s enthusiasm for Nagari. Like Shore’s experiment too, Nesfield’s attempt came to nothing, for after 1888 the education reports of Oudh contain no mention of the teaching of Kaithi.

And so forth. ... Anyway, I'm running out of time, but upon reading that I thought, "I remember Nesfield from somewhere." I remembered a short start-level article I had written long ago and forgotten about: History of English grammars. You can read about Nesfield there in the 19th or 20th centuries sections. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:05, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

@Largoplazo: Here is the Kaithi script, used even now for Magahi a language of Bihar. But this is what irritates me about the India-POV Urdu warriors: look at the amount of time they waste distorting a language they only rudimentarily understand. They use arguments (that Kaithi was used for writing Urdu, which it may have been here and there, but the evidence seems to be that it was related much more to Bhojpuri, Magahi, Nagari, Devanagari, even Gujarati! than it was to Urdu, in any essential fashion. They couldn't have have taken some time to fix that darn Kaithi article?? Why am I the one to find the sources? What is their interest then: looking for reliable knowledge or relentlessly make a bogus arguments, come what may? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:33, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

PS And note in the Kaithi script above, there are no end of the row nasal consonants of the Devanagari script. All that people do on the Urdu page is to cherry pick their POV in the most ridiculous places, and then if you counter them, they edit war and say, "Take to the talk page." How silly! Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:37, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm not moved by your overarching battle against "POV Urdu warriors" cherry picking hither and yon. This is an article on Urdu, so Urdu is the appropriate subject. It's a section on the writing of Urdu, so significant developments in the history of the writing of Urdu are relevant. I see a couple of factual sentences concisely conveying a significant circumstance relevant to the history of Urdu writing. I can't see anything resembling an agenda in them, and I haven't seen you negate the appropriateness of their presence. Largoplazo (talk) 15:43, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
@Largoplazo: Again, what is there is UNDUE. Here is the major source on Indo Aryan languages. The Urdu chapter runs from page 286 to 350. That's 65 pages. Why don't you search "Kaithi" in that book? What page numbers appear? You don't think that if Kaithi had been used for writing Urdu in any notable fashion, it would have been mentioned in a 65 page chapter on the language by Ruth Laila Schmidt, Professor Emerita of Urdu at the University of Oslo, and author of Urdu Grammar? How is somehow worthy of mention in the short (six or seven page) WP article? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:06, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
This is why I emphasized the brevity and concision of the mention. The text here doesn't praise Kaithi or its use. It doesn't promote it. I cannot imagine who would benefit from its mention or whose agenda mentioning it could possibly promote. I don't know why an arbitrary 65 page treatment of Urdu doesn't mention it. Maybe it's because it was irrelevant to the author's primary purpose in writing the pieces. But its omission from that one piece doesn't so totally outweigh the significance of a formal decree that the system be used in official contexts to the extent that it's a horrible POV crime for it simply to be mentioned, as opposed to expounded on at length, which it isn't. I feel that your emphasis on UNDUE is undue, as is your reaction to the presence of these two sentences in the article and as was your obliteration of the entire section in response to it. I can make no assertion as to your motivation, but the intensity with which the mention of Kaithi concerns you makes it sound as though you have a POV that this mention rubs raw. Largoplazo (talk) 16:37, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

@Largoplazo:

  • You say >>>"Yet I don't see that any of the information you've shared falsifies the assertion that "In 1880, Sir Ashley Eden, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal abolished the use of the Persian alphabet in the law courts of Bengal" or diminishes the significance of the official replacement of the Persian-derived alphabet in judicial settings. Reading these words more closely myself just now raises a separate concern, which is whether this is about Urdu at all or about Bengali—did Urdu have official status in Bengal to begin with, in place of Bengali? If it did, then I'm left at not understanding why what you've written above contraindicates the inclusion of the two-sentence discussion of Kaithi.
  • Please note: the Bengal presidency had been split into two lieutenant governorships: (a) Northwestern Provinces and Oudh and (b) Bengal (which included Bengal proper, Bihar and Orissa). Please examine two of the maps I had uploaded on Wikipedia showing Bengal: File:Pope1880BritishIndia1.jpg in 1880. and File:Joppen1907BritishBengalBritishBurmaA.jpg which shows how British Bengal changed. Bihar and Orissa were a part of it.
  • The quote in the writing systems section is: In 1880, Sir Ashley Eden, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal in colonial India abolished the use of the Persian alphabet in the law courts of Bengal and ordered the exclusive use of Kaithi, a popular script used for both Urdu and Hindi;
  • The text in King's book says: In Bihar, unlike the NWP&O, official policy by 1880 had begun to promote both the Nagari and Kaithi scripts. In that year the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Sir Ashley Eden, ordered the exclusive use of Nagari or Kaithi in much of Bihar.” The government intended the Nagari and Kaithi scripts to take the place of the Persian script in printed and hand-written documents respectively.”
I also have access to the book and User:Fowler&fowler, you're not sharing the complete text, which is on page 67 and 68. I will share relevant quotes from page 67 and 68 that provide the context to this, which supports the text in the article:

In the same year the Hindi Brahman of Kanpur observed that the local government had queried district officers as to whether the court documents should be written in Hindi as well as in Urdu, and if so, in the Nagari or Kaithi script, and disparaged Kaithi as being no better than the Persian script. ... Moreover, one piece of evidence suggests that Kaithi had some sort of association with Hindustani (Urdu). Nesfield wrote in 1876 that 'no such association [like that of Nagari] exists between Kaithi and Sanskrit. On the contrary, there is a counter association already established between the Kaithi character and the Hindustani vocabulary. ... In Bihar, unlike the NWP&O, official policy had begun to promote both the Nagari and Kaithi scripts. In that year the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Sir Ashley Eden, ordered he exclusive use of Nagari or Kaithi in much of Bihar. The government intended the Nagari and Kaithi scripts to take the place of the Persian script in printed and hand-written documents respectively. ... To Hindi supporters, the Kaithi script did not possess the proper qualities to join the 'pool of symbols' suitable to differentiate Hindi from Urdu.

