I am neither pleading for Hindi nor Urdu but I am just putting to you the problem of nomenclature. If we take the case to an impartial tribunal composed of judges of the high courts, put the word Hindustani before them and all the evidence pertaining to it, the tribunal can come to only one conclusion and there can be no second, that Hindustani is Urdu. Nobody can deny that literary or high flown Urdu is Arabicised and Persianised. On the other hand Hindustani can include what we know as simple Hindi, the Hindi of the villages, what is called Khari boli. Literary Hindi, I submit, cannot be included in the word Hindustani. This is the difficulty before us but what we decide is a different matter. When the word Hindustani is capable of being interpreted differently by different people it is always better to use a clear word. I have great respect for the Honourable Maulana Saheb and I have to submit as a humble student of literature if you call Hindi a narrow language that is not the word to be used. That is not the limiting adjective. at any rate, that you can use for Hindi. Hindi is very widely based, more widely based than Urdu. Urdu is based at the most on the vernacular, in the words of Grierson, which is spoken in between Delhi and Meerut. He has given the figure as 52 lakhs for the vernacular Hindustani. Literary Hindi has for its basis the speeches from the borders of Bengal to the borders or Punjab, from the borders of Nepal to the borders of Gujerat. When you come to examinations in the Universities you will find literature of old Rajputana language, Dingal, the literature of Avadhi and other different dialects such as Braj and Bhojpuri whose literatures are included in literary Hindi. If you study literature for M.A. in Urdu you will never have literature of any one of the dialects of India to be studied. Why? Because Urdu does not concern itself with the dialects of India.
