Give Hindi a chance: Lessons for Indian readers from New Zealand’s revival of the Māori language

Down here in New Zealand, there is a strong emphasis on rejuvenating the indigenous Māori language. Māori make up about 17% of the New Zealand population.

Despite their present-day struggles – deep-seated racism, poverty, high unemployment, and disproportionate representation in the prison population – the Māori have roots in Aotearoa (New Zealand) deeper than any other group. They arrived as seafarers around 1250 AD and settled across both large islands, naming rivers, lakes, mountains, and other places in their language centuries before Europeans set foot on the land and began colonisation.

Māori vis-à-vis Hindi

Māori was made an official language in 1987 alongside English, and since then, there has been a major push to encourage all New Zealanders to learn it. The government funds Māori-language books, TV, radio, and multimedia. There are challenges: Māori was spoken in different dialects and had no script, so Te Reo – the official version – is a somewhat standardised blend written in an adapted Roman script. It is not widely used in daily life in the same way that Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, Konkani or Santhali are in India.

Still, I love how Māori words sound: Wahine (woman), Tamariki (children), Aroha (compassion, sustaining love), and, of course, Kia ora (hello!).

Because most Māori people today use English as their first or only language, there is constant alarm about saving this language. Māori activists will remind you that you cannot imagine a people without a language of their own.

Looking from this end of the world, I am struck by the neglect and disdain many Indians can show towards Hindi or its literature, the largest spoken language in India and understood by at least 43% of the population. I cannot, for instance, find any Indian public website that offers a well-formatted, comprehensive collection of classic Hindi literature. Hindi Samay – run by Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University, Wardha – is an admirable effort, but it remains clunky, with many texts available only as PDFs or poorly displayed.

There are no active, viable Hindi literary magazines left beyond the inimitable but long-struggling Hans and Nayi Dhara—though the latter is seeing a revival. Many excellent modern Hindi writers notwithstanding, Krishan Murari noted in 2024 that modern Hindi literature has yet to produce writers comparable to those of its “golden age.” The era of novelists such as Premchand, Nirmal Verma, Dharamveer Bharti, Agyeya, Nagarjuna, and Mahadevi Verma; poets such as Suryakant Tripathi Nirala and Ramdhari Singh Dinkar; and the iconoclastic humourist and essayist Harishankar Parsai now seems long past.

Why might that be? What’s the point of declaring Hindi an official language if its literary and intellectual soul is being starved?

Living in Australia and New Zealand around 2018 – 16 years after leaving India – I began to understand the ache behind the academic phrase used in literary studies: “Indo-nostalgia.” I would expand this term to describe the feeling of intense longing for a lost, glorious time when life was rich in culture and thought, slow-paced, and non-commercial enough to nurture genuine relationships and friendships. It was a time before the internet and smartphones turned people into distracted screen addicts.

For me, living abroad, this nostalgia manifested as a desire for Hindi literature – mostly literary fiction, thoughtful essays, travelogues, and some poetry – much of which I had read during my school years. As a child in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I also bought and read Hindi comics, magazines and paperbacks. All of it offered a deeper immersion in authentic Indian emotions, memories, aesthetics, outlook, and intellect.

In a BBC podcast, writer James Marriott warns that reading is dying as people turn to mobile screens and online streaming. He argues that a language’s complex thought and aesthetics develop primarily through print: quality magazines, newspapers, and books. If you take away the passion for writing and reading in a language, that language – and its speakers – become intellectually and culturally diminished.

Have Bollywood, OTT platforms, and YouTube damaged our native cultures and ability to think critically? Punjabi and Bollywood music dominate globally, with star musicians selling out arenas worldwide. But should we really be proud and satisfied with this cultural export? How often do we hear about the modern literature or intellectual life of Hindi or Punjabi? Should these languages be known primarily for popular song and dance?

In Western countries, I frequently see Chinese and Korean people – young and old – reading native texts in books, on their phones or tablets. I have rarely seen a North Indian reading Hindi or Devanagari in public.

Yet, before we blame the masses, we need to ask if enough is being done to fund, encourage and promote good literature and intellectual life in native languages.