No amount of filibustering, User:Fowler&fowler, is going to change the fact that the history of the scripts used to write Urdu should belong in this article. Thank you for your continued words of wisdom here User:Largoplazo. We need to ensure that we do not allow communal political views to enter this article. Kind regards, AnupamTalk 17:41, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
I also just noticed this comment above, where User:Fowler&fowler pushes POV reflective of communal pieties that "it's Muslim", "it needs Nastaliq" and "it can't be written in Devanagari". On the other hand, King's text, which is cited, clearly states that "From a technical linguistic viewpoint they were largely correct: one can write Urdu in the Nagari or Roman scripts, and Hindi in the Persian or Roman with the addition of a few diacriticals or other special symbols." The text also states "Educated Muslims, for the most part supporters of Urdu, rejected the Hindu linguistic heritage and emphasized the joint Hindu-Muslim origins of Urdu." User:Fowler&fowler, you can't just cherry-pick from sources to support your personal POV and blank entire sections of this article that are well supported by scholars such as King. AnupamTalk 17:52, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Let's stick to how, the text in King's book: "In Bihar, unlike the NWP&O, official policy by 1880 had begun to promote both the Nagari and Kaithi scripts. In that year the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Sir Ashley Eden, ordered the exclusive use of Nagari or Kaithi in much of Bihar. The government intended the Nagari and Kaithi scripts to take the place of the Persian script in printed and hand-written documents respectively.” was paraphrased: "In 1880, Sir Ashley Eden, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal in colonial India abolished the use of the Persian alphabet in the law courts of Bengal and ordered the exclusive use of Kaithi, a popular script used for both Urdu and Hindi;" Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:56, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Technically a language can be written in any script, Anupam. But in the unique case of Hindi and Urdu, where they share a nearly identical grammar, basic vocabulary, and common loanwords, the two differentiating features are the script and formal loanwords.Foreverknowledge (talk) 20:51, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
These "communal political views" of Fowler&fowler that Anupam refers to above, Largoplazo, were pointed out by Zakaria1978, who is from across the border (Pakistan) earlier in the talk page.[3] Any mention of India in this article deeply disturbs Fowler&fowler[4] which is why you notice that "the intensity with which the mention of Kaithi concerns you makes it sound as though you have a POV that this mention rubs raw." There is no way that one who writes about "Urdu illiterates in India" in their edit summaries can follow WP:NPOV on this article.[5] There is no bogeyman of "India-POV Urdu warriors", just simply Fowler&fowler's POV and so far, not a single editor has agreed with them here. LearnIndology (talk) 18:04, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Fowler&fowler, don't remove citations from the article that don't suit your viewpoints.[6] LearnIndology (talk) 18:13, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

I also think that the Kaithi topic is an interesting historical footnote from a time (i.e. the late 1800s) when nobody really made a difference between "Hindustani" and "Urdu", and Sanskritized Khariboli/Urdu/Hindustani aka "Modern Standard Hindi" still was something as alien as a conlang for most people, a time when Urdu had not yet been converted into the ideological raft for sailing to the promised land called "Pakistan". We should keep due weight, sure, but there are other ways to do this than purging everything out from our page which is not covered in every publication about the history of Urdu. If some of the good sources tell a story about it, why shouldn't we too? And if King's book is suboptimally paraphrased, there are better ways to kill a fly on a window glass than using a hammer. It's a spontaneuous metaphor; I do not kill flies. –Austronesier (talk) 18:17, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
I don’t entirely agree, Austronesier. The British administration certainly confounded Hindustani and Urdu (as Platts indicates too) and often promoted Urdu under the name of Hindustani. But others certainly appreciated the difference between moderately Persianized Khariboli and a more highly Persianized one. As Imre Bangha indicates, the more moderately Persianized register was traditionally called Hindustan (i.e. Hindustani) and the high Persianized register was called Rekhta. If the British had promoted a moderately Persianized register instead of higher Persianized and Sanskritized registers, perhaps Hindi and Urdu wouldn’t have diverged into two languages. Foreverknowledge (talk) 19:35, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Thank you User:LearnIndology and User:Austronesier. The website for Unicode confirms this widespread and official usage:

Kaithi was used for writing Urdu in the law courts of Bihar when it replaced Perso-Arabic as the official script during the 1880s. The majority of extant legal documents from Bihar from the British period are in Urdu written in Kaithi. There is a substantial number of such manuscripts, specimens of which are given in Figure 21, Figure 22, and Figure 23.

I hope this helps. With regards, AnupamTalk 18:19, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Please don't change the text Anupam. You can't do this. @Austronesier: if you think this is an interesting historical footnote, please tell me briefly what that footnote is. We can then talk about abridging it for an actual footnote. Please also tell me where King says Kaithi was being used for writing Urdu. This after all is the Urdu article, not Hindustani or Hindi. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:24, 16 October 2020 (UTC) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:31, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Also @Anupam: that quote of yours if from a proposal made in 2007 to a funding agency. Was the proposal funded? If so, where is the publication of results? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:28, 16 October 2020 (UTC) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:31, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
You need to familiarise yourself with what Unicode is, User:Fowler&fowler, and the author of that article is a linguist at the University of Michigan well versed in South Asian and Central Asian languages. The article provides a plethora of figures regarding Urdu officially written in the Kaithi script during the colonial era in India, as does King (I have provided the full quote above). Additionally, there is a consensus here to retain the information and buttress it, not remove it or footnote it. As such, please respect that. User:Austronesier, I wanted to mention that with regard to sailing to the promised land, King writes: "British language policy both resulted from and contributed to the larger political processes which eventually led to the partition of British India into India and Pakistan, an outcome almost exactly paralleled by the linguistic partition of the Hindi-Urdu continuum into highly Sanskritized Hindi and highly Persianized Urdu." This provides some context into the historical context for Urdu (and Hindi too). AnupamTalk 18:40, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Edit warring all of you (except for @Largoplazo), eh? –Austronesier (talk) 18:56, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Not edit warring about what was there, but trying to stop Anupam from changing the text post-facto. How many times has he done this before? Not a peep from anyone? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:04, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, I forgot this is actually reddit, apparently, I got redirected after typing in "W-i-k-i-p-e-d-i-a". Good night! –Austronesier (talk) 19:10, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

@Anupam: He is? Please tell me where in the Dept of Linguistics, UofM? If you are so sure this is reliable, we can take this source and post it on the Reliable Sources noticeboard. How about it? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:59, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Ya, I also say "no" to footnoting Kaithi. Bihar was a huge province in Undivided India and Kaithi's use there, the Urdu heartland, for writing the language must be documented in the body of the article. Wikipedia is not censored. I disagree with Fowler&fowler wanting to change the Writing Systems section too. This is an encylopedia article on the language and our readers will want a peripheral overview of the language. If Fowler&fowler wants to add material on how each letter is derived, they can do that at Urdu script. How is reads now is marvelous. LearnIndology (talk) 19:14, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 2

  • From Peter Robb, Pro-Director, Professor and former Head of the Department of South Asian Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in Robb, Peter G. (2007). Liberalism, Modernity, and the Nation. Oxford University Press. pp. 76–77. ISBN 978-0-19-568159-8.
Kaithi was used to write Hindi

In Bihar, for example, in the 1870s, Hindi written in the Kaithi script had been proposed as the standard. Persian script was also proposed, in the interests of consistency, in 1876. According to Grierson, Kaithi was used from Bihar to Gujarat ‘alongside the more complete and elegant Devanagari’. ‘Practically speaking, the former may be looked upon as the current hand of the latter, though epigraphically it is not a corruption of it as some think.’23 Sir Steuart Bayley, then Commissioner in Patna, declared Kaithi to be ‘more suitable to the wants of the people’ (a significant choice of criterion), though he agreed that the Nagri script was sometimes used by zamindars. However, in the same year (1872), Sir George Campbell, Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, required that all notifications and processes be in Nagri, and that the amla and police officers learn the script within six months. This practice was followed after 1875 for all printed materials and returns, though handwritten entries were commonly made in Kaithi. The alternative use of the Persian script was abolished in 1880. Hindi written in Kaithi script continued to be used for court proceedings, but in the 1890s Sir Charles Elliott’s government ordered that, though complaints might be presented in any language, all summons, reports, and other official documents should now also be written in Nagri (when not in English). It was further proposed that Nagri should be introduced in all primary schools.

