Hindustani people

''Hindūstān'' ( , from '' Hindū'' and ''-stān''), also sometimes spelt as Hindōstān ( ''Indo-land''), along with its shortened form ''Hind'' (), is the Persian-language name for the Indian subcontinent that later became commonly used by its inhabitants in the Hindi–Urdu language.

Hindustan was the Persian word for ''India'', but when introduced to the subjects under Persianate rule, the subsequent culture which resulted from these events gave it another specific meaning that of the cultural region between the river Sutlej (end of Northwestern India) and the city Varanasi (start of Eastern India). As the area where Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb and the Hindustani language traces its origins, it corresponds to the plains where the river Yamuna flows or the regions/states encompassing Haryana, Delhi, Harit Pradesh, and Awadh.

Other toponyms for the subcontinent include ''Jambudvīpa'' and '' Bharata Khanda''. Since the Partition of India in 1947, although limitedly, ''Hindustan'' continues to be used to the present day as a historic name for the Republic of India.

Etymology

Hindustan is derived from the Persian word ''Hindū'' cognate with the Sanskrit ''Sindhu''.
The Proto-Iranian sound change ''*s'' > ''h'' occurred between 850 and 600 BCE, according to Asko Parpola. Hence, the Rigvedic ''sapta sindhava'' (the land of seven rivers) became ''hapta hindu'' in the Avesta. It was said to be the "fifteenth domain" created by Ahura Mazda, apparently a land of 'abnormal heat'.
In 515 BCE, Darius I annexed the Indus Valley including ''Sindhu'', the present day Sindh, which was called ''Hindu'' in Persian. During the time of Xerxes, the term "Hindu" was also applied to the lands to the east of Indus.

In middle Persian, probably from the first century CE, the suffix '' -stān'' was added, indicative of a country or region, forming the present word ''Hindūstān''. Thus, Sindh was referred to as ''Hindūstān'' in the Naqsh-e-Rustam inscription of Shapur I in 262 CE.

Historian B. N. Mukherjee states that from the lower Indus basin, the term ''Hindūstān'' got gradually extended to "more or less the whole of the subcontinent". The Greco-Roman name "India" and the Chinese name ''Shen-tu'' also followed a similar evolution.

The Arabic term ''Hind'', derived from Persian ''Hindu'', was previously used by the Arabs to refer to the much wider Indianised region from the Makran coast to the Indonesian archipelago. But eventually it too became identified with the Indian subcontinent.

Current usage

Republic of India

"Hindustan" is often used to refer to the modern-day Republic of India. Slogans involving the term are commonly heard at sports events and other public programmes involving teams or entities representing the modern nation-state of India. In marketing, it is also commonly used as an indicator of national origin in advertising campaigns and is present in many company names. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and his party the Muslim League, insisted on calling the modern-day Republic of India "Hindustan" in reference to its Hindu-majority population.

People

The term 'Hindustani' refers to an Indian, irrespective of religious affiliation. Among non-Hindustani speakers e.g. Bengali-speakers, "Hindustani" is used to describe persons who are from the Yamuna-Ganges belt; also regardless of religious affiliation, but rather as a geographic term.

''Hindustani'' is sometimes used as an ethnic term applied to South Asia (''e.g.'', a Mauritian or Surinamese man with roots in South Asia might describe his ethnicity by saying he is ''Hindustani''). For example, '' Hindoestanen'' is a Dutch word used to describe people of South Asian origin, in the Netherlands and Suriname.

Language

The ''Hindustani language'' is the language of Hindustan and the lingua franca of the northern Indian subcontinent. Hindustani derives from the Old Hindi dialect of Western Uttar Pradesh and Delhi areas. Its literary standard forms— Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu—use different scripts. The Hindi register itself derives its name from shortened form, ''Hind'' (India).

Historical usages

Early Persian scholars had limited knowledge of the extent of India. After the advent of Islam and the Muslim conquests, the meaning of ''Hindustan'' interacted with its Arabic variant ''Hind'', which was derived from Persian as well, and almost became synonymous with it. The Arabs, engaging in oceanic trade, included all the lands from ''Tis'' in western Balochistan (near modern Chabahar) to the Indonesian archipelago, in their idea of ''Hind'', especially when used in its expansive form as "''Al-Hind''". ''Hindustan'' did not acquire this elaborate meaning. According to André Wink, it also did not acquire the distinction, which faded away, between ''Sind'' (roughly what is now western Pakistan) and ''Hind'' (the lands to the east of the Indus River);: "The Arabs, like the Greeks, adopted a pre-existing Persian term, but they were the first to extend its application to the entire Indianized region from Sind and Makran to the Indonesian Archipelago and mainland Southeast Asia." other sources state that ''Sind'' and ''Hind'' were used synonymously from early times, and that after the arrival of Islamic rule in India, "the variants Hind and Sind were used, as synonyms, for the entire subcontinent." The 10th century text '' Hudud al-Alam'' defined ''Hindustan'' as roughly the Indian subcontinent, with its western limit formed by the river Indus, southern limit going up to the Great Sea and the eastern limit at Kamarupa, the present day Assam. For the next ten centuries, both ''Hind'' and ''Hindustan'' were used within the subcontinent with exactly this meaning, along with their adjectives ''Hindawi'', ''Hindustani'' and ''Hindi''. Indeed, in 1220 CE, historian Hasan Nizami described ''Hind'' as being "from Peshawar to the shores of the ndianOcean, and in the other direction from Siwistan to the hills of Chin."

