Persian language in the Indian subcontinent
Before British colonisation, the Persian language was the lingua franca of the Indian subcontinent and a widely used official language in the northern India. The language was brought into South Asia by various Turco-Persianate and Afghan empires and was preserved and patronized by local Indian dynasties from the 11th century, such as the Sayyid dynasty, Tughlaq dynasty, Khilji dynasty, Mughal dynasty, Gujarat sultanate, and Bengal sultanate. Initially it was used by Muslim dynasties of India but later started being used by non-Muslim empires too. For example, the Sikh Empire, Persian held official status in the court and the administration within these empires. It largely replaced Sanskrit as the language of politics, literature, education, and social status in the subcontinent.
The spread of Persian closely followed the political and religious growth of Islam in the Indian subcontinent. However, Persian historically played the role of an overarching, often non-sectarian language connecting the diverse people of the region. It also helped construct a Persian identity, incorporating the Indian subcontinent into the transnational world of Greater Iran, or Ajam. Persian's historical role and functions in the subcontinent have caused the language to be compared to English in the modern-day region.
Persian began to decline with the gradual deterioration of the Mughal Empire. Hindustani and English replaced Persian as British authority grew in the Indian subcontinent. Persian lost its official status in the East India Company in 1837, and fell out of currency in the subsequent British Raj.
Persian's linguistic legacy in the region is apparent through its impact on the Indo-Aryan languages. It played a formative role in the emergence of Hindustani, and had a relatively strong influence on Punjabi, Sindhi, Bengali, Gujarati, and Kashmiri. Other languages like Marathi, Rajasthani, and Odia also have a considerable amount of loan words from Persian.
Background
Persian's arrival in the Indian subcontinent was the result of a larger trend in Greater Iran. In the aftermath of the Muslim conquest of Persia, new Iranian-Islamic empires emerged, reviving Persian culture in a new Islamic context. This period is sometimes termed the Iranian Intermezzo, spanning the 9th to 10th centuries, and reestablished in the Persian language the refinement and prestige that Arabic had laid claim to. In the process, Persian adopted Arabic script and incorporated many Arabic words into its vocabulary, evolving into a new form known as New Persian. These developments were centred in the regions of Khorasan and Transoxiana.The empires employed Turkic slave warriors in their military, which exposed them to a Persianate culture. These warriors were able to rise up the ranks and gain political power; they began the synthesis of a Turco-Persian tradition, wherein Turkic rulers patronised the Persian language and culture.
The resulting Turkic dynasties, such as the Seljuks and Ghaznavids, expanded outwards in search of new opportunities. Immediately adjacent to the lands of the Persians and Turks, the Indian subcontinent became a target for the Ghaznavid Empire, and New Persian was carried along with them. This set a precedent for Persian's further growth in the subcontinent. The Turkic and Mongol dynasties that subsequently arrived in South Asia emulated this Persianised high culture since it had become the predominant courtly culture in Western and Central Asia. Similar developments in other regions of Asia led to the establishment of Persian as literary and official language in a region stretching from "China to the Balkans, and from Siberia to southern India", by the 15th century. The arrival of Persian in the Indian subcontinent was hence no isolated event, and eventually positioned the region within a much larger Persian-speaking world.
History
Arrival and Growth
The Ghaznavid conquests of the 11th century introduced Persian to the Indian subcontinent. As Mahmud of Ghazni established a power base in India, the centre of Persian literary patronage shifted from Ghazna to the Punjab alias Hind or the land east on the river Indus, especially at the empire's second capital Lahore. This began a steady influx of Persian-speaking soldiers, settlers and literati from Iran, Khorasan, and other places of the Persianate world. This flow would stay largely uninterrupted for the next few centuries. Notable Persian poets of this early period include Abu-al-Faraj Runi and Masud Sa'd Salman, both born in the Indian subcontinent. The Ghurids expanded this territory, shifting Perso-Islamic influence further into the subcontinent and claiming Delhi.Virtually every Islamic power thereafter followed the Ghaznavids' practice of using Persian as a courtly language. Delhi became a major centre of Persian literary culture in Hindustan from the 13th century onwards, with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate by the post-Ghurid Mamluks. The successive Khiljis and Tughluqs sponsored many pieces of literature in the language; poet Amir Khusrow produced much of his Persian work under their patronage. Between the 13th and 15th centuries, the Turkic rulers of the Delhi Sultanate encouraged the flow of eminent Persian-speaking personalities into the subcontinent, granting them land to settle in rural areas. This flow was increased by the Mongol conquests of the Perso-Islamic world, as many Persian elite sought refuge in North India. Hence the Persian language established itself in court and literature, but also through a sizeable population often associated with Islamic nobility. The Delhi Sultanate was largely the impetus for the spread of Persian, since its borders stretched deep into the subcontinent. In the wake of its gradual disintegration, the various outgrowths of the empire in regions as far as the Deccan and Bengal resultantly adopted Persian.
