Language is identity. This is something most people believe in. When I began researching Hyderabad’s history over the last decade, I came across a big mismatch in what we, Dakhni people, are told about our spoken language, versus what it actually is. While it is often misunderstood as a ‘dialect of Urdu’, Dakhni has its own history and identity, distinct from the northern language.

In Hyderabad and the Deccan (especially in cities such as Bidar, Bijapur, and Aurangabad), we speak in Dakhni but learn in standardised Urdu. This duality has existed for years and people have formed the assumption that Dakhni exists because of south Indian words seeping into Urdu.

But that is not even close to the truth. We use words like ‘kaiku (why)’, ‘nakko (no/don’t)’, and ‘hau (yes)’, which are Marathi words. Similarly, ‘tarkari’ is the Kannada word for vegetables, which we use quite commonly. Not only is Dakhni’s lexicon entirely different from that of Urdu but it is also more in sync with Dravidian languages. This, I believe, is one thing Urdu purists or those harping on Persian superiority probably dislike.

Which is older?

Outside of Hyderabad, in cities such as Bengaluru, Chennai, and smaller towns and even villages, the word ‘manjhe’ is used for ‘I’ or ‘myself’. It is also found in medieval Dakhni literature. Ask anyone who knows Urdu to read Dakhni literature and chances are, they won’t know a good chunk of the words. This is because Marathi, Kannada, and Telugu words don’t exist in Urdu.

I have heard several people, who don’t want to accept Dakhni as a language, call it a ‘mix’ or a corrupt form of Urdu. I’d like to point out that Rekhta, one of the early names of Urdu, also means ‘mixed’. Further, Urdu is also an amalgamation of Persian and Hindi, or a form of Hindustani.

It took me a while to realise that Dakhni and Urdu are two vastly different languages, although they’ve shared the same path in their evolution. However, what is more annoying is the hegemony of Urdu over Dakhni.

Each time I write about Dakhni on social media, there is a barrage of either hate or purists attempting ‘correct’ me, asserting that it is just a dialect and not a language. Last I checked, people who speak the language are the ones who generally get a say in the matter.

It is no coincidence that I came across the origin of Dakhni while researching the history of Hyderabad. Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah, the founder of the city, wrote entirely in Dakhni. Bijapur and Hyderabad were Dakhni centres in the 16th and 17th centuries—almost two centuries before Urdu literature had its golden period.

“The earliest known Urdu works can be found only in the mid 18th century,” T Grahame Bailey noted in his 1932 book, A History of Urdu Literature.

John Shakespeare’s A Grammar of the Hindustani Language (1855) has an entire section on Dakhni. The language is very different from Urdu, he writes. In fact, he calls Urdu a dialect of Hindustani on the very first page.

So, that is what it is. The notion that Dakhni is a dialect of Urdu is not only false, but also a way of appropriating the language.

But exactly how old is Dakhni as compared to Urdu? Let’s see a simple timeline.

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An Urdu-Dakhni timeline

Both Dakhni and Urdu go back to Dehalvi (also known as ‘Old Urdu’ by some historians), which was spoken in Delhi for about 100 years between the 13th and 14th centuries. It reached the Deccan in the 14th century via Muhammad bin Tughlaq’s conquest, when he decided to shift his capital to Daulatabad (now in Aurangabad).

A mix of Persian with dialects in and around Delhi, the Dehlavi language was used by Sufis to mingle with the local populace. According to historians such as HK Sherwani, however, that spoken language had not yet been established completely. So, Dehalvi is not Urdu. 

Dakhni developed first from Dehalvi in the mid-14th century after it mixed with Marathi. In 1347, Tughlaq lost the Deccan region after his generals broke free and formed the Bahamani empire. This is where the journey of Dakhni begins.

Under the first Bahamani capital of Gulbarga, Dehalvi mixed further with Kannada. But Dakhni only emerged as a language when the Bahamanis shifted their capital to Bidar in the 1420s. The city is about 30 km away from Zaheerabad in Telangana and about 50 km away from the Maharashtra border. Even today, people in Bidar speak Kannada, Marathi and Telugu.

To put it simply, Dakhni is a mix of Persian, Dehlavi, Kannada, Marathi, and Telugu. At Bidar, between 1421 and 1434, Kadam Rao Padam Rao by Fakhruddin Nizami became the first Dakhni written piece to be recorded. 

The Bahamani empire collapsed in 1518 and its governors formed their own countries—Golconda (Hyderabad), Bijapur, Ahmednagar, and Berar.

Hyderabad and Bijapur were the two main Dakhni centres during this period. At this time, we don’t really have a trace of modern Urdu.

The language evolved from Hindustani in the North under Mughal rule, just like Dakhni evolved on its own—much earlier—in the Deccan. (History of the Mediaeval Deccan, Sherwani).

However, just as modern Urdu was on the rise, the Mughals, under Aurangzeb, conquered the South, which spelt the end of Dakhni in the 18th century.

So how can Urdu, a language that had not fully evolved in the 16th century, call Dakhni its dialect? That is simply absurd. If anything, it can be said that Urdu actually evolved from Dakhni.

Modern Urdu’s evolution is linked to the end of Dakhni, particularly to one person: Wali Dakhni. An 18th-century poet from Ahmedabad, he is credited with creating what is modern Urdu by making changes to Dakhni and Persianising it. (Sherwani).

The Urdu spoken in the Mughal camps, which developed in the North, also made its way South after the Mughal conquests. Hyderabad was the last Deccan state to fall in 1687.

After the Deccan fully came under the Mughals, they appointed the Nizams as governors of the South in 1724. Until 1837, Persian continued to be the official language—not Urdu. Due to Mughal conquests, Dakhni lost patronage and hence its literature came to an end.

But we, the people of the Deccan, never stopped speaking Dakhni.

Independent researcher Karthik Malli, who studies Dakhni, told me that languages do not stop existing when literature stops being created. Similarly, Dakhni has not been erased despite Urdu becoming an official language eventually.

What prompted me to write this piece is a recent reel by Instagram influencer Dr Nehal Pasha, where he asks Urdu speakers not to make fun of Dakhni. I’m happy with the newfound awareness among influencers such as Danish Sait and Zoha Sanofer to use the word Dakhni instead of south Indian Urdu.

Just to be clear, I don’t dislike Urdu. It is also a language of Indians. But it is high time we recognise the power relations between languages, so that one, like Dakhni, doesn’t get swept under the hegemony of another.

Yunus Lasania is a Hyderabad-based journalist whose work primarily focuses on politics, history, and culture. Views are personal.

(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)