Hindi

Modern Indian language classified as a
member of the Indo-European language family; Hindi is the “official”
language of the Republic of India.
Hindi is spoken throughout most of
northern and central India as a second
or “link” language and as a “mother”
tongue in much of the states of Uttar
Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. It is
also one of the broadcast languages
for the television and radio networks
run by the Indian government and by
virtue of these mediums can be found
throughout the nation.
As with many of India’s regional
languages, Hindi has a long history as
a literary language, particularly in an
earlier version known as Braj Bhasha,
which was the dominant language in
which northern Indian devotional
(bhakti) poetry was written. The slow
demise of Sanskrit in contemporary
times has helped make Hindi an
important language for fiction,
learned scholarship, and writing on
Indian culture.
In modern India, speaking a certain
language often carries political implications, since an important factor in
preserving regional identities has been
the stress on maintaining one’s regional language. For this reason, many people are not about to let Hindi replace
their regional languages. This sentiment is particularly marked in southern India, where the imposition of the
Hindi language is decried as a new
form of imperialism.