Re: Partition from India OR Independence from British Legacy??
Urdu is a Sanskritic language because it is just another dialect of Hindvi/Hindustani like Hindi.
I have no problem with Sanskrit vocabulary in Urdu because Urdu has more relation to Sanskrit than it does to Semitic or Avestan (Persian etc.) languages, my point was it’s narrow minded to be so stringent and insist on keeping a language “pure” from all foreign influences because all languages evolve by assimilating from other languages or else they become incompetent and outdated, evolution has happened with English and it will happen with our languages, the new words become a part of that language’s vocabulary just as much as they are of the language they were take from and they don’t change a language’s roots or identity, of course when new words are assimilated into a language they have to be adapted or they sound hideously out of place like with many words of Arabic and Persian origin in Urdu.
I think Paki nationalists need to stop their obsession with Persian and also encourage the use of Sanskrit words in Urdu literature (together with suitable vocabulary from Persian/Arabic) because there is a difference between religion and culture, even after embracing Islam some of us Pakistanis have carried on this un-Islamic mindset that ethnicity and religion are related so we can’t be proper Muslims as Desis so we have to be Arab which is wrong because Islam is a universal religion and all ethnicities have equal rights to it unlike ethnicist/casteist religions such as Judaism or Brahminsim, we can be Muslims and still hold onto our language, culture and secular traditions, we have religious relations with the rest of the Muslim world and that’s enough because it’s all that matters, we don’t have to adopt their culture.
Those who brought Sanskrit to South Asia are amongst the ancestors of Pakistanis (together with others e.g. Indus Valley people), Panini was Pakistani (remember name change doesn’t mean identity change), in fact those who brought Sanskrit to South Asia only gave their genes to Pakistan and northwestern India, it is more likely that the rest of India (including the Sanskritic speaking northern states), Sri Lanka and Bangladesh only got culture and religion from them.
I also think we need to start using a adapted form of the Devanagri script which is edited so that is has all the sound of Urdu and there is no confusion between “z” and “j” because that would sound hideous.
I don’t think it matters to Almighty Allah whether I call him Khuda or Ishvar when I’m speaking in my language.
As for Indians they should allow a few foreign words in official Hindi instead of insisting on just words of Sanskrit origin because that’s the way it is in proper vernacular Hindi, my Indians friends have no problem speaking to me or I to them, I find that people from Delhi are very much like people from Lahore and those from Mumbai like people from Karachi. When I first met them I was a bit anxious and made an effort to only use words such as patni, parivar, pita ji, buddhi, ishvar, kirpa, dhanivad and my friends did the same only using words commonly used in Urdu but we soon realised we can understand each other just fine in our usual dialects and it’s quite easy to know the meaning of a new word just by the context it is used in so now we just talk normal, southies need to be Hindised though because they sometimes use incomprehendible Malayalam words in Hindi, I can understand Sanskrit origin words just fine because in vernacular Urdu/Punjabi spoken in Pakistan they are quite common and that’s what the older generation use (it is only the official version of Urdu which is overtly Persianised), I guess same is the case on the Indian side as my Sikh friends tell me where it was overtly Sanskritised after partition, the older generation speak like anyone from our side of Wagah, Sikh elders here sound just like our elders and it’s quite heart warming whereas the news on Alpha Punjabi is just not like that.
You mentioned the Guru Granth Sahib being rooted in Hinduism, the Gurus rejected the authority of the Hindu scriptures, only the Guru Granth Sahib is a authority in the Sikh religion, the first Guru ji combined Islam and Hinduism, I agree with you that he did borrow many concepts from Hinduism such as using the title Ik-Onkar (Aum) for God but he rejected the trinity it represented in Hinduism, he taught that it represents three attributes of one person God rather than three persons in one God, he called God Ram but he denied that he were a person like depicted in Hinduism but rather a name for the Incomprehendible/Transcendent One, he also used many Arabic words for God such as Allaah, Rabb, Rahman, Raheem and Persian words such as Khuda, he even assimilated some poetry in praise of God from ascetics who followed Islam or its offshoots.