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:45, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree with you about Kaithi, Fowler. Khariboli in Kaithi script was indeed used in the courts of Bihar, but as shown in the conflicting terminology in your source and Anupam’s source, there is no consensus among scholars whether this should be considered Hindi in Kaithi script replacing Urdu, or Urdu in Kaithi script replacing Urdu in Perso-Arabic script. This is due to Kaithi being a “third party” in the Hindi-Urdu dispute, and presumably the degree of Persianization used in Kaithi documents can lead to different subjective conclusions about whether it should be called Hindi or Urdu. Foreverknowledge (talk) 20:32, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
We know Kaithi was used to write Urdu, since Hindi as we know it today didn't exist then.[7] This article should talk about the history of the way this language developed including the way that it was written, which was different ways. Anupam already showed us sources that explicitly call the language Kaithi was written in Bihar as Urdu. I don't see how this is POV promotion either but just writing historical facts. Article isn't saying that we should start writing Urdu in Kaithi now. It's just saying it was written that way before. Zakaria1978 ښه راغلاست (talk) 23:34, 16 October 2020 (UTC)
That’s not quite correct, Zakaria. The time period under consideration is the late 19th century. Both Urdu and Hindi were in existence then. Northern India was engulfed in the Hindi-Urdu dispute during this period. Anupam’s and Fowler’s sources contradict each other as far as whether the language in Kaithi script used in the courts of Bihar was labeled Urdu or Hindi, and there are other sources that mention both Urdu and Hindi while others just state Hindustani. So there are different POVs. Foreverknowledge (talk) 00:17, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
Dear Zakaria1978 and LearnIndology You will have noticed my detailed quotes from Platt's and Dasa's dictionaries. I notice that you Zakaria are an Urdu speaker from Pakistan and you've admitted that you have been reading Urdu newspapers for many decades, and LearnIndology you say that Urdu is your madari zaban (and you are an academic). You are also both adamant that kaithi was indeed used for writing Urdu, the literary register, not Hindustani, the colloquial common speech. That means kaithi will need to pass the test of common homophones of Urdu.
(a) how would you distinguish between "sadaa" as in sadabahar and "sadaa" as in zameeN se aane lagi sada (Iqbal) if you were writing in kaithi which is a shorthand without diacritics. Here is the kaithi script
(b) aam (as in the mango fruit) and aam as in common (diwan-e-aam)
(c) sher (as in tiger ) and sher as in sher-o-shayari
(d) kasrat (as in kasarat karna in the gym, working out) and kasrat (as in kasrat se hona, to occur abundantly; or ba-kasarat, abundantly
(e) baaz (as in the magnificent bird) and baaz (as in shatranj-baaz, a chess player)
(f) jaal (as in net) and jaal (as in jaal, counterfeit, forged, as in jaal-sazi counterfeiting)
(g) jamaa (as in set, congeal, dahi jama (the yogurt set) and jamaa (as in congregation, as in jamaa-daar an officer)
Please tell us. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:20, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
PS If on the other hand, I get the sense that you LearnIndology and Zakaria1978 are being disruptive, as you have been on some other pages which I edit, I will request a topic ban for both of you from India-related topics broadly construed. @Doug Weller, RegentsPark, SpacemanSpiff, and Bishonen: Be warned. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:32, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

@Foreverknowledge: You make a very important point here (somewhere ↑ further above). The identification of the material written in Kaithi as "Urdu" texts crucially depends on the question of whether Modern Standard Hindi already had taken shape as a Sanskritized form of Khariboli that could be used as a vehicle for formal writing and as a conscious alternative choice to Urdu. (The question of whether Kaithi is apt or defective to represent all facets of Urdu is secondary.)

Based on the two current simplistic POVs, you get the corresponding answer:

  • If one says that Modern Standard Hindi is Sanskritized Urdu, which after experiments in the early 19th century (e.g. Lallu Lal's Prem Sagar) only gained traction starting in the final third (or quarter) of the 19th century, then before that time, the Khariboli-derived language (spoken or written) still was undivided Urdu (then also synonymously called Hindustani). In this language, speakers/writers made use of "refined" (i.e. Persianized) vocabulary in various degrees, but that was a matter of style, and not an expression of Muslim communalism (NB at that time), nor defining the Urdu-ness vs. Hindustani-ness of the language. And since the practice of using Kaithi for writing Khariboli still fell into the period before the formal emergence of Modern Standard Hindi, one can include Kaithi writings in the Urdu text corpus.
  • OTOH, if one interprets the gradual emergence of Sanskrtized Khariboli texts in the early 1800s as the first actual specimen of MSH, and narrows down the definition of Urdu to the highly Persianized style of Khariboli written in Perso-Arabic script, this leaves Hindustani as label for the colloquial language. Then we could interpret the use of Kaithi as part of the efforts to de-Persianize Khariboli in its graphic representation, and thus assign these text to the emerging Hindi text corpus, or at least to the "neutral" Hindustani text corpus, since Kaithi was rejected by many Hindi advocates who only accepted Devanagari as "true" script for Hindi.

