Mariomassone

====''Glimpses of World History''====

=====[[Incipit]]=====

:''I do not know when or where these letters will be published, or whether they will be published at all, for India is a strange land to-day and it is difficult to prophesy.''

 

*L'alfabeto latino è stato proposto come soluzione per alcune delle nostre difficoltà linguistiche. È certamente più efficiente sia dell'hindi sia dell'urdu dal punto di vista di lavoro rapido. Nei giorni nostri della macchina da scrivere, il duplicatore e altri aggeggi mecchanici, l'alfabeto latino ha grandi vantaggi sopra gli alfabeti indiani che non possono utilizzare totalmente questi nuovi dispositivi. Ma malgrado questi vantaggi, non penso che ci sia la minima possibilità per l'alfabeto latino di rimpiazzare il devanagari o l'urdu. C'è certamente il muro del sentimento rafforzato ancora di più dal fatto che l'alfabeto latino è associato con i nostri padroni stranieri. Ma ci sono fondamenti ancor più solidi per il suo rifiuto. Gli alfabeti sono parti integri delle nostre letterature; senza di esse, saremmo in gran parte tagliati dalla nostra vecchia eredità. (p. 251)

:''The Latin script has been advocated as a solution of some of our linguistic difficulties. It is certainly more efficient than either Hindi or Urdu from the point of view of rapid work. In these days of the type-writer and duplicator and other mechanical devices, the Latin script has great advantages over the Indian scripts which cannot utilise fully these new devices. But in spite of these advantages I do not think there is the slightest chance of the Latin script replacing Devanagari or Urdu. There is the wall of sentiment of course strengthened even more by the fact that the Latin script is associated with our alien rulers. But there are more solid grounds also for its rejection. The scripts are essential parts of our literatures; without them we would be largely cut off from our old inheritance.''

:''To consider Hindi as the language of the Hindus and Urdu as that of the Muslims is absurd. Urdu, except for its script, is of the very soil of India and has no place outside India. It is even today the home language of large numbers of Hindus in the North.''

:''The word Urdu seems to have come into use during the Moghal period in the camps of the Moghals, but it appears to have been used almost synonymously with Hindi. It did not signify even a variation of Hindi. Right up to the Revolt of 1857, Urdu meant Hindi, except in regard to script.''

:''Urdu is the language of the towns and Hindi the language of the villages. Hindi is of course spoken also in the towns, but Urdu is almost entirely an urban language.''

:''I have no doubt in my mind that Hindi and Urdu must come nearer to each other, and though they may wear different garbs, will be essentially one language. The forces favouring this unification are too strong to be resisted by individuals.''

:''I am no expert in this matter but my own impression is that the average writer in Hindi or Urdu does not seek to take advantage of even the existing audience. He thinks much more of the literary coteries in which he moves, and writes for them in the language that they have come to appreciate. His voice and his word do not reach the much larger public, and if they happen to reach this public, they are not understood. Is it surprising that Hindi and Urdu books have restricted sales?''

:''I imagine that probably Bengali, of all Indian languages, has gone furthest in developing contacts with the masses. Literary Bengali is not something apart from and far removed from the life of the people of Bengal. The genius of one man, Rabindra Nath Tagore, has bridged that gap between the cultured few and the masses, and today his beautiful songs and poems are heard even in the humblest hut. They have not only added to the wealth of Bengali literature but enriched the life of the people of Bengal, and made of their language a powerful medium of the finest literary expression in the simplest terms.''

 

=====[[Explicit]]=====

:''We aim at national independence and a democratic State. Democracy is freedom but also discipline, and we must therefore develop both the freedom and the discipline of democracy among our people.''

*Jawaharlal Nehru, [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.59024/page/n3 ''Eighteen Months in India 1936-1937''], Allahabad Law Journal Press, 1937

:''His aversions and dislikes are obvious, but what does he like? With all his strength and tenacity, he is a strangely negative person whose appropriate symbol might well be a "no". Hence all attempts to understand his positive aspect fail and one cannot come to grips with it.<br>Since British rule came to India, Moslems have produced few outstanding figures of the modern type. They have produced some remarkable men but, as a rule, these represented the continuation of the old culture and tradition and did not easily fit with modern developments. [...] The Hindus are backwards also, sometimes even more hide-bound and tied up with traditional ways of thought and practice than the Moslems, but nevertheless they have produced some very eminent men in science, industry, and other fields.''

 

:''Mr. Jinnah's demand was based on a new theory he had recently propounded - that India consisted of two nations, Hindu and Moslem. Why only two I do not know, for if nationality was based on religion, then there were many nations in India. Of two brothers one may be a Hindu, another a Moslem; they would belong to two different nations. These two nations existed in varying proportions in most of the villages of India. They were nations which had no boundaries; they overlapped. A Bengali Moslem and a Bengali Hindu living together, speaking the same language, and having much the same traditions and customs, belonged to different nations. All this was very difficult to grasp; it seemed a reversion to some medieval theory.''