The Arabic equivalent of the term isHind.[1] The two terms are used synonymously in Hindi-Urdu. Hindustan was also commonly spelt asHindostan in English.[10]
A map of theIndus River basin system, from the Indus' upper course and origin inTibet to its lower course andmouth inSindh
Hindustan is derived from thePersian wordHindū cognate with the SanskritSindhu.[2]TheProto-Iranian sound change*s >h occurred between 850 and 600 BCE, according toAsko Parpola.[11] Hence, theRigvedicsapta sindhava (the land of seven rivers) becamehapta hindu in theAvesta. It was said to be the "fifteenth domain" created byAhura Mazda, apparently a land of 'abnormal heat'.[12]In 515 BCE,Darius I annexed theIndus Valley includingSindhu, the present daySindh, which was calledHindu in Persian.[13] During the time ofXerxes, the term "Hindu" was also applied to the lands to the east of Indus.[2]
Inmiddle Persian, probably from thefirst century CE, the suffix-stān was added, indicative of a country or region, forming the present wordHindūstān.[14] Thus, Sindh was referred to asHindūstān, or "Indus land" in the Naqsh-e-Rustam inscription ofShapur I inc. 262 CE.[15][16]
HistorianB. N. Mukherjee states that from the lower Indus basin, the termHindūstān got gradually extended to "more or less the whole of thesubcontinent". The Greco-Roman name "India" and the Chinese nameShen-tu also followed a similar evolution.[15][17]
The Arabic termHind, derived from PersianHindu, was previously used by the Arabs to refer to the much wider Indianised region from theMakran coast to theIndonesian archipelago.[18] But eventually it too became identified with the Indian subcontinent.
In the time of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal empire, the ruling elite and its Persian historiographers made a further distinction between "Hindustan" and "Hind". Hindustan referred to the territories of Northern India in the Miyan-Doab and adjacent regions under Muslim political control, while "Hind" referred to the rest of India. For example, the army ofGhiyas ud din Balban was referred to as "Hindustani" troops, who were attacked by the "Hindus".[19]
"Hindustan" is often an informal and colloquial term to refer to the modern-dayRepublic of India.[8][9][20] Slogans involving the term are commonly heard at sports events and other public programmes involving teams or entities representing the modern nation-state of India. In marketing, it is also commonly used as an indicator of national origin in advertising campaigns and is present in manycompany names.Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder ofPakistan, and his party theMuslim League, insisted on calling the modern-day Republic of India "Hindustan" in reference to its Hindu-majority population.[21]
The region of Hindustan is extensive, full of men and full of produce. On the east, south and even on the west it ends at its great enclosing ocean (muḥiṭ-daryā-sī-gha). On the north it has mountains that connect with those ofHindu-Kush,Kafiristan andKashmir. North-west of it lies Kabul, Ghazni and Qandahar. Dihlī is held (aīrīmīsh) to be the capital of the whole of Hindustan...
–Babur Nama, A. S. Beveridge, trans., vol. 1, sec. iii: 'Hindustan'[24]
Early Persian scholars had limited knowledge of the extent of India. After the advent of Islam and theMuslim conquests, the meaning ofHindustan interacted with its Arabic variantHind, which was derived from Persian as well, and almost became synonymous with it. The Arabs, engaging in oceanic trade, included all the lands fromTis in western Balochistan (near modernChabahar) to the Indonesian archipelago, in their idea ofHind, especially when used in its expansive form as "Al-Hind".Hindustan did not acquire this elaborate meaning. According to André Wink, it also did not acquire the distinction, which faded away, betweenSind (roughly what is now western Pakistan) andHind (the lands to the east of the Indus River);[6][18][25] other sources state thatSind andHind were used synonymously from early times,[26] and that after thearrival of Islamic rule in India, "the variants Hind and Sind were used, as synonyms, for the entire subcontinent."[27] The 10th century textHudud al-Alam definedHindustan as roughly theIndian subcontinent, with its western limit formed by the river Indus, southern limit going up to the Great Sea and the eastern limit atKamarupa, the present day Assam.[17] For the next ten centuries, bothHind andHindustan were used within the subcontinent with exactly this meaning, along with their adjectivesHindawi,Hindustani andHindi.[28][29][30] Indeed, in 1220 CE, historianHasan Nizami describedHind as being "fromPeshawar to the shores of the[Indian] Ocean, and in the other direction from Siwistan to the hills of Chin."[31]