The inner and emotional world of a language

Widespread reading culture in Western countries has long been supported by free and well-stocked public libraries. In India, knowledge was traditionally considered the preserve of an elite, generally Brahmin, caste. The concept of free public libraries was so unfamiliar that, for a long time, accessing quality books often required relying on foreign cultural institutions or British Council libraries in major Indian cities

Today, while most young Indians chase professional degrees at IITs and IIMs for high-paying jobs, the reading and production of literature has become highly professionalised within academia. Many talented young Indians “study” literature as a career strategy, hoping for teaching jobs in top Indian or Western universities.

The same phenomenon affects Hindi literature. Krishan Murari notes that Hindi literature departments at Indian universities have largely run out of ideas and energy; even fine institutions like Delhi University have been recycling old topics for dissertations. Meanwhile, influential critical appraisal, pioneering translations (such as those of Dalit writer Ajay Navaria) of Hindi fiction have shifted to Western institutions. At the Sharjah International Book Fair, Geetanjali Shree mentioned that it took her around nine years to write Ret Samadhi. After its Hindi release in 2018, the novel remained relatively unknown for two years until the English translation and its eventual International Booker Prize win in 2022.

Seen from Hindi literature’s perspective, it seems self-defeating to translate a Hindi novel into English and market it to Western academia and readers when millions of Hindi speakers in India ignore the original book. Should Indians depend on the Western literary establishment to promote Indian languages and enrich their intellectual traditions? Should Western universities be the authority on which Hindi novels ought to be read and admired?

Here, we must remember that some of Hindi’s finest authors – from Premchand and Phanishwar Nath Renu to more recent figures like Kashinath Singh – rose without patronage from Western institutions.

In 2001, VS Naipaul lamented that India lacked an intellectual life capable of engaging with his books. In An Area of Darkness (1964), Naipaul offers his opinion on native Indian literature: “Premchand, the great, the beloved, turned out to be a minor fabulist, much preoccupied with social issues like the status of widows or daughters-in-law.” He adds that “many of the ‘modern’ [Indian] short stories were only refurbished folk tales.”

Despite his penetrating gaze, Naipaul had a rather conflicted emotional connection to Indian culture and history. India, even if he tried to understand it, remained for him a place of unknowable darkness. His judgment is harsh because writers like Premchand did not match his colonial English tastes or had much market value.

To be clear, Hindi literature, including Premchand, can be melodramatic, fatalistic, reactionary, and socially conservative. Earlier Hindi writing was largely produced by upper-caste men who envisioned India through their own narrow identities, often excluding and demeaning women, Muslims, lower castes and Adivasis.

In many ways, Hindi fiction is more authentic than most English-language fiction about India. For one, contemporary Hindi writing is more democratic – with powerful Dalit and Adivasi voices such as Omprakash Valmiki, Dr Tulsiram, Ajay Navaria, and Jacinta Kerketta – whereas Indian-English fiction remains an upper-caste echo chamber.

Hindi fiction’s vocabulary, contexts and emotional world are rooted in Indian soil – its social classes, castes, ethnic groups, rivers, agricultural seasons, trees and wildlife. Hindi novels naturally mention the Hindu calendar months: Paush (mid-December to mid-January), Magh (January–February), Phalgun (February–March), Jyeshta (May–June). A language’s true power lies in its cultural, historical, and geographical specificity. Indeed, some Hindi novels – such as Kashi Ka Assi, which weaves together Hindi, Awadhi, and Bhojpuri dialects – may remain untranslatable into any other language, including English.

Nirmal Verma once said, “If I were asked to write in a language other than my mother tongue, I would refuse. The reason is that my stories and novels are very much a product of my emotional world, and the language of my inner world is Hindi.”

Not many North Indian writers today can make such a claim so boldly, when Indo-English novels sell far more, and fellowships or teaching positions in Western universities continually tempt native writers to perform for non-Indians.

Against this bleak literary landscape, where do we turn for hope – to read authentic Hindi fiction that will touch, move, entertain and enlighten an inquisitive reader? A book culture doesn’t begin with great speeches or learned essays; rather, it develops with an actual reading community.

For the millions who speak Hindi as a first or second language, can read Devanagari, and want to give Hindi fiction a chance, here are my recommendations.

Six recommended Hindi novels

For many of these books, professionally narrated audiobooks are available. By all means, use them, but only as an aid to reading the text itself. If you listen, make sure to follow along with the original text in Devanagari.

1. Godan, Premchand (1936)

Probably the most talked-about Indian novel that few actually read. It contains the melodramatic elements typical of Premchand, but it also offers the sharpest expression of his socially conscious writing – against corruption, caste injustice, and social evils. Premchand’s prose is fluid, plain yet powerful.

