The Decline of the North

[Note: This is an edited compilation of some comments I originally posted in the course of a Facebook discussion; I am grateful to Kinjal, Shanth, and Vinod for having inspired some of the thoughts expressed here.]

The Northern Indian subcontinent, home to the vast floodplains of the Indus and Ganges river systems, is amongst the cradles of human civilisation; one of the most fertile and most densely populated regions in the world. Naturally, it is also possessed of an extremely rich cultural heritage, having produced the likes of Tansen, the Taj Mahal, Ghalib, and Premchand, to name but a few relatively recent exemplars. However, in modern India the North appears to have fallen behind; in terms of cultural awareness, one senses a major distinction between the Hindi belt and the rest of the country. For instance, the Bengali, Tamil, and Marathi middle classes have a strong sense of their distinct cultural heritage and identity; and I think to a greater or lesser extent the same is true for the various major non-Hindi language groups in India. So why are we Hindi-speaking peoples so callous and complacent?

I've thought about this a lot, and whilst there is no doubt a confluence of many factors at work, there seem to be two quite major and obvious ones. One is simply that we are demographically dominant, and so have never felt the need to safeguard our distinctive culture against majority encroachment. In a sense this also tends to make us arrogant; there can be a mindset amongst Hindi-speakers that we are the 'true Indians', and almost a resentment against any Indian who doesn't speak fluent Hindi. In this connection it is also remarkable how the sense of identity of the Hindi-speaker is quite different from other Indians. I have never felt any reason to think of myself as a 'UP-wallah' or 'Lucknow-wallah'; those have never for me been identities that had anything significant to add to my 'Indian' identity, which is the only one that has ever mattered. As far as I can make out the same is true of all my family and Hindi-speaking friends. On the other hand for Bengalis or Tamilians or Marathis, their regional identity tends to be as prominent as their Indian one, and in certain contexts may even be in conflict with or override the latter.

The second reason for Northern philistinism is the partition of India, and the consequent rejection by the Hindu middle classes of much of the rich composite heritage of the North as 'un-Indian' (note that three of my four examples at the start came about under Mughal patronage; and even Premchand started out writing in Urdu). Based on interactions with several Pakistani friends, it is evident to me that they, despite all their troubles, have done a much better job of safeguarding much of this heritage than we have: great works of Urdu and Farsi literature, musical forms like the Qawwali and so on; things which in fact largely have their origins not in Pakistan but in places like Delhi, Agra, Aligarh, and Lucknow, but have today sadly become foreign in their own homeland.

Of course, not all the major cultural achievements of the North came about under Islamic influence; there were certainly long-standing literary traditions of a more 'indigenous' nature. Prior to the latter half of the 19th century, the major literary languages of the Hindi heartland were Braj Bhasha and Awadhi, with many others such as Marwari, Bundelkhandi, Bhojpuri, and Maithili also having a significant presence. In addition to these was the Khadi Boli-based Urdu/Rekhta, which was the 'high culture' language of the elites (both Hindu and Muslim, though predominantly the latter). The idea of 'Hindi' as a single language did not really exist until about 150 years ago (Bharatendu Harishchandra was born in 1850); its genesis lay in a desire to create a more 'Indian/Hindu' alternative to Urdu as the administrative and literary language of the Hindustani governing classes. So our great tragedy was that on the one hand, we rejected the Urdu and Farsi canons as un-Indian; on the other hand, we largely neglected the non-Khadi Boli Hindustani canons (with rare exceptions, such as Tulsidas' 'Ramcharitmanas', still retaining some prominence) as inferior or 'low culture'.

To appreciate the magnitude of our self-inflicted cultural loss, imagine this scenario: the English become dominant over the whole of Northwestern Europe, and under their influence all other Germanic languages—Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic—become relegated to lowliness, being seen as just inferior dialects of English (something that has in fact happened to Scots, for instance). At the same time, the English suddenly rediscover their Anglo-Saxon roots, and begin to see all French/Romance influence on their language as 'un-English'; leading them to construct a 'Modern Old English' as an alternative. Thus, they now regard 'Beowulf' as greater even than sliced bread, but begin to frown upon everything post-1066. Just think of the list of writers now consigned to neglect: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Joyce, Spinoza, Leibniz, Goethe, Schiller, Ibsen... it sounds utterly incredible, does it not? And yet something not entirely unlike this has transpired in Northern India over the course of the last 150 years.