The truth of course somewhere lies in the middle, and depends very much on how we use the labels "Urdu", "Hindustani" and "Hindi": ahistorically (=retroactively) based on modern sociolinguistic patterns (from the early 1900s until now); or within their historical context. However, what does not work is to say: Urdu is Persianized Hindustani, and Hindi is Sanskitized Hindustani, both emerged in the early 1800; and at the same time assign the Kaithi texts to the Urdu corpus. That's a fallacy. –Austronesier (talk) 11:19, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Very good points @Austronesier and Foreverknowledge: and well thought through. I have just woken up, but only physically yet. After coffee, I'll post something illustrating your points. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:08, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
Allow me @Austronesier and Foreverknowledge: to offer a less theoretical perspective on this. Kaithi was a cursive hand employed for writing. There were other cursive hands. For example, one was associated with Nagari. It was used (or slightly varying versions of it were) in a swath across the North-Western Provinces (today's UP minus Awadh). As you can imagine, when people wrote fast (as in a letter or in making out a receipt) they did not have the time for drawing the hanging overhead line of Nagari.
Thus, when Mahatma Gandhi wrote a letter to Indira Gandhi (who was the daughter of his associate Jawaharlal Nehru) about his inability to attend her forthcoming wedding (in 1942), he wrote in a cursive hand. See here, from the Twitter site of a venerable Indian newspaper founded by Nehru. Allow me also to offer a quick transcription (which might not be perfect) in Devanagari: चि॰ इदुं, मैं क्या करूं। तेरी शादी के समय मैं तेरे पास न रहूं मुझे चुभता है, लेकिन मेरी लाचारी तू जानती है. मेरी आभा तो वहाँ होगी ही. जो आशाएं इस विवाह से रखी जाती हैं, ईश्वर सफल करे, बापु के आशिरवाद . Here चि॰ = चिरंजीवी = long-lived. Rough translation: "Long-lived/Blessed Indu (her nickname), What can/should I do? At the time of your wedding for me to be not there, hurts (or literally, pricks), but you understand my helplessness. My Abha (his great-niece) will be there in any case. What hopes/wishes are placed in this wedding, may God fulfill them. With blessings of Bapu." (Note: the "Abha" part I might have misread. The great-niece was 13 at that time. It is possible she attended the wedding (with her parents), but to offer the cosolation of a 13-year-old's presence to a 25-year-old woman about to get married, does not sound entirely diplomatic, but then it might have been his way of noting that a family member of his (perhaps several) were attending.)
The language: there are two clearly Persian-derived words in it: a) شادي shaadi (wedding feast, wedding, marriage) and b) لاچاری lachaari, a nominalization of Persian لاچار (lachaar) = لا (Persian la = without) + چار (Persian "remedy") = helpless(ness). OK, so what is this language Gandhi was writing? Was it Hindi, Urdu, or Hindustani? For sure, it was not Modern Standard Hindi (of Harishchandra the major figure of the 19th-century MSH-as-Khari-Boli renaissance), nor was it the Urdu of Ghalib or Mir, which were highly Persianized. Was it Hindustani? I would submit that it was not even Hindustani in the sense that the British used it after 1837: a language with a lightly Persianized vocabulary employed by the government, and used in court proceedings. Rather it was Hindi (but not MSH) that was commonly spoken in slightly varying dialects across the NW-P.
Kaithi was similar to cursive Nagari, but not identical. It was employed for the range of dialects found to the east of Benares (=Varanasi). Especially, in Bihar, it had a history of use that far outdated the experiment the British had begun with Khari Boli prose at Fort William (Calcutta) in the early 1800s. Kaithi was used to write letters, make receipts, file police reports, witness statements, but it was most emphatically not being used to write Urdu, in the same way that Gandhi was not writing Urdu. I will next look for some Kaithi documents from the period 1800 to 1881 (the last date is the year when the Kaithi script became official (along with Nagari) for court documents in Bihar.) Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 09:58, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
PS I just noticed at the Twitter site: they are (or rather were four years ago) asking for help in transcribing Gandhi's letter! Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:06, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
Here is: “The” palms of David in Kaithi Hindi. Baptist Mission Press. 1852. pp. 10–. These are the Baptists publishing it in Upper India. The year is 1852, when the Nagari Pracharini Sabha was yet 40 years away and Hirishchandra, its patron saint, (see above) a mere toddler. My point is: the Baptists had no dog in this Hindi-Urdu fight. They were looking to employ the most accessible script for quickly delivering the land from error's chain.
Anyway, please take a look at psalm number 8 at the bottom of page 10. It is written in Kaithi Hindi. I will first phonetically transcribe it, then do the same in devanagari, then translate it into English: (phonetic) हे परमेश्वर हमारे परभु सारी परीथीवी में तेरा नाम कैसा उतम है जीस ने अपने वीभव को स्वरगों से उपर अ‍सथापीत कीआ है (Modern Standard Hindi) हे परमेश्वर हमारे प्रभु सारी पृथ्वी में तेरा नाम कैसा उत्तम है जिस ने अपने वैभव को स्वरगों से ऊपर स्थापित किया है (English translation) Dear God, my Lord, How supreme/excellent is your name around the world that you have established your grandeur above the Heavens?"
There are no Persian or Arabic words in this, though later there may well be. It is certainly not Urdu, nor is it Hindustani in the meaning prevalent after 1837. For परमेश्वर प्रभु पृथ्वी उत्तम वैभव स्वरगों स्थापित are all tatsam words from Sanskrit, but with a pronunciation differing from Sanskrit or MSH. Again, it is the vernacular (spoken) language that the Baptists had chosen and they assessed Kaithi to be the script in the psalm would have been most accessible for rural congregations in N-W Pronives and Bihar. That is a far cry from saying that Kaithi was used as a script for Urdu. No Urdu sentence employs so many tatsam Sanskrit-origin words. I will create a small list of reliable sources later in the day. Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:28, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Though there is already a wide consensus to retain the information about historical scripts used to write Urdu in the article, I would like to offer some more compelling references, in addition to the ones that have already been provided, that buttress the use of the Kaithi script to write Urdu. Magahi and Magadh: Language and people, authored by Lata Atreya, Smriti Singh and Rajesh Kumar and published in the Global Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences in 2014, states:

Kaithi was also used to write Urdu or the Hindustani lingua franca, although now the Perso-Arabic script is associated with Urdu.

Hindi Nationalism by Alok Rai and published by Orient Blackswan in 2001, an academic press, states:

Devanagari was opposed not only to the Persian script, but also to Kaithi, a variant of the Nagari script that was popular amongst Muslims and Kayasthas.

A Quarrel in the Language Family: Agency and Representations of Speech in Mihila, authored by Richard Burghart and published in Modern Asian Studies in 1993 mentions that:

High Hindi-also called 'Nagari Hindi' - supplanted Urdu as the language of public life for Hindus in upper India. The Nagari Pracarini Sabha was formed in Benaras to promote the use of High Hindi written in the Devanagari alphabet, rather than the Perso-Arabic and Kaithi alphabets in which Urdu and Hindustani had previously been transcribed.

Script and identity–the politics of writing in South Asia, authored by Carmen Brandt and Pushkar Sohoni in South Asian History and Culture in 2018, states:

The Kaithi script was favoured in various regions by Kayasthas for keeping accounts in a host of languages such as Bhojpuri, Braj Bhasha, Hindi/Urdu, and Maithili ... It is also important to note that Hindi/Urdu was also written in Gurmukhi and Kaithi.