With the Turko-Persian conquests starting in the 11th century, an accurate meaning ofHindustan took shape, defining the land of the river Indus. The conquerors were liable to call the lands under their controlHindustan, ignoring the rest of the subcontinent.[32]In the early 11th century asatellite state of theGhaznavids in thePunjab with its capital atLahore was called "Hindustan".[33] After theDelhi Sultanate was established, north India, especially the Gangetic plains and the Punjab, came to be called "Hindustan".[32][34][35][36] Scholar Bratindra Nath Mukherjee states that this narrow meaning ofHindustan existed side by side with the wider meaning, and some of the authors used both of them simultaneously.[37]
The Delhi Sultanate established differences between "Hindustan" and "Hind", where Hindustan referred to the territories of today's Northern India and thePunjab, the lands of the Indus. In the Miyan-Doab and adjacent regions under Muslim political control. For example, the army ofDelhi Sultanate was referred to as "Hindustani" troops, who were attacked by the "Hindus".[38]
TheMughal Empire (1526–1857) called its lands 'Hindustan'. The term 'Mughal' itself was never used to refer to the land. As the empire expanded, so too did 'Hindustan'. At the same time, the meaning of 'Hindustan' as the entireIndian subcontinent is also found inBaburnama andAin-i-Akbari.[39] The Mughals made a further distinction between "Hindustani" and "Hindu". In Mughal sources, Hindustani commonly referred to Muslims in Hindustan, while non-Muslim Indians were referred to as Hindus.[40]
The lastGorkhali KingPrithvi Narayan Shah self proclaimed the newly unifiedKingdom of Nepal asAsal Hindustan (Real Hindustan) due to North India being ruled by theIslamicMughal rulers. The self proclamation was done to enforce Hindu social codeDharmashastra over his reign and refer to his country as being inhabitable forHindus. He also referred Northern India asMughlan (Country ofMughals) and called the region infiltrated by Muslim foreigners.[41]
The dual meanings of the terms "India," "Hindustan," and the "Mughal Empire" persisted with the arrival of Europeans. For instance, Rennel produced an atlas titled the Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan or the Mogul Empire in 1792, which actually depicted the Indian subcontinent. This conflation of terms by Rennel illustrates the complexity and overlap of these concepts during that period.[42][43] J. Bernoulli, to whomHindustan meant the Mughal Empire, called his French translationLa Carte générale de l'Inde (General Map of India).[44]This 'Hindustan' of British reckoning was divided into British-ruled territories (more often referred to as 'British India') and the territories ruled by native rulers.[45] The British officials and writers, however, thought that the Indians used 'Hindustan' to refer to only North India.[46][36] AnAnglo-Indian Dictionary published in 1886 states that, whileHindustan means India, in the native parlance it had come to represent the region north ofNarmada River excludingBihar andBengal.[35]
During the independence movement, the Indians referred to their land by all three names: 'India', 'Hindustan' and 'Bharat'.[47]Mohammad Iqbal's poemTarānah-e-Hindī ("Anthem of the People of Hind") was a popular patriotic song amongIndian independence activists.[48]
Sāre jahāṉ se acchā Hindustān hamārā (the best of all lands is our Hindustan)
The 1940Lahore Resolution of theAll-India Muslim League demanded sovereignty for the Muslim-majority areas in thenorthwest and northeast ofBritish India, which came to be called 'Pakistan' in popular parlance and the Dominion of India came to be called 'Hindustan'.[49] The British officials too picked up the two terms and started using them officially.[20]
However, this naming did not meet the approval of Indian leaders due to the implied meaning of 'Hindustan' as the land ofHindus. They insisted that the newDominion of India should be called 'India', not 'Hindustan'.[50] Probably for the same reason, the name 'Hindustan' did not receive official sanction of theConstituent Assembly of India, whereas 'Bharat' was adopted as an official name.[51] It was recognised however that 'Hindustan' would continue to be used unofficially.[52]
^abMukherjee, The Foreign Names of the Indian Subcontinent (1989), p. 46: "They used the nameHindustan for India Intra Gangem or taking the latter expression rather loosely for the Indian subcontinent proper. The termHindustan, which in the "Naqsh-i-Rustam" inscription of Shapur I denoted India on the lower Indus, and which later gradually began to denote more or less the whole of the subcontinent, was used by some of the European authors concerned as a part of bigger India. Hindustan was of course a well-known name for the subcontinent used in India and outside in medieval times."
^Śivaprasāda, Rājā (1874).A History of Hindustan. Medical Hall Press. p. 15.The Persians called the tract lying on the left bank of the Sindhu (Indus) Hind, which is but a corruption of the word Sindh.
