Hindustani language

Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language that functions as the common tongue across India's Hindi Belt and Pakistan, and is also used by the Deccani-speaking community in South India. It is a pluricentric language with two standardized forms: Hindi, which draws heavily on Prakrit and Sanskrit and is written in the Brahmic script, and Urdu, which is heavily influenced by Persian and Arabic and written in the Perso-Arabic script. These registers serve as the official languages of India and Pakistan, respectively, and the language is often referred to as Hindi–Urdu. Everyday speech exists on a continuum between these two standards.

Mahatma Gandhi supported the idea of Hindustani as a unifying or fusion language, believing it could bridge communal and religious divides in the subcontinent, since it wasn't tied specifically to Hindu or Muslim communities like Hindi or Urdu were, and was also considered easier to learn. Converting between Hindi and Urdu generally involves simply transliterating between the Devanagari and Perso-Arabic scripts; translation is typically needed only for religious and literary works.

Scholars date the earliest written poetry in the language, known as Old Hindi, to the Delhi Sultanate period in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. During the Delhi Sultanate—which covered much of present-day India, eastern Pakistan, southern Nepal, and Bangladesh, and fostered Hindu-Muslim cultural exchange—the Prakrit foundation of Old Hindi absorbed loanwords from Persian, Arabic, and Turkic, evolving into modern Hindustani. This vernacular became a symbol of Indian national unity during the independence movement and remains the common language of people in the northern Indian subcontinent, as seen in the vocabulary of Bollywood films and songs.

The core vocabulary of Hindustani comes from Prakrit and Sanskrit (via Prakrit), with substantial borrowings from Persian and Arabic (via Persian). It is commonly written in the Devanagari script for Hindi and the Nastaliq script for Urdu, with romanisation increasingly used as a neutral script in modern times.

As of 2025, Hindi and Urdu together rank as the third-most-spoken language globally after English and Mandarin, with 855 million native and second-language speakers according to Ethnologue. However, this figure includes millions who reported their language as 'Hindi' on the Indian census but actually speak other Hindi languages rather than Hindustani. In 1995, the total number of Hindustani speakers was reported to be over 300 million, making it the third- or fourth-most spoken language in the world at that time.

**History**

Early forms of present-day Hindustani developed from the Middle Indo-Aryan Apabhraṃśa vernaculars of North India between the 7th and 13th centuries. It emerged as a contact language in the Ganges-Yamuna Doab region (Delhi, Meerut, and Saharanpur), driven by increasing linguistic diversity during the Muslim period in the Indian subcontinent. The 13th-century poet Amir Khusrau, active during the Delhi Sultanate, used these forms—then the region's lingua franca—in his writings and called it Hindavi (Persian for 'of Hindus or Indians'). By the end of that century, the military campaigns of Alauddin Khalji introduced the language to the Deccan, leading to its southern dialect, Deccani, which was promoted by Muslim rulers there. The Delhi Sultanate, made up of various Turkic and Afghan dynasties ruling from Delhi, was followed by the Mughal Empire in 1526, and preceded by the Ghurid and Ghaznavid dynasties.

Earlier names for the language included Hindui, Hindavi, Zabān-e Hind ('Language of India'), Zabān-e Hindustan ('Language of Hindustan'), Hindustan ki boli ('Language of Hindustan'), Rekhta, and Hindi. Regional dialects were known as Zabān-e Dakhani in the south, Zabān-e Gujari ('Language of Gujars') in Gujarat, and Zabān-e Dehlavi or Urdu around Delhi. It is an Indo-Aryan language, with its base in the Western Hindi dialect of the Ganges-Yamuna Doab called Khariboli—its contemporary form falls under the umbrella of Old Hindi.

Though the Mughals were of Timurid (Gūrkānī) Turco-Mongol descent, they were Persianised, and Persian gradually became the state language of the Mughal empire after Babur. Mughal patronage continued and reinforced Persian, which had already been supported by the earlier Turko-Afghan Delhi Sultanate, laying the groundwork for Persian's introduction and use in the subcontinent.

Hindustani began to take shape as a Persianised vernacular during the Delhi Sultanate (1206–1526 AD) and Mughal Empire (1526–1858 AD) in South Asia. It kept the grammar and core Sanskritic and Prakritic vocabulary of the local Khariboli dialect from the Ganges-Yamuna Doab. However, as a growing common dialect, it absorbed many Persian, Arabic, and Turkic loanwords, and as Mughal conquests expanded, it spread as a lingua franca across much of northern India—a result of Hindu and Muslim cultural contact in Hindustan that created a composite Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb. The language was also called Rekhta, meaning 'mixed', reflecting how the Sanskritic and Prakritic vocabulary of Old Hindi was blended with Persian loanwords. Written in Devanagari, Perso-Arabic, and occasionally Kaithi or Gurmukhi scripts, it remained the primary lingua franca of northern India for the next four centuries, though it varied significantly.