Hindustani language, lingua franca of northern India and Pakistan. Two variants of Hindustani, Urdu and Hindi, are official languages in Pakistan and India, respectively. Hindustani began to develop during the 13th century ce in and around the Indian cities of Delhi and Meerut in response to the increasing linguistic diversity that resulted from Muslim hegemony. In the 19th century its use was widely promoted by the British, who initiated an effort at standardization. Hindustani is widely recognized as India’s most common lingua franca, but its status as a vernacular renders it difficult to measure precisely its number of speakers.

Origin Hindustani was initially used to facilitate interaction between the speakers of Khari Boli (a regional dialect that developed out of Shauraseni Apabhramsha and is now considered a variety of Hindi) and the speakers of Persian, Arabic, and Turkic languages who migrated to North India after the establishment of Muslim hegemony in the early 13th century ce. Hindustani’s popularity increased as a result of its use by poets such as Amīr Khosrow (1253–1325), Kabīr (1440–1518), Dadu (1544–1603), and Raḥīm (1556–1627), the court poet of Akbar. Its use by Sufi saints such as Bābā Farīd (flourished late 12th century) and various poets of the Natha tradition (which combined practices from Buddhism, Shaivism, and Hatha Yoga in an effort to reach immortality) also increased its popularity.

Vocabulary Though Khari Boli supplied its basic vocabulary and grammar, Hindustani also borrowed freely from Persian. Among the Persian words that became common are many concerning administration (e.g., adalat ‘court,’ daftar ‘office,’ vakil ‘pleader,’ sipahi ‘soldier,’ shahar ‘city,’ kasba ‘small town,’ zila ‘district’), dress (e.g., kamiz ‘shirt,’ shal ‘shawl’), cosmetics (e.g., itra ‘perfume,’ sabun ‘soap’), furniture (e.g., kursi ‘chair,’ mez ‘table,’ takht ‘dais’), and professions (e.g., bajaj ‘draper,’ chaprasi ‘peon,’ dukandar ‘shopkeeper,’ haqim ‘physician,’ dalal ‘broker,’ halvai ‘confectioner’). Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. Subscribe today Hindustani also borrowed Persian prefixes to create new words. Persian affixes became so assimilated that they were used with original Khari Boli words as well. The process of hybridization also led to the formation of words in which the first element of the compound was from Khari Boli and the second from Persian, such as rajmahal ‘palace’ (raja ‘royal, king’ + mahal ‘house, place’) and rangmahal ‘fashion house’ (rang ‘colour, dye’ + mahal ‘house, place’). As Muslim rule expanded, Hindustani speakers traveled to distant parts of India as administrators, soldiers, merchants, and artisans. As it reached new areas, Hindustani further hybridized with local languages. In the Deccan, for instance, Hindustani blended with Telugu and came to be called Dakhani. In Dakhani, aspirated consonants were replaced with their unaspirated counterparts; for instance, dekh ‘see’ became dek, ghula ‘dissolved’ became gula, kuch ‘some’ became kuc, and samajh ‘understand’ became samaj.

Colonization and conflict When the British colonized India (see India: history of), they chose to instruct their officers in Hindustani. Colonization intensified existing conflicts between the Hindu population and the Muslim population even as it motivated efforts toward linguistic standardization. During the process of creating a literary, standard form of Hindustani, Hindus introduced increasing numbers of Sanskrit words, and Muslims introduced increasing numbers of Persian and Arabic words. Mahatma Gandhi realized that the standardization process was dangerously divisive. He emphasized the importance of keeping Hindustani as colloquial as possible and of avoiding the addition of unfamiliar Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic words. He also pleaded for the use of both Devanagari and Persian Arabic script for writing Hindustani. However, the religious difference proved intractable, and with partition Hindustani was split into two distinct (if closely related) official languages, Hindi in India and Urdu in Pakistan. Despite this division, many basic terms, such as the names of the parts of the human body and of relatives, pronouns, numerals, postpositions, and verbs, are the same in both Sanskritized Hindi and Persianized Urdu.

Hindustani in the 21st century In a study of Calcutta (now Kolkata), the Indian linguist Sumit Kumar Chatterjee in 1931 detailed the use of a lingua franca that he named Bazaar Hindustani. He noted that the language was greatly simplified, with minimal grammatical forms, vocabulary, idioms, and expressions, and that it was used by Indians and Europeans who spoke languages as diverse as Assamese, Bengali, Oriya, and Tamil. In the 21st century, this simplified version of Hindustani continues to be used as a lingua franca not only in Kolkata but in all of the cities of India, especially in non-Hindi-speaking areas. More than 100 million individuals, including more than 50 million people in India, speak Urdu; many of these individuals may actually use Hindustani for ordinary communication. Approximately 550 million people speak Hindi, and sizable portions of this group, especially those who live in cities, are known to use Hindustani rather than Sanskritized Hindi in ordinary speech. Thus, while Hindustani may not survive as a literary language, it continues to thrive as a vernacular.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Zeidan , Assistant Editor.