^abWink, Al-Hind, Volume 1 (2002), p. 5: "The Arabs, like the Greeks, adopted a pre-existing Persian term, but they were the first to extend its application to the entire Indianized region from Sind and Makran to the Indonesian Archipelago and mainland Southeast Asia."
^Pande, Aparna (2011).Explaining Pakistan's foreign policy: escaping India. New York: Routledge. pp. 14–15.ISBN978-0415599009.At partition, the Muslim League tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the British that the two independent countries should be called Hindustan and Pakistan but neither the British nor the Congress gave in to this demand. It is important to note that Jinnah and the majority of the Pakistani policy-makers have often referred to independent India as "Hindustan," as an affirmation of the two nation theory.
^Ashmore, Harry S. (1961).Encyclopaedia Britannica: a new survey of universal knowledge, Volume 11.Encyclopædia Britannica. p. 579.The everyday speech of well over 50,000,000 persons of all communities in the north of India and in West Pakistan is the expression of a common language, Hindustani.
^Beg, Mirzā K̲h̲alīl (1996).Sociolinguistic perspective of Hindi and Urdu in India. Bahri Publications. p. 37.The word Hind meaning 'India', comes from the Persian language, and the suffix -i which is transcribed in the Persian alphabet as ya-i-ma'ruf is a grammatical marker meaning 'relating to'. The word Hindi, thus, meant 'relating/belonging to India' or the 'Indian native'.
^Wink, Al-Hind, Volume 1 (2002), p. 145: "The Arabic literature often conflates 'Sind' with 'Hind' into a single term. Sind, in point of fact, while vaguely defined territorially, overlaps rather well with what is currently Pakistan. It definitely did extend beyond the present province of Sind and Makran; the whole of Baluchistan was included, a part of the Panjab, and the North-West Frontier Province."
^Fatiḥpūrī, Dildār ʻAlī Farmān (1987).Pakistan movement and Hindi-Urdu conflict. Sang-e-Meel Publications.There are examples to show that "Hind" and "Sind", have been used as synonyms.
^Qureshi, Ishtiaq Husain (1965).The Struggle for Pakistan. University of Karachi. p. 1.It was after the Arab conquest that the name Sind came to be applied to territories much beyond modern Sind and gradually it came to pass that the variants Hind and Sind were used, as synonyms, for the entire subcontinent.
^The Indian Magazine, Issues 193-204. National Indian Association in Aid of Social Progress and Education in India. 1887. p. 292.Again Hasan Nizami of Nisha-pur, about A.D. 1220, writes: "The whole ofHind, from Peshawar to the shores of the Ocean, and in the other direction from Siwistan to the hills ofChin."
^abYule, Henry; Burnell, Arthur Coke (1996) [first published 1886],Hobson-Jobson: The Anglo-Indian Dictionary, Wordsworth Editions,ISBN978-1-85326-363-7: "Hindostan, n.p. Pers.Hindūstan. (a) 'The country of 'Hindūs' or Indus people, India. In modern native parlance the word indicates distinctively (b) India north of the Nerbudda, and exclusive of Bengal and Behar. The latter provinces are regarded aspūrb (seePoorub), and all south of the Nerbudda asDakhan (seeDeccan). But the word is used in older Mahommedan authors just as it is used in English school-books and atlases, viz., as (a) the equivalent of India Proper. Thus Babur says of Hindustan: 'On the East, the South and the West it is bounded by the Ocean'"
^abMacdonnell, Arthur A. (1968) [first published 1900].A History of Sanskrit Literature. Haskell House Publishers. p. 141. GGKEY:N230TU9P9E1.
A Sketch of the History of Hindustan from the First Muslim Conquest to the Fall of the Mughal Empire byH. G. Keene. (Hindustan The English Historical Review, Vol. 2, No. 5 (Jan. 1887), pp. 180–181.)
Story of India through the Ages; An Entertaining History of Hindustan, to the Suppression of the Mutiny, by Flora Annie Steel, 1909 E.P. Dutton and Co., New York. (as recommended by the New York Times;Flora Annie Steel Book Review, 20 February 1909,New York Times.)
The History of Hindustan: Post Classical and Modern, Ed. B.S. Danniya and Alexander Dow. 2003, Motilal Banarsidass,ISBN81-208-1993-4. (History of Hindustan (First published: 1770–1772). Dow had succeeded his father as the private secretary ofMughal EmperorAurangzeb.)
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