Persian Language In India

Before British colonisation, the Persian language was the lingua franca of the Indian subcontinent and a widely used official language in the northern India. The language was brought into South Asia by various Turkics and Afghans and was preserved and patronized by local Indian dynasties from the 11th century, such as Ghaznavids, Sayyid dynasty, Tughlaq dynasty, Khilji dynasty, Mughal dynasty, Gujarat sultanate, and Bengal sultanate. Initially it was used by Muslim dynasties of India but later started being used by non-Muslim empires too. For example, the Sikh Empire, Persian held official status in the court and the administration within these empires. It largely replaced Sanskrit as the language of politics, literature, education, and social status in the subcontinent.

The spread of Persian closely followed the political and religious growth of Islam in the Indian subcontinent. However Persian historically played the role of an overarching, often non-sectarian language connecting the diverse people of the region. It also helped construct a Persian identity, incorporating the Indian subcontinent into the transnational world of Greater Iran, or Ajam. Persian's historical role and functions in the subcontinent have caused the language to be compared to English in the modern-day region.

Persian began to decline with the gradual deterioration of the Mughal Empire. Urdu and English replaced Persian as British authority grew in the Indian subcontinent. Persian lost its official status in the East India Company in 1837, and fell out of currency in the subsequent British Raj.

Persian's linguistic legacy in the region is apparent through its impact on the Indo-Aryan languages. It played a formative role in the emergence of Hindustani, and had a relatively strong influence on Punjabi, Sindhi, Bengali, Gujarati, and Kashmiri. Other languages like Marathi, Rajasthani, and Odia also have a considerable amount of loan words from Persian.

Background

Persian's arrival in the Indian subcontinent was the result of a larger trend in Greater Iran. In the aftermath of the Muslim conquest of Persia, new Iranian-Islamic empires emerged, reviving Persian culture in a new Islamic context. This period is sometimes termed the Iranian Intermezzo, spanning the 9th to 10th centuries, and reestablished in the Persian language the refinement and prestige that Arabic had laid claim to. In the process, Persian adopted Arabic script and incorporated many Arabic words into its vocabulary, evolving into a new form known as New Persian. These developments were centred in the regions of Khorasan and Transoxiana.

The empires employed Turkic slave warriors in their military, which exposed them to a Persianate culture. These warriors were able to rise up the ranks and gain political power; they began the synthesis of a Turco-Persian tradition, wherein Turkic rulers patronised the Persian language and culture.

The resulting Turkic dynasties, such as the Seljuks and Ghaznavids, expanded outwards in search of new opportunities. Immediately adjacent to the lands of the Persians and Turks, the Indian subcontinent became a target for the Ghaznavid Empire, and New Persian (also referred to as Classical Persian) was carried along with them. This set a precedent for Persian's further growth in the subcontinent. The Turkic and Mongol dynasties that subsequently arrived in South Asia emulated this Persianised high culture since it had become the predominant courtly culture in Western and Central Asia. Similar developments in other regions of Asia led to the establishment of Persian as literary and official language in a region stretching from "China to the Balkans, and from Siberia to southern India", by the 15th century. The arrival of Persian in the Indian subcontinent was hence no isolated event, and eventually positioned the region within a much larger Persian-speaking world.

History

Arrival and Growth

The Ghaznavid conquests of the 11th century introduced Persian to the Indian subcontinent. As Mahmud of Ghazni established a power base in India, the centre of Persian literary patronage shifted from Ghazna to the Punjab, especially at the empire's second capital Lahore. This began a steady influx of Persian-speaking soldiers, settlers and literati from Iran, Khorasan, and other places of the Persianate world. This flow would stay largely uninterrupted for the next few centuries. Notable Persian poets of this early period include Abu-al-Faraj Runi and Masud Sa'd Salman, both born in the Indian subcontinent. The Ghurids expanded this territory, shifting Perso-Islamic influence further into the subcontinent and claiming Delhi.

Virtually every Islamic power thereafter followed the Ghaznavids' practice of using Persian as a courtly language. Delhi became a major centre of Persian literary culture in Hindustan from the 13th century onwards, with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate by the post-Ghurid Mamluks. The successive Khiljis and Tughluqs sponsored many pieces of literature in the language; poet Amir Khusrow produced much of his Persian work under their patronage. Between the 13th and 15th centuries, the Turkic rulers of the Delhi Sultanate encouraged the flow of eminent Persian-speaking personalities (such as poets, scribes, and holy people) into the subcontinent, granting them land to settle in rural areas. This flow was increased by the Mongol conquests of the Perso-Islamic world, as many Persian elite sought refuge in North India. Hence the Persian language established itself in court and literature, but also through a sizeable population often associated with Islamic nobility. The Delhi Sultanate was largely the impetus for the spread of Persian, since its borders stretched deep into the subcontinent. In the wake of its gradual disintegration, the various outgrowths of the empire in regions as far as the Deccan and Bengal resultantly adopted Persian.

Apart from courtly influence, Persian also spread through religion, particularly the Islamic faith of Sufism. Many Sufi missionaries to the subcontinent had Persian roots, and although they used local Indic languages to reach their followers, they used Persian to converse amongst each other and write literature. This resulted in a diffusion process among the local followers of the faith. Sufi centres (''Khanqah'') served as focal points for this cultural interaction. Sufism also interacted with Hinduism through the Bhakti movement; Abidi and Gargesh speculate that this could have further introduced Persian to locals.

The language had a brief dormant period in the late 15th to early 16th century after the Delhi Sultanate was sacked by Timur. Afghan dynasties such as the Suris

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