On the colloquial level, there is little difference between Hindi and Urdu. They sound similar, they have the same grammar and they both developed from the Khari Boli dialect of North India. Khari Boli, in turn, developed from Madhaydeshi which derived from Prakrit which derived from Sanskrit. So, essentially, both Urdu and Hindi evolved from Sanskrit. They are both members of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages.
The two obvious differences are -
- Hindi is written left to right in the Devanagari script.
- Urdu is written right to left in a modified Persian-Arabic script called Nastaliq
- Hindi uses vocabulary from Sanskrit.
- Urdu uses vocabulary from Persian and Arabic.
But, just to keep everyone on their toes, Hindi also uses words from Persian and Arabic, and Urdu also uses words from Sanskrit.
Urdu gained prominence during the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal era. The administrative language was Persian and Kahri Boli began to incorporate many Persian and Arabic words into its fold. The word "Urdu" originated from the Turkish word for tent, army or