As a compromise, I could accept changing this clause in the article: "court language was Urdu written in the Kaithi script" to "court language was Hindi-Urdu written in the Kaithi script". If that doesn't work, we will just have to keep the article the way it is. Thanks, AnupamTalk 14:42, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Christopher Rolland King's book says, very very clearly, that "Kaithi had some sort of association with Hindustani (Urdu)"  while Nagari was associated with Hindi. There is not any justifiable reason to use original research and personal interpretations to argue against the Kaithi's inclusion. LearnIndology (talk) 15:46, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
In his work, King takes the first of the two perspectives mentioned by @Austronesier:. There are other scholars who take the second perspective or are somewhere in between. So as I said before, there are different POVs on the matter among scholars. What is clear is that a moderately Persianized Khariboli was being used, regardless of whether one chooses to call it Urdu, Hindi, Hindi and Urdu, Hindi-Urdu, Hindustani, or all of the aforementioned. I think the compromise suggested by @Anupam: is appropriate. Also @Fowler&fowler: made an important point about the change in 1881: Perso-Arabic script was abolished in Bihar and replaced with Kaithi or Nagari. I don’t think we should presume the court language when written in the Kaithi script was different than when written in the Nagari. Foreverknowledge (talk) 17:22, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
Thank you User:Foreverknowledge. Feel free to make that change in the article to reflect our compromise. I appreciate and am thankful for your willingness to work together. User:LearnIndology, thanks for your continued participation as well—I too, feel that King's text is clear, along with the other sources that I have offered. However, on Wikipedia, I'm usually willing to take into account the desires of others, as long as they are sincere in their work. I hope this helps. With regards, AnupamTalk 17:26, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
There is no question of any compromise. We have to be clear that the script of the court in Bihar was changed from the Perso-Arabic to the Kaithi. Nowhere did they say that the language of the submission was to be changed. The language was a mix of various Bihari dialects, which had already absorbed typical terms of both Sanskrit and Persian long before. For example, the witness complaint in often began with "Dharam aotar" (in dialect Hindi) or "Gharib Nawaz" or "Gharib Parwar" is Persianized dialect. What does this have to do with the Urdu page? If you are saying that a lightly Persianized dialect was now being written in Kaithi, that fact belongs to the Kaithi page, to the Hindustani page, to the Maithili page. For the Urdu page, all we can say is that in 1881 the Perso-Arabic script was discontinued for legal submissions and publications in Bihar. The Urdu language did not acquire a new script. I will present some sources soon. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:55, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
Original research does not trump the citations that are plain as day showing Urdu being written in Kaithi. LearnIndology (talk) 18:20, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
LearnIndology, I agree with you here. ─ The Aafī (talk) 19:27, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Fowler&fowler's references from 1836 to 2019

1836 The Romanizing System, Calcutta Monthy Journal

The introduction of one character instead of the many now used in the British territories in India, is acknowledged to be most desirable. This being granted, however, the question arises, which shall be adopted ? Of the native characters in this Presidency (to say nothing of Madras or Bombay) we must adopt tho Bengali, the Deb, or some one form of the Kaithi Nagati, or the Persian, or Arabic, or the Uriya. As a universal character for India, no one has yet proposed to us to adopt the Bengali or Uriya; and some few who recommended the Arabic or Persian have aow given that up. The only question regards thercfore the comparative advantages of the Roman and the Nagari. Now regarding the Nagari character it is a fact, that some years ago when Government proposed to print an edition of the Regulations in the Hindui language, they sent to the principal officers of Government throughout the upper provinces, specimens of Deb Nagari and of Kaithi Nagari printing in the must approved types, and requested them to ascertain which of these characters was generally understood by the people under their authority. The general reply to the circular was to the following effect, that while many individuals, for the most part Brahmins, were found in each district and large town, who could read with comparative ease the Debnagari character, it was read by the people generally in no district whatever; that the character of business was the Kaithi, but that this was so different in different districts (as each one will find for himself who will compare the chits and bundles he may procure from different parts of the country) that they could recommend no form of the character whatever which would be generally understuod. Under what obligations then are we to introduce a character possessing none of the advantages of association with the rulers of the country, or with the great majority of the population, when we have the opportunity of teaching in our schools what character we please.

1878 "Bible Translations" in A Sketch of the Modern Language of the East Indies, Routledge

The Bible has been translated into Hindi, and many of its Dialects in the Nagari and Kaithi Characters; and in the Hindustani Dialect in Nagari, Arabic, and Roman Characters. The result of this first attempt to take stock of the Dialects of Hindi, represented actually by books or Vocabularies, is that there are five varieties in the Special Group, twenty-seven in the Aryan proper, five in the Semi-Dravidian, thirteen in the Semi-Kolarian, eight in the Sino-Tibeto-Burman : in all, fifty-eight varieties, in addition to the printed educational, Governmental, and public press, standard, which is sometimes called Khuree Boli, or High Hindi.

The Character used for Hindi and its Dialects is known as Devanagari for the Hindu sacred books. The same Character is termed Nagari for the ordinary requirements of life. A tachygraphic form of the same adopted by the writer class is called Kayasthi or Kaithi. A further degradation is used in the commercial world under the name of Surafi or Muhajuni. Side by side with these Characters, used by Hindus exclusively, is the Arabic adapted form used for Hindustani by Mahomedans, the official world, and educated men of the new stamp irrespective of religion. Both Nagari and Arabic are used in the documents issued by the State.

1881 G. A. Grierson, A Handbook to the Kaithi Character

Introduction: I now take advantage of the preface to point out that this Manual pretends only to show the actual handwriting in current use in Bihar. In no way does it attempt to show good Kayathi writing is a model for learners of handwriting. It is not a copybook, and is not meant to teach how to write, but how to read writing, and especially bad writing. Hence the samples given are of all kinds,—some good, and some bad,—and are written by all manner of scribes. I have given the documents unaltered, with all their faults of spelling and grammar, which I have endeavoured accurately to reproduce in the transliteration. The numerous gross grammatical blunders in documents, most of which are written by fairly educated men, may surprise those who do not know that book-Hindi, and a fortiori: court-Hindi, is a forcign language to all who use it in Bihér. The native langunge of every Bihari (excepting those born and bred in the large towns) is as diferent from Hindi, as French is from Italian ; and the little they ever knew of that language has been learnt after several years of painful training in the Government higher schools, and most of that little forgotten before they had any occasion to use it. I think that a perusal of the documents herewith presented will appear to be a sufficient answer to those who oppose the substitution of one of the Bihar languages for Hindi as a Court-language, on the ground that the latter is alrendy in possession, and should not be disturbed except for very strong reason. Unless the ungrammatical jargon of these petitions can be called Hindi or Urdu, Hindi is no more in possession than Norman-French was in possession as the language of England, at a time when the lawyers spoke what they called Norman-French in the law Courts. The matter, no doubt, is different ia the North-West Provinces, west of Banaras ; for there Hindi may fairly claim to be the vernacular of the country ; but it is not, never was, and never can be, the vernacular of Bihar. History and the laws of philology alike decide against it, and experience has shown how Norman-French never became the vernacular of England.

Introduction: By a recent order of the Bengal Government, the Urdu character has been abolished from all official documents, and the Deva Nagari character has been substituted for it in printing, and the Kayathi character in papers written by hand. The Deva-Nagari alphabet has in fact taken a place corresponding to that of the Roman character in English printed books, while the Kayathi corresponds to our ordinary English running hand.

How can it be Urdu, when it is dialect, not even Khari boli?
1887 Grierson: Some Useful Hindi Books, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

Those who wish to familiarize themselves with the Kaithi1 character, now much used in Bihar, cannot do better than buy the Suta-Prabodh (price 4 annas, say 6d.), published by the same. It is a reading-book for girls, in simple Hindi. I would also draw particular attention to a work entitled Bhakha Saar (Part II.), which comes from these publishers. In my opinion it is the best Hindi reader for advanced students extant. Besides the usual and proper extracts from the Prém Sagar and the Ramayan of Tul’si Das, it contains selections from the writings of nearly all the best modern Hindi writers. Chief among the authors laid under tribute is Harishchandra whose late lamented death at an early age has been a severe blow to the progress of Hindi literature.