North India

With the Turko-Persian conquests starting in the 11th century, a narrower meaning of ''Hindustan'' also took shape. The conquerors were liable to call the lands under their control ''Hindustan'', ignoring the rest of the subcontinent.Shoaib Daniyal
Land of Hindus? Mohan Bhagwat, Narendra Modi and the Sangh Parivar are using 'Hindustan' all wrong
Scroll.in, 30 October 2017.
In the early 11th century a satellite state of the Ghaznavids in the Punjab with its capital at Lahore was called "Hindustan". After the Delhi Sultanate was established, north India, especially the Gangetic plains and the Punjab, came to be called "Hindustan".: "Hindostan, n.p. Pers. ''Hindūstan''. (a) 'The country of Hindūs', India. In modern native parlance the word indicates distinctively (b) India north of the Nerbudda, and exclusive of Bengal and Behar. The latter provinces are regarded as ''pūrb'' (see Poorub), and all south of the Nerbudda as ''Dakhan'' (see Deccan). But the word is used in older Mahommedan authors just as it is used in English school-books and atlases, viz., as (a) the equivalent of India Proper. Thus Babur says of Hindustan: 'On the East, the South and the West it is bounded by the Ocean'" Scholar Bratindra Nath Mukherjee states that this narrow meaning of ''Hindustan'' existed side by side with the wider meaning, and some of the authors used both of them simultaneously.

The Mughal Empire (1526–1857) called the invaded Bharatiya land as 'Hindustan'. The term 'Mughal' itself was never used to refer to the land. As the empire expanded, so too did the expanded usage of the word 'Hindustan'. At the same time, the meaning of 'Hindustan' as the entire Indian subcontinent is also found in '' Baburnama'' and '' Ain-i-Akbari''.

Kingdom of Nepal usage

The last Gorkhali King Prithvi Narayan Shah self proclaimed the newly unified Kingdom of Nepal as ''Asal Hindustan'' (Real Hindustan) due to North India being ruled by the Islamic Mughal rulers. The self proclamation was done to enforce Hindu social code Dharmashastra over his reign and refer to his country as being inhabitable for Hindus. He also referred Northern India as ''Mughlan'' (Country of Mughals) and called the region infiltrated by Muslim foreigners.

Colonial Indian usage

These dual meanings persisted with the arrival of Europeans. Rennel produced an atlas titled the ''Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan or the Mogul Empire'' in 1792, which was in fact a map of the Indian subcontinent. Rennel thus conflated the three notions, 'India', 'Hindustan' and the Mughal Empire. J. Bernoulli, to whom ''Hindustan'' meant the Mughal Empire, called his French translation ''La Carte générale de l'Inde'' (General Map of India).
This 'Hindustan' of British reckoning was divided into British-ruled territories (sometimes referred to as 'India') and the territories ruled by native rulers. The British officials and writers, however, thought that the Indians used 'Hindustan' to refer to only North India. An ''Anglo-Indian Dictionary'' published in 1886 states that, while ''Hindustan'' means India, in the "nativa parlance" it had come to represent the region north of Narmada River excluding Bihar and Bengal.

During the independence movement, the Indians referred to their land by all three names: 'India', 'Hindustan' and 'Bharat'. Mohammad Iqbal's poem '' Tarānah-e-Hindī'' ("Anthem of the People of Hind") was a popular patriotic song among Indian independence activists.

''Sāre jahāṉ se acchā Hindustān hamārā''
(the best of all lands is our Hindustan)

Partition of India

The 1940 Lahore Resolution of the All-India Muslim League demanded sovereignty for the Muslim-majority areas in the northwest and northeast of British India, which came to be called 'Pakistan' in popular parlance and the remaining India came to be called 'Hindustan'. The British officials too picked up the two terms and started using them officially.

However, this naming did not meet the approval of Indian leaders due to the implied meaning of 'Hindustan' as the land of Hindus. They insisted that the new Dominion of India should be called 'India', not 'Hindustan'. Probably for the same reason, the name 'Hindustan' did not receive official sanction of the Constituent Assembly of India, whereas 'Bharat' was adopted as an official name. It was recognised however that 'Hindustan' would continue to be used unofficially.

The Indian Armed Forces use the salutary version of the name, "Jai Hind" as a battle cry.

See also

* Names for India
* Āryāvarta
* Bharata Khanda
* -stan

References

General sources

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Further reading

* ''A Sketch of the History of Hindustan from the First Muslim Conquest to the Fall of the Mughal Empire'' by H. G. Keene.
Hindustan
The English Historical Review, Vol. 2, No. 5 (Jan. 1887), pp. 180–181.)
* ''Story of India through the Ages; An Entertaining History of Hindustan, to the Suppression of the Mutiny'', by Flora Annie Steel, 1909 E.P. Dutton and Co., New York. (as recommended by the New York Times

Book Review, 20 February 1909, New York Times.)
* ''The History of Hindustan: Post Classical and Modern'', Ed. B.S. Danniya and Alexander Dow. 2003, Motilal Banarsidass, . (History of Hindustan (First published: 1770–1772). Dow had succeeded his father as the private secretary of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.)

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Cultural history of India
Demographic history of India
Persian words and phrases
Urdu-language words and phrases
Bengali words and phrases
Hindi words and phrases
Toponyms for India
North India