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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 November 2009
This article will discuss two attempts at the romanisation of Indian languages in the twentieth century, one in pre-independence India and the second in Pakistan before the Bangladesh war of 1971. By way of background, an overview of the status of writing in the subcontinent will be presented in the second section, followed by a discussion of various earlier attempts in India to change writing systems, relating mainly to the situation in Bengal, which has one language and one script used by two large religious groups – Muslims and Hindus (in modern-day Bangladesh and West Bengal, respectively). The fourth section will look at the language/script policy of the Indian National Congress in pre-independence days, and attempts to introduce romanisation, especially the work of the Bengali linguist S. K. Chatterji. The penultimate section deals with attempts to change the writing system in East Pakistan, i.e. East Bengal, to (a) the Perso-Arabic script, and (b) the roman script.
In all cases, the attempt to romanise any of the Indian scripts failed at the national – official – level, although Indian languages do have a conventional transliteration. Reasons for the failure will be presented, in the final section, in terms of İlker Aytürk's model (see this issue), which proposes factors that may allow – or may not lead to – the implementation of romanisation.
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4 While there are no intra-Islamic social divisions, there is a sharp division between Muslims and non-Muslims. The latter (dhimmi, or zimmi in Urdu), for example, have to pay the jizya, a tax or tribute.
5 According to Muslim tradition, the Qur'an was handed down from Heaven through the angel Gabriel to Muhammed, an allegedly illiterate Mecca merchant.
6 Just over twenty six per cent of the population according to the last census in 2001.
7 Chatterji, S. K., The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language (Calcutta, 1926 (1975))Google Scholar. See also Kurzon, D., ‘Transliteration or Transcription? Attempts at Bengali/Arabic Transliteration from Historical and Linguistic Perspectives’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, Golden Jubilee Volume, vol. 50 (2005), pp. 641–665Google Scholar.
8 There is still at least one weekly in Goa written in Roman Konkani Vauraddeancho Ixtt “The Workers’ Friend”.
9 King, C. R., One Language – Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in Nineteenth Century North India (New Delhi, 1994)Google Scholar. But for counter arguments, see Russell, R., ‘Some notes on Hindi and Urdu’, The Annual of Urdu Studies, Vol. 11 (1996), pp. 203–208Google Scholar.
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11 Ibid.
12 Trevelyan, The Application of the Roman Alphabet to All the Oriental Languages (Serampore Press, 1834), p. 5.
13 Ibid., p. 7.
14 Ibid., p. 12.
15 Macaulay, T.B., ‘Minute of Indian Education’, in Clive, John and Pinney, Thomas (eds.) Selected Writings (Chicago, 1972), pp. 237–251, p. 241Google Scholar.
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20 See “Transliteration of Indic scripts: How to use ISO 15919”, http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stone-catend/trind.htm (accessed May 2009).
21 From Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India.
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26 He also proposed italicised ‘s’ and ‘z’ to be used for graphemes in the Perso-Arabic alphabet.
27 A strange choice. It would have been much easier to employ the IPA symbol /ʔ/.
28 Ibid., p. 23.
29 Ibid., p. 26.
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31 King, R., Nehru and the Language Politics of India (New Delhi, 1998)Google Scholar.
32 Exceptions include Punjab, which was eventually set up in 1966 as a linguistic state in a truncated form, and Goa, which was freed from Portuguese rule only in 1961. It became the smallest state.
33 See, for example, Kurzon, D., ‘Indian languages: Hidden English in texts and society’, in Globally Speaking: Motives for Adopting English Vocabulary in Other Languages, eds. Rosenhouse, J and Kowner, R (Clevedon, 2008), pp. 208–226CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Anderson, B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1991)Google Scholar.
35 Ibid., p. 133.
36 His mother tongue was Sindhi, as he was born in Karachi, but his strongest language was probably English.
37 This relates to the deliberate introduction of Sanskrit words and phrases, from the second part of the nineteenth century onwards, into Indian languages written by the Hindu population, including Hindi and Bengali, to counter the use of Arabic and Persian words in “Muslim” languages.
38 Cited by Alam, S. M. Shamsul, ‘Language as political articulation: East Bengal in 1952’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 21:4 (1991), p. 478CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Islam, R., ‘The Bengali language movement and emergence of Bangladesh’, in Fifty Years of Ekushey February – Celebrating the Mother Tongue, ed. Abbasi, M. Z. (Bangladesh, 2002), p. 52Google Scholar.
39 In 1982 the Bangladeshi government published, in fifteen volumes, documents relating to the conflict between, firstly, East Pakistan and the Pakistani government in West Pakistan, and secondly, to the war of independence of 1971 and its aftermath – Rahman, H. H., History of the Bangladesh War of Independence: Documents (Dhaka, 1982)Google Scholar. The various documents related to here are published in these volumes.
40 Islam, ‘Bengali language movement’, p. 52.
41 Shamsul Alam, ‘Language as political articulation’, p. 454.
42 Ibid., p. 478.
43 Umar, B., 1992 (1997) ‘Language movement’, in History of Bangladesh 1704–1971, ed. Islam, Sirajul (Dhaka, 1992), p. 453Google Scholar.
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45 See Rahman, History of the Bangladesh War of Independence.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 Mamoon and Ray, Civil Society in Bangladesh, p. 43.
49 Personal communication (2004).
50 Ibid.
51 O'Connell, J. T., ‘The Bengali Muslims and the state: Secularism or humanity for Bangladesh?’, in Understanding the Bengali Muslims: Interpretative Essays, ed. Ahmed, R. (New Delhi, 2001), p. 190Google Scholar.
52 Umar, ‘Language movement’.