Footnote 1: I should mention that many of the above books can also be had in the Kaithi character.

1911 G. A. Grierson, "Bihari in Encyclopaedia Britannica

BIHARI , the name of the most western of the four forms of speech which comprise the Eastern Group of modern Indo-Aryan Languages. The other members are Bengali, Oriya and Assamese . The number of speakers of Bihari in 1901 was 34,579,844 in British India, out of a total of go,242,167 for the whole group. It is also the language of the inhabitants of the neighbouring Tarai districts of Nepal. In the present article it is throughout assumed that the reader is in possession of the facts described under the heads of Indo-Aryan Languages and Prakrit. The article BENGALI may also be studied with advantage.

"Bihari” means the language of the province of “ Bihar,” and to a certain extent this is a true description. It is the direct descendant of the old Magadhi Prakrit (see PRAKRIT), of which the headquarters were South Bihar, or the present districts of Patna and Gaya. It is, however, also spoken considerably beyond the limits of this province. To the west it extends over the province of Agra so far as the longitude of Benares, and to the south it covers nearly the whole of the province of Chota Nagpur. Allowing for the speakers in Nepal, its area extends over about 90,000 sq. m., and the total number of people who claim it as a vernacular is about the same as the population of France. Bihari has been looked upon as a separate language only during the past twenty-five years. Before that it was grouped with all the other languages spoken between Bengal and the Punjab, under the general term “ Hindi.”

The usual character employed for writing Bihari is that known as Kaithi, a cursive form of the well-known Nagari character of Upper India. The name of the character is derived from the Kaayath or Kaayasth caste, whose profession is that of scribes. Kaithi is widely spread, under various names, all over northern India, and is the official character of Gujarati. The Nagari character is commonly employed for printed books, while the Brahmans of Tirhut have a character of their own, akin to that used for writing Bengali and Assamese. In the south of the Rihari tract the Oriya character belonging to the neighbouring Orissa is also found.

2001 Hindi nationalism, Orient Blackswan

(From Preface: page ix) The anxieties and ambitions of the North Indian Brahmin elite, tormented by the entrenched power of the Muslim upper classes and jealous of the Kayastha monopoly over the service sector, sustained the energies of the Nagari/ Hindi movement. Devanagari was opposed not only to the Persian script, but also to Kaithi, a variant of the Nagari script that was popular amongst Muslims and Kayasthas. To displace a community, it was necessary to repress the assumed markers of its identity and the cultural basis of its power. The hostility towards the Persian script, coalesced with the attack against the syncretic culture associated with the hegemonic Avadh Muslim elite, fusing the issue of language and religion. (p 50) The necessary intransigence of the Nagari/ Hindi protagonists becomes all too evident in the matter of the Kaithi script. This is a cursive variant of the Nagari script—but its very memory has been all but erased, so that one can have a whole roomful of Hindi intellectuals who have never seen a line of Kaithi, let alone being able to write one. Yet, till but a century back, this script was better known and much more widespread than Nagari.

The great argument in favour of Nagari was that it was more widely used than the Persian script, but the fact of the matter was.that the Kaithi variant was even more widely used than the DevaNagari. Thus, the great benefits, benefits democratic and educational, that were expected to flow from the introduction of the DevaNagari script could as plausibly have been expected from Kaithi. But the manner in which the claims of the more widely used Kaithi were ignored needs to be thought about. Kaithi was championed vigorously, for instance, by J.C. Nesfield, he of the famous Grammar, while he was a senior education official in Oudh. When Campbell first ordered the banishment of the Persian script from Bihar in 1873, it was expected to be replaced by either Nagari or Kaithi. The Bengal Provincial Committee reporting to the Education Commission in 1883-84 spoke up in favour of Kaithi precisely on the grounds that it was widely in use. It was stated (p 51) that the Indigenous schools of Bihar had been able to hold their own because the Kaithi character had not been thrust out, unlike in the NWP...‘ Vedalankar cites an 1852 report on Indigenous Education and Vernacular Schools in NWP to the effect that “in all but a few districts”, schools using DevaNagari were outnumbered by those using the Kaithi and Mahajani variants of the Nagari. Thus, she extracts the following figures for the numbers of primers used in 1854: DevaNagari: 25151; Kaithi: 77368; Mahajani: 24302.

But Kaithi was unacceptable to the Nagari/Hindi propagandists. It appears that there were some crucial disqualifications that attached to Kaithi. It was perceived to have some association with Hindustani rather than with Sanskrit. It was, moreover, known to Hindus and Muslims alike,‘ and so might not have appeared “pure” enough to proponents of the Nagari variant—Devanagari, no less, the script of the scriptures. Perhaps most crucially, it could not serve as a basis of “differentiation”. Thus, for instance, the Nagari Pracharini Sabha of Arrah petitioned the Government in 1912 to oust Kaithi from textbooks and substitute DevaNagari for it.? Malaviya’s Abhyudaya too spoke up in favour of Nagari, against Kaithi.

2002 Jalal: Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam, Routledge

(106) Identifying Hindi with Khariboli rather than Brajbhasha or Awadhi weakened the argument about its uninterrupted links with ancient Sanskrit literature. Yet most supporters of Hindi in the late nineteenth century came to associate the language with Khariboli even while conceding the older and more numerous literary contributions of Braj and Awadhi. Hindi as Khariboli could be different from Urdu as Khariboli only if written in a script other than Persian. Discarding the Persian script was easy. But Hindi could be written in the Nagari or the Kaithi scripts and there was no agreement on how far to go in the direction of Sanskritization. Where Persian had left a stronger imprint, as in the western parts of the province, proponents of Hindi wanted to drop only the script and retain the vocabulary. Others showed their erudition by adorning their prose with overly long Sanskrit words. The more pragmatic preferred a simpler form of Hindi in order to preserve connections with the spoken language of the region. These disputes played themselves out during the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. All three trends did much to boost the cause of Hindi in the North Western Provinces. So there at least contentions over the precise identity of language did not appear to be a formidable barrier to its deployment as a symbol of communitarian identity.

