Editorial Note, Jan – Feb, 2024

This issue leads with a version of the Presidential Address to the Modern India section of the Indian History Congress 2022, delivered by Salil Misra. The essay tells the story of Hindi’s rise as a major language, noting that there was nothing natural or inevitable about that rise, and that given a different constellation of forces and circumstances, some other language might have emerged as dominant. During the course of its development Hindi entered into an adversarial relationship with Urdu. Most of Hindi’s supporters were Hindus and those of Urdu, Muslims. This led some scholars to see this equation as natural and self-evident. However, there was also an opposite tendency, perhaps a reaction, to overlook this connection altogether and see the Hindi–Urdu rivalry as purely social, linguistic and political. In this approach, the religious dimension was seen more as a consequence of the language rivalry and not something that had accompanied the rivalry all along. He seeks to tell the story of Hindi by avoiding both the extremes of essentialism and of denial.