In 2010, when celebrated Hindi writer and playwright, Asghar Wajahat wrote a polemical article in Jansatta, “Lipi ka sawal: Yeh dil mange more” (Question of script: The heart desires more) suggesting the use of the Roman alphabet/script for Hindi, it was met with annoyance and indignation.
In 2024, he is pushing the envelope, again. This time he has brought out Mushkil Kaam (Difficult Task), a collection of short stories in the Roman alphabet. A
In 2010, when celebrated Hindi writer and playwright, Asghar Wajahat wrote a polemical article in Jansatta, “Lipi ka sawal: Yeh dil mange more” (Question of script: The heart desires more) suggesting the use of the Roman alphabet/script for Hindi, it was met with annoyance and indignation.
In 2024, he is pushing the envelope, again. This time he has brought out Mushkil Kaam (Difficult Task), a collection of short stories in the Roman alphabet. A Ghaziabad publishing house, Pustaknama, has taken on the onus of printing the slim book. “Established publishers, like Rajkamal, would not agree to it, citing pressure from the Hindi literary lobby,” says Wajahat.
Wajahat’s overriding concern is that Hindi literature is losing readers among Hindi speakers. “The young generation of India is almost alienated from the scripts of their own languages… They are closer to the Roman script.” So, if Roman Hindi helps popularise Hindi literature among the Hindi speaking but non-Devnagari reading public, what is the harm? “Nothing is eternal,” he adds, “scripts evolve over time, change and even get replaced.”
Hindi academia and litterateurs object to using Roman Hindi as they believe it will destroy the historical and cultural quintessence of the Devnagari script and with it, the value of its rich, multilayered and multi-ethnic literary corpus. In other words, Devanagari does not need a Roman walking stick.
For most Indians, the association of the Latin script with the English language is fastened to the colonial politics of the English Education Act of 1835 based on Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education, which promoted English over regional languages. Subsequently, the adoption of English, as one of the Indian languages in the Indian Constitution has been viewed either with a stand-offish antipathy or as a unifying force in a multilinguistic and multi-ethnic land.
Over the years, the stark difference in academic competence between Hindi medium educated students and those with English medium schooling has only aggravated this perception. Instead of addressing the scholastic neglect, liability is ascribed to language. Thus, education in the English language is sought by all strata of society, and education in the Hindi language (largely funded by the government) is attended mostly, by the economically disadvantaged section of the populace.
This patrimony is echoed by Hindi poet, writer and translator, Udayan Vajpeyi when he says, “Latin alphabet will create a pathway to the English language. It will destroy Hindi. Once the script disappears, it is impossible to bring it back. The two things we managed to save and preserve during the British colonial rule is our “ghar ki rasoi” (domestic culinary ingenuity) and “bhasha” (language).”
In this reasoning, the Latin script is posited as an adversarial or hostile writing tool. “Every language is a repository of world views and ways of understanding the self and one’s culture. In the West, as far as language is concerned, there is a separation between the body and the mind, science and religion. It’s fine, I understand their point of view. But it is not so with Hindi or any other Indian language,” says Vajpeyi.
It’s another matter that the Latin script (with appropriate adaptation and diacritics) has been evolved for Sanskrit and is used widely in academia. Meanwhile, the equalisation of language with script appears to haunt the Hindi language in deeply complex and ambiguous way.
In other countries, notably China, the Latin alphabet, known as pinyin, was developed by Chinese linguists to standardise pronunciation of Mandarin. It is used within China for telegraphic codes, media, braille, dictionaries, indexes etc. Roman pinyin has also replaced some traditional writing systems of several ethnic minorities in China and is used in documenting languages without script. It is also widely used for external communication. An admirable collection of Chinese literary works has also been made available in pinyin.
Standardisation of pronunciation is a thorny issue in the context of Hindi literature, “The Hindi literary corpus incorporates many Hindi dialects,” Vajpeyi points out. He illustrates it with an example, “Ganga is pronounced as “Ganga-oh” not Ganga or Ganges.” Transliteration of this word from Hindi to Latin script erases this nuance.