Apart from courtly influence, Persian also spread through religion, particularly the Islamic faith of Sufism. Many Sufi missionaries to the subcontinent had Persian roots, and although they used local Indo-Aryan languages to reach their followers, they used Persian to converse amongst each other and write literature. This resulted in a diffusion process among the local followers of the faith. Sufi centres served as focal points for this cultural interaction. Sufism also interacted with Hinduism through the Bhakti movement; Abidi and Gargesh speculate that this could have further introduced Persian to locals.
The language had a brief dormant period in the late 15th to early 16th century after the Delhi Sultanate was sacked by Timur. Afghan dynasties such as the Suris and Lodis gained control in the north of the subcontinent, and although Afghans at the time were a part of the Persianate world, these rulers were not well-acquainted with the language. In this era, empires all over the subcontinent began to employ Hindustani's emerging predecessor Hindavi as a language of the court. Work in Persian was however still produced, and Persian still featured in official documents. Notably, the Delhi Sultanate's official language was declared Persian by Sikandar Lodi, which began a diffusion process outside Islamic nobility; Hindus for the first time began to learn the language for purposes of employment, and there is evidence of them even teaching the language in this period.
Height
Persian experienced a revival with the advent of the Mughal emperors, under whom the language reached its zenith in the Indian subcontinent. The Mughals were of Timurid origin; they were Turco-Mongols, and had been Persianised to an extent. However, the early Mughal court preferred their ancestral Turkic language. This linguistic situation began to change when the second Mughal Emperor Humayun reconquered India with the aid of Safavid Iran, ushering many Iranians into the subcontinent. His successor Akbar developed these ties by granting these Iranians positions in the imperial service. He also undertook generous efforts to attract many Persian literati from Iran. Akbar's actions established Persian as the language of the Mughal court, transitioning the royal family out of the ancestral language. Under Akbar, Persian was made the official language of the Mughal Empire, a policy it would retain till its demise. His pluralist rule resulted in many natives becoming more open to learning the language, and educational reforms were introduced in madrasas to improve Persian learning. The Mughal association with the Persian language continued with Akbar's successors; the literary environment created under them led Sa'ib, a Shah Jahan-era poet at the Mughal court, to comment:Under the Mughals, Persian took prominence as the language of culture, education, and prestige. Their policies resulted in a process of "Persianisation" by which many Indian communities increasingly adopted the language for social purposes. Professions requiring Persian proficiency, previously occupied by Iranians and Turks, came to be shared with Indians. For example, groups such as the Kayasthas and Khatris came to dominate the Mughal finance departments; Indians taught Persian in madrasas alongside masters of the language from Iran. Moreover, the complete Persianisation of the Mughal administrative system meant that the language reached both urban centres as well as villages, and a larger audience for Persian literature developed.
In this way, Persian became a second language to many across North India; Muzaffar Alam contends that it neared the status of a first language. By the 18th century, many Indians in the north of the subcontinent had a "native speaker's competence in Persian".
Decline
Following Aurangzeb's death, Persian began to fall into decline, being displaced by Urdu in the Mughal court. The arrival and strengthening of British political power added a growing influence of English as well. However, for a long time Persian was still the dominant language of the subcontinent, used in education, Muslim rule, the judiciary, and literature. While the East India Company used English in the higher levels of administration, it acknowledged the importance of Persian as a "language of command", and used it as the language of provincial governments and courts. Hence many British officials arriving in India learned Persian in colleges established by the Company. The teachers in these colleges were often Indian. In some cases, Britishers even took over as Persian professors, sidelining the role of the Indians.Through the early 1800s, though the East India Company continued to use Persian and Hindustani officially, it increasingly began to favour vernacular languages over Persian in the administration and adjudication of the Indian population. This was due to the fact that Persian was no longer as widely understood in India. By the 1830s, the Company came to view Persian as an "impediment to good governance", culminating in a series of reforms; the Madras and Bombay Presidencies dropped Persian from their administration in 1832, and in 1837, Act No. 29 mandated the abandonment of Persian in official proceedings throughout India in favour of vernacular languages. English eventually replaced Persian in education as well, and the British actively promoted Hindustani as the means of common communication. Additionally, nationalistic movements in the subcontinent led to various communities embracing vernacular languages over Persian. Still, Persian was not fully supplanted, and remained the language of "intercultural communication". Famed poet Mirza Ghalib lived during this transitional era, and produced many works in the language. As late as the 1930s, Persian was still a favoured college degree for Hindu students, despite the consolidation of English-medium education. Muhammad Iqbal's prolific Persian work, produced during the turn of the 20th century, is considered the last great instance of the Indo-Persian tradition.
Nile Green asserts that the advent of printing technology in 19th-century British India also played a part in Persian's decline. While the printing press enabled the highest Persian textual output in the subcontinent's history, it also greatly amplified more widely spoken languages such as Hindustani and Bengali, exacerbating the shift towards vernacular languages in the region.