Swami Dayanand and his contribution to Hindi Language
Swami Dayanand and his contribution to Hindi Language
Dr Vivek Arya
Before the advent of Swami Dayanand the main language in our country was Urdu and Persian. The main reason was that the people were still carrying the remnants of Mughal rule while the Britishers were the rulers of our country. The princely and the rich class of our country started copying the Britishers. They showed great interest in learning English language. It seems that they were under this impression that speaking in English will earn them self respect and dignity in front of the Britishers. I think it was the only option left for a defeated ruler in front of his master.
Hindi or Devanagari was spoken only in central India. It was a form of distorted version full of alien Arabic words. Veer savarkar mentions that the most regarded work authored by Swami Dayanand, the Satyarth Prakash is credited to popularize the 'Sanskrit Nistha' version of Hindi Language.
Savarkar in his Book 'Hindu Nationalism' quotes
"By Hindi we of course mean the pure Sanskrit Nistha Hindi as we find it for example in the Satyarth Prakash written by Maharishi Dayananda Saraswati. How simple and untainted with a single unnecessary foreign word is that Hindi and how expressive withal. It may be mentioning in passing that Swami Dayanand ji was about the first Hindu leader who gave conscious and definitive expression to the view that Hindi should be the Pan-Hindu National Language of India."
Swami Dayanand dreamed of uniting our country by bonding them with the bond of one single language the Devanagari or Hindi. We also get glimpse of the vision of Swami Dayanand that how far he was thinking. There would not have been any language conflict and North-South India division if the Pan India Hindi language model would have been adopted by our Government. This is a strong message for our country ruling class.
[Note--Few readers might be questioning me that Why i am writing this article in English? Answer is simple that i am writing this article in English for Non Hindi readers so that they can learn the benefit of learning Hindi