“The push for the adoption of the Roman script for Hindi is an international conspiracy,” says Kamal Kishore Goenka. A recipient of the 2014 Rahul Sanskrityayan Award, for his work on Premchand, he points to the growing popularity of Hindi, “Do you know that the Jagran newspaper has 37 editions?” While it is true that Jagran boasts of the highest readership in the world, surely population statistics and/or habits (one newspaper is read by at least 10 people at a tea stall) in the world’s most populous region, cannot be a touchstone.
Changing script is not new nor even novel. Premchand wrote in Nastaliq script and his works were transcribed into Devnagari much later. Similarly, as Wajahat reminds us, “Fifty-years ago when Urdu writers abandoned Nastaliq and adopted Nagari script, they were welcomed.” Hindi literature benefited from this infusion into the language.
Invariably, however, Wajahat’s literary activism, a quest to add another tool to popularise Hindi literature, is hemmed in by distrust. Nowhere does he suggest doing away with the Devnagari script, “Those who read Hindi literature in Devnagari will not read Hindi literature in the Roman script. Therefore, those who would read Hindi literature in Roman script will be additional readers,” he says.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of exploring the issue in binaries -- free thinker versus the purist is the most common; and, in the anxious age of the Hindu, Hindutva and Hindi, an act of an anarchist versus the filial patriot, as its corollary.
Asked for his views on the subject, author and journalist Madhur Upadhyay summarily dismissed this writer saying, “I don’t wish to comment on this subject.” Such reactions are part of the wave of hostility and pique that Wajahat’s activism has aroused. Especially, since his literary work as an essayist, novelist, short story writer, and playwright is widely acknowledged and honoured.
The debate over Roman Hindi, though, is not new. It has been in the works since the early days of Independence. The stimulus came from the Turkish experiment. In the 1920s, Kamal Ataturk decided to replace the Arabic script of the Turkish language with the Latin one. In India, there are two views about this momentous development. One sees it as a modernising impulse and the other views it as the despotic act of a dictator. As the argument goes, only dictators can order the replacement of one script with another and get away with it.
But history is witness to other examples: undivided Punjab predominantly used the Nastaliq script; in post-Partition Indian Punjab, the Gurmukhi script and Punjabi, shorn of its rich Urdu inheritance, have been leveraged to assert Punjabi-ness. In this version of the Punjabi identity, its legendry Urdu literary masterpiece, Heer Waris, has been inexorably abandoned by Punjab academia, and survives, and barely so, in its songs and colloquial metaphors.
There is no escaping the fact that, outside the hallowed portals of the Hindi literary scene, Roman Hindi is flourishing. Advertisers, news media, the Internet and mobile users are all rolling with it. The government too cannot escape its use for administrative purposes in the army, the health sector, transportation and in science, among other fields.
The Hindi film industry has been using Latin alphabets for its Hindi film titles since the 1940s. And for more than four decades now, Hindi film scripts have been written in Roman Hindi. This has been necessitated, largely, by the requirement of managing a multilingual film crew, where a cameraman may be a Tamil, the film editor Kashmiri, and the actor, a Bengali. In short, its presence is ubiquitous.
In his January 13, 2015 column, Scripting change: Bhasha Bachao, Roman Hindi apnao (Save language, adopt Roman Hindi) in a prominent English daily, Chetan Bhagat, while noting that every regime at the Centre makes a show of allegiance to Hindi, the more Hindi purists impose Devnagari script, the more the youth rebels against it. Roman Hindi, he writes, provides an opportunity to erect a new industry of print media and books. He represents the Hinglish universe, which is the polar opposite of what Wajahat represents.
To return to Wajahat and his new book, Mushkil Kaam in Roman Hindi, and taking a thread from Amit Chaudhuri’s observations on literary activism in India, it can be safely said that every writer has the right to recycle, estrange and rediscover his text. This includes playing with script options as well. The question is why does it invite an off-the-wall cancellation?
In this case, the answer is simple: Because a prominent Hindi writer from the established Hindi literary fraternity has done it. Detractors may accuse Wajahat of trying to attract attention or pulling off a PR stunt. To which his answer is: “I am making a statement. We should address this issue. Fact is, we are losing readership because of a script. If it were a PR stunt, I would have gone to London’s Hyde Park, invited publishers and writers, and released the book there. I sincerely, believe that presenting Hindi literature in Roman script will benefit all Hindi writers.”
Charu Soni is an independent journalist.
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