A lifelong Gandhian, Premchand here turns a critical eye on Gandhian ideals, showing how the so-called Gandhians can be equally corrupt. Godan is the Indian Grapes of Wrath that was written before John Steinbeck’s novel.

2. Ve Din, Nirmal Verma (1964)

Not a big classic, but it’s short, atmospheric, and written in Verma’s haunting, easy-to-read prose. It’s primarily set in Prague, where Verma lived for years. His themes of existential angst and gloom surface here, as they do in his famed stories like “Kavve aur Kala Pani” and “Parinde.”

A particular delight of Ve Din is reading European locations described in Hindi.

3. Gunahon ka Devta, Dharamvir Bharati (1949)

A beloved and overrated Hindi novel. I mostly recommend it for its lyrical prose. Who would have thought Allahabad (now officially Prayagraj) could be such an enchanting university town? The opening pages describing the city, the university campus and the library are lovely.

But the melodrama is heavy. The inter-caste love story between upper-caste characters Chander (Kshatriya) and Sudha (Brahmin) is a missed opportunity without a stronger indictment of the caste system.

Ultimately, it is a depressing (or bittersweet) novel that can be read as young Sudha’s tragedy within conservative Hindu patriarchy, both in its harsh and its affectionate forms.

4. Peeli Chhatri Wali Ladki, Uday Prakash (2001)

A modern Hindi classic whose humour masks a serious critique of consumerism, capitalist corruption, and caste privilege – especially Brahmin privilege in India’s academic and cultural life. It approaches an inter-caste love story with an honesty that Gunahon ka Devta avoids.

5. Kashi Ka Assi, Kashinath Singh (2003)

Forget the idea of Varanasi as merely a site for Hindu religious pilgrimage. Singh’s male characters gather on the banks of the Ganga to discuss politics, trade gossip, tell dirty jokes, and use a wildly earthy Hindi dialect while chewing paan and tobacco. It’s a subversive feast. There may not be much of a story here, but you get a strong sense of how ordinary Indians live and speak in Hindi.

Translating its raw, bawdy dialogue into English is an exercise in inauthenticity.

Still, here’s my attempt at a translation.

“छोड़ो ये सब । एक पते की बात सुनो; जानते हो, बुढ़ापे का सबसे बड़ा कष्ट क्या है ?” 

उन्होंने अपनी जाँघों की ओर इशारा किया – “एक ऐसी चीज का नीचे निरन्तर लटकते जाना – घुटनों की ओर, जिसका अब न कोई इस्तेमाल है, न जरूरत, ऐसी फालतू चीज का वजन ढोना और मरते दम तक ढोते रहना बुढ़ापे का सबसे बड़ा कष्ट है।’’ 

मिश्राजी और राधेश्याम हँसने लगे । 

“बकवास छोड़िए, चुनाव का बताइए । क्या हो रहा है मुहल्ले में ?” 

“माँ चुदाए दुनिया, हम बजाएँ हरमुनिया,” कहते-कहते वह गली की ओर चल पडे ।

“Leave all this nonsense. Listen to one solid truth: do you know what the greatest misery of old age is?” 

He pointed towards his thighs – “It's this thing constantly hanging down towards the knees… something that now has neither any use nor any need. Carrying the weight of such a useless object...till your last breath – that is the biggest suffering of old age.”

Mishra-ji and Radheshyam burst out laughing.

“Stop the bullshit, tell us about the elections. What's happening in the neighbourhood?”

“Mother-fuck the damn world, I’ll go play the harmonium,” muttering, he walked toward the lane.

Dark Horse, Nilotpal Mrinal (2015)

Mrinal is a controversial figure, not widely embraced by the Hindi literary establishment or academia. He identifies with “nayi Hindi” (new Hindi) literature.

This tragi-comic novel sheds light on the lives of Hindi-medium aspirants to civil services, whose experiences are generally invisible to the English-educated class of Indians.

Set mostly in Delhi’s student coaching hub, Mukherjee Nagar, the novel depicts the frustration many Hindi speakers face while trying to enter English-dominated elite spaces.

It also exposes the money-grabbing and corrupt practices of the Indian coaching industry – a topic later explored by several web series and Bollywood films.

Rajiv Thind is a literary critic, fiction writer and visiting academic at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.