The advancement of one's own language,
Is the root of all progress.
The twinge of the heart can't be cured,
Without the knowledge of one's own language.
– Bharatendu Harishchandra
It is difficult to guess what Harischandra Agrawal had in mind when he penned his oft-quoted couplets on Matribhasha ke prati (Towards a mother tongue) in mid-19th century Benaras. The language of the poem is a mixture of Awadhi and Bhojpuri, and it is possible that a budding poet in the ambitious journalist had visions of glory for Bhojpuri. Awadhi had a rich literary tradition dating back at least to the 16th-century epic Ramcharitmanas. Even during the heyday of Persian in the Mughal Empire, Awadhi and Braj Bhasa managed to maintain their positions through connections to the court of Awadh. But despite being the mother tongue of a much larger population, Bhojpuri remained the language of the streets. It was a dialect that the rich and powerful in Benaras spoke to priests, peddlers and servants – even as they conducted religious ceremonies in Sanskrit, conversed with each other in Hindostani and transacted business with the British in English.
The pang that the status of Bhojpuri caused in the conscience of the educated middle class is perhaps understandable. But had Harishchandra known that his writings would eventually become the foundation on which the edifice of an artificial language would be erected, he probably would have written something in praise of his pitri-bhasha Prakrit or Sanskrit instead. Hindi has subsumed almost all indigenous languages of the Ganga plain, to emerge as the lingua franca of Hindostan and beyond in Southasia. The title that the pandits of Kashi conferred upon Harishchandra was Bharatendu, the 'sun of Bharat', and not a son of Bhojpuri. By writing a famous poem in praise of 'one's own language', Harishchandra Agrawal of Benaras almost killed his 'own' language.
The belief that language changes at every river or hillock is common throughout Southasia. Until the rise of the Mughals in Delhi, there was no language that linked the entire Jambudwip. Scholars used Sanskrit to debate religious texts, little kings patronised the dialects in which panegyrics were composed in their praise, and merchants of the Ganga plain often spoke multiple languages. Urdu evolved as the common language of the Mughal army, in which soldiers spoke Rajasthani, Punjabi, Braj Bhasa, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Magadhi and hundreds of other dialects, but were forced to follow edicts that emanated from urd (the royal camp) that were laced with Persian. Interestingly, the term urdi has continued to be used to denote royal orders until quite recently in Nepali, though presumably there will be no urdis in Nepal now that there is no king to issue them. But Urdu, the Mughal army's common language, has become even more popular in its Hindostani avatar in Southasia, and among Southasians abroad.