(115) By the time the Hunter Commission began its deliberations in 1882 the idea of a ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ community had already impinged on the debate over language, education and employment. The memorial submitted by the National Muhammadan Association of Calcutta traced the decline of Muslims in eastern India to the abandonment of Persian as the court language. It protested the implementation in 1881 of an administrative decision taken in 1871 to introduce Hindi in the Kaithi script as the official language of the lower courts in Bihar. This amounted to throwing Muslims and Hindus of the Kayasth caste out of subordinate government jobs. The majority of Hindus in Bihar ‘in their manners, their customs, and their modes of amusement’ were like the Muslims from whom they derived their ‘polish and culture’ Urdu was not unintelligible to the illiterate masses of Bihar and was by far the most popular language of communication among the educated. Unable to distinguish between Kaithi and Nagari, the memorialists claimed that ‘Nagari’ was a difficult script to master and therefore ‘objectionable to all classes of people’

2007 Peter Robb on Language in Chapter: Borders and Allegiances, Liberalism, Modernity and the Nation, OUP,

Definable languages had undoubtedly existed in several senses, yct they had not been made exclusive or standardized, even in formal versions and for ‘higher’ purposes. The British helped decide which were languages and which dialects, as in the case of Oriya and Bengali. There was a dispute in the mid and late-nineteenth century about the status of Oriya, and pressure for it to be replaced by the superior and mutually intelligible Sanskritized Bengali; the pressure was resisted, on practical and political grounds, by officials who wanted to recognize an equally standardized and Sanskritized, printed Oriya.” Colonial rule linked each language to a distinct written form, to a region, and in some cases to a ‘race’ or religion. In Bihar, for example, in the 1870s, Hindi written in the Kaithi script had been proposed as the standard. Persian script was also proposed, in the interests of consistency, in 1876. According to Grierson, Kaithi was used from Bihar to Gujarat ‘alongside the more complete and elegant Devanagari’. ‘Practically speaking, the former may be looked upon as the current hand of the latter, though epigraphically it is not a corruption of it as some think.’23 Sir Steuart Bayley, then Commissioner in Patna, declared Kaithi to be ‘more suitable to the wants of the people’ (a significant choice of criterion), though he agreed that the Nagri script was sometimes used by zamindars. However, in the same year (1872), Sir George Campbell, Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, required that all notifications and processes be in Nagri, and that the amla and police officers learn the script within six months. This practice was followed after 1875 for all printed materials and returns, though handwritten entries were commonly made in Kaithi. The alternative use of the Persian script was abolished in 1880. Hindi written in Kaithi script continued to be used for court proceedings, but in the 1890s Sir Charles Elliott’s government ordered that, though complaints might be presented in any language, all summons, reports, and other official documents should now also be written in Nagri (when not in English). It was further proposed that Nagri should be introduced in all primary schools. ... Thus standardization proceeded under government sponsorship, though it remained controversial in Bihar: many local officials favoured Kaithi even in the 1890s. In 1892 Antony MacDonnell, temporarily inheriting the issue, proposed to withdraw Elliott’s order (to some extent foreshadowing his own policy later in the North-Western Provinces). MacDonnell had been convinced by a quick survey of signatures and documents in the Patna Registration Office and in Muzaffarpur that Kaithi was used overwhelmingly by the few Biharis who could write. Again it was indigenous usage that was supposedly to prevail. But in 1896, Grierson advised that Nagri had been ‘systematically taught for some years past in all but the lowest classes of the schools’. The Government of India, convinced that MacDonnell was exaggerating, instructed that Elliott’s order should be enforced as far as possible. The local interests of the people had vanished, or had been re-interpreted by an ‘expert’. The change had all the hallmarks of linguistic imperialism of the kind experienced in Britain and France. Value and political judgements abounded. Elliott thought Kaithi ‘rough and savage’, so that Nagri could be seen as part of a civilizing force. Muslims opposed Kaithi, it was said, in, the hope of advancing the cause of the Persian script. Hindus supported Kaithi for the opposite reason. Nagri was presumably ‘superior’ to Kaithi partly by virtue of its association with the Sanskrit past. It was also ‘Hindu’, and widely intelligible as ‘Hindi’. These were pregnant combinations. Unities, once enunciated in one sphere, might be assumed for others.

2011 A Reference Grammar for Maithili, de Gruyter

A total of three scripts have been used for Maithili. These are: Mithilaksar (also known as Tirhuta and Maithili), Kaithi, and Devanagari. ... During the British regime in India, the Kaithi character (which is a corruption of the Devanagari script) was used as an official character throughout Bihar and Chota Nagpur; its use also spread to the Nepal tarai. As the name suggests, Kaithi was extensively used by kayasthas for record-keeping in government offices. However, throughout Mithila all educated people who were not brahmins used the Kaithi character and found it extremely easy to read and write.

2014 Muslim Politics in Bihar: Changing Contours, Routledge

(p53) In Bihar, the political awareness of Muslims kept pace with the spread of modern education. The initial phase of the political awakening of the Muslims evolved around the Hindi-Urdu controversy. In January 1881, the government replaced Urdu, and introduced Hindi as court language. It presented a serious threat to the educated elite among the Muslims as well as the Hindu caste of scribes — the Kayasthas who were well versed in both Urdu and Persian. Both the communities opposed it, notwithstanding some misgivings between the two communities on the issue. The Kayasthas were trained in the Perso-Arabic language and script, and had their own Kaithi script as well, which made them rise in protest against the Nagr! script. There was another script in vogue in Tirhut, called Tirahutiya also known as Mithilakshar, a script for the Maithili language." The controversy, therefore, did not create a sharp communal divide along religious lines, unlike in UP where, during the same period, the same issue, created sharp socio-political cleavages between the Hindus and Muslims.” (p 94) By 1880, after Ashley Eden ordered the ‘exclusive’ use of Nagri or Kaithi in much of Bihar’,”’ the official policy was to promote both Nagri and Kaithi scripts, (p 253 ) Urdu Politics in Late-Colonial Bihar: In the latter half of nineteenth century, the colonial state extended its official support to the Hindi—Nagri movement in Bihar. Hindi was introduced in Bihar without much resistance in 1880, when Ashley Eden ordered the exclusive use of Nagri or Kaithi script.“ This process had begun in 1862. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Nagri script was strongly entrenched in education and offices of Bihar and, within a short span of merely two decades, the Bihar’s Nagri movement had crystallized the ideology of the Hindi intelligentsia into a communalized Hindu community.” Consequently, Urdu was pushed on to the margins.

2019 The Cambridge Companion to Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan

Apparently, scripts and languages were merely a pretext of the struggle for iobs and access to power. Because these main reasons were not exposed, the arguments paraded in the support of Hindi carried little weight. A major argument of the Hindi movement leaders that Nagari was the script of the masses was not supported by facts — because 97 per cent of them were illiterate at the time.!” In fact, compared with the Nagari script, the Kaithi script was more widely used then, and thus, democratic arguments favouring the Nagari script carried little weight. The reason that the Kaithi script was not considered by the Hindi movement leaders was that this script was somewhat associated with Hindustani, rather than Sanskrit, and was known to both the Hindus and Muslims — which made it not ‘pure’ enough to create a basis of differentiation. Therefore, the reason underlying the Hindi movement and its consequences was the contest between two elite groups: the entrenched Urdu-wielding Avadh elites (including both Muslims and Hindus) and the emergent and aspirant savarna Nagari—Hindi elites.

