Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/446

 356 EARLIER INDIAN SPEECHES

holding communion with them. Call the language of the North what you will, Urdu or Hindi, it is the same. If you write it in the Urdu character you may know it as Urdu. Write the same thing in the Nagiri character and it is Hindi.

There, therefore, remains a difference about the script. For the time being Mahomedan children will certainly write in the Urdu character and Hindus will mostly write in the Devangari. I say mostly, because thousands of Hindus use the Urdu character and some do not even know the Nagan character. But when Hindus and Mahomedans come to regard one another without suspicion, when the causes begetting suspicion are removed, that script which has greater vitality \\ill be more universally used and, therefore, become the national script. Meanwhile those Hindus and Maho- medans who desire to write their petitions in the Urdu character should be free to do so, and should have the right of having them accepted at the seat of National Government.

There is not another language capable of competing with Hindi in satisfying the live conditions. Bengali comes next to Hindi. But the Bengalis themselves make use of Hindi outside Bengal. No one \\onders to see a Hindi-speaking man making use of Hindi, no matter where he goes. Hindu preachers and Maho- medan Moulvis deliver their religious discourses throughout India in Hindi and Urdu and even the illiterate masses follow them. Even the unlettered Gujarati going to the North attempts to use a few Hindi words, whereas a gatekeeper from the North dec- lines to speak in Gujarati even to his employer, who has on that account to speak to him in broken Hindu

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