Even by the trigger-happy standards of Hindutva outrage, what happened on Tuesday seemed ridiculous: some Indians, including senior Bharati...
Even by the trigger-happy standards of Hindutva outrage, what happened on Tuesday seemed ridiculous: some Indians, including senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, were angry that clothing brand FabIndia had named a Diwali collection using Urdu. They claimed that the Urdu language simply could not be associated with a Hindu festival.
A jumpy FabIndia soon took down the advertisment for the collection and released a statement that assured anyone outraged that the Urdu phrase “Jashn-e-Rivāj” (celebration of tradition) would not be associated with Diwali. Instead, it would have a Hindi name: Jhilmil sī Diwāīi (a sparkling Diwali).
By any standard, the controversy was both ridiculous (how could festivals be associated with language?) and frightening (the mob had enough power to force corporations to bend to their will). But perhaps, the biggest irony was that both phrases, Jashn-e-Rivāj and Jhilmil sī Diwāīi would be perfectly intelligible to Indian Hind speakers.
The Persian loanwords “jashn” and “rivāj” would, in fact, be seen as common Hindi words with the only explicit “Urdu” element being the genitive marker “-e-” rather than the postposition “kā” (which is shared by both Hindi and Urdu). Nevertheless, even the “-e-” is so common in Indian popular culture such as Bollywood that Hindi speakers would come...