As the Hindi movement intensified, the situation became so polarized that ignoring their economic interest associated with Urdu, kayasthas passed a resolution in the first Kayastha Conference in 1988. The resolution favoured the introduction of the Nagari script in government courts and offices. At its conclusion, a memorandum was sent to the Lieutenant Governor

2019 Nation and Region in Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India

In the battle of the scripts in the Hindi-Urdu conflict, the NPS was also critical of the Kaithi script. In its view, Nagari was purer than the latter because of its links with Sanskrit, while Kaithi had suspect associations with Hindustani.'’’ By 1880 official policy in Bihar promoted both the Nagari and Kaithi scripts, and by 1881 a new version of Kaithi was prescribed for general use in primary vernacular schools in the province. The Kaithi script flourished in Bihar for another three decades or so. The NPS, along with other Hindi organisations, was critical of these developments.’ To a certain extent, Grierson was responsible for the longevity of the Kaithi script in Bihar. The second edition of his A Handbook of the Kaithi Character (1899) was used by officials and was a set text for ICS candidates. However, according to Grierson, the Kaithi script was introduced in Bihar in the 1880s in some official documents to accustom villagers to eventually read printed papers in Nagari. Once it had served this purpose the plan was to substitute Nagari for Kaithi, hence he designed and ‘dressed up’ the Kaithi type in his handbook so as not to be very different from Nagari. It was not ‘pure Kaithi’, and in fact there were ‘much purer’ versions in circulation. These were then sidelined by the Government-approved typeface designed by Grierson.'” Grierson therefore minimised any possible rivalry between the Kaithi and the Nagari scripts. Colonial figures in their memoranda recommended Grierson’s manual on Kaithi, but by the late 1920s the use of the Kaithi script was diminishing, and ICS probationers in Hindi were no longer required to study it by that date.'

Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:40, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

  • The bottom line is what Grierson says in his introduction to Kaithi Character (i.e. Script) quoted above. It bears repeating:

    By a recent order of the Bengal Government, the Urdu character has been abolished from all official documents, and the Deva Nagari character has been substituted for it in printing, and the Kayathi character in papers written by hand. The Deva-Nagari alphabet has in fact taken a place corresponding to that of the Roman character in English printed books, while the Kayathi corresponds to our ordinary English running band.

  • I just noticed @Foreverknowledge:'s comment. The above question is exactly a rephrasing of of his comment. In other words, the language of the legal submissions in Bihar after 1880, which remained the same, began to be printed in Devanagari and cursively hand-written in Kaithi. The language did not change. If you are going to insist on calling it Urdu, then you have to say that after 1880, Urdu began to be printed in Devanagari in Bihar. If, on the other hand, you are not going to call it Urdu (but Hindustani, or one of the varying dialects of Bihar with varying proportion of Persian words long absorbed in legal language from earlier days—then why should any mention of the Bihar order, with reference to Kaithi, be on the Urdu page? It belongs to the Kaithi, Maithili language, Hindustani language pages. At best you can say, after 1880 the Perso-Arabic script was no longer used to print or to record in cursive, all legal/court-related matters in Bihar. It is as simple as that. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:10, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 3

Fowler&fowler, you can't simply ignore all of the citations that Anupam has presented here (and those that are already in the article), which show that Urdu was written in Kaithi. I think the compromise they suggested and that Foreverknowledge agreed to is more enough, also taking into account the points given by LearnIndology and Zakaria1978. Such stubbornness, despite others being willing to adjust for you, smells of WP:OWN. ─ The Aafī (talk) 19:22, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

TheAafi - a very sensible comment you made. We can't rely on a personal interpretation or original research when sources are clear that Urdu was written in Kaithi. Christopher Rolland King's book says, very very clearly, that "Kaithi had some sort of association with Hindustani (Urdu)" while Nagari was associated with Hindi. The intransigence on this issue, despite over ten citations, is puzzling. LearnIndology (talk) 20:30, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
I also agree with TheAafi. Before independence, Urdu was the official language of the whole subcontinent. That means Urdu was the language used in the courts. The citations we have say that in some parts of the subcontinent, the script was changed from Persian to Kaithi. And it wasn't the colloquial language but the court language. What was the language used in the courts? It was none other than Urdu. The Hindus wrote in Nagari but the Muslims preferred to write in Kaithi or Persian. No one is denying that Kaithi was used to write other languages besides Urdu/Hindi. The citations given also say that. But Fowler&fowler giving citations saying that Kaithi was used to write Bhojpuri doesn't mean that it also wasn't used to write Urdu. Simple. Easy. Done. Zakaria1978 ښه راغلاست (talk) 23:39, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Citations being used in support of the Kaithi script for Urdu

@Anupam: As you know you have cited the sentence about the Bihar Government's January 1881 order, which in your restatement, was about the exclusive use of the Kaithi script for the Urdu language being employed in legal submissions. When I objected that an unpublished proposal could not be cited, you stated most emphatically that in this instance it could. I have now posted the topic of the proposal's reliability at the Reliable Services Noticeboard: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Grant_Proposals_to_a_Funding_Agencies. You and the others @Austronesier, Foreverknowledge, LearnIndology, Zakaria1978, and TheAafi: may wish to view or to contribute to the discussion. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:03, 21 October 2020 (UTC) Corrected Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:04, 21 October 2020 (UTC) PS @Anupam: I meant to say earlier: please don't change that Anshuman Pandey citation or any of the others in that sentence until the discussion at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard has concluded. Best, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:41, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

User:Fowler&fowler, I have no issue if you wish to remove that specific citation as we have other sources that attest to the fact that Urdu was written in Kaithi and there is a consensus to include that in the article. If you wish to propose a rewrite of the sentence here in accordance with the compromise I have suggested (or something similar), I am willing to listen. I hope this helps. With regards, AnupamTalk 20:10, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
@Anupam:. A compromise in the manner in which it has been suggested is UNDUE, in my view. I have more evidence that for ten years preceding the January 1881 Bihar order, i.e. from 1872 onward, the government there was actively trying to change the language of civil and criminal courts (not necessarily just the script) from Urdu to Hindi. Several sources, in fact, say the language was changed from Urdu to Hindi in the Kaithi script. To be sure, there is also occasional mention of some "association" of Kaithi with Hindustani language, but it is not clear that there was attested history of Hindustani being written in Kaithi, or the word "association" was merely recording a correlation of the people who wrote Urdu, which included Muslims and Kayastha, and those who used Kaithi as a cursive shorthand in some dialect language of their region (which also included Kayasths and some Muslims). When I have collected all the sources, I will propose a statement about the Bihar order and also something about the relation of Kaithi and Hindustani. Please hold on. Best and thanks for your reply, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 20:32, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
I'll be happy to wait, However, I think the sources (at least the ones I have provided) are clear that the Kaithi script was used to write multiple languages in colonial India, including Urdu, Hindi, among others. The compromise that you suggest can mention that Kaithi was used to write Hindi-Urdu/Hindustani, taking into account what I and others have said. I look forward to seeing the wording that you suggest. I might not agree with it fully but will try to keep an open mind and most likely will provide some suggestions, which I trust that you will also consider. I hope this helps. With regards, AnupamTalk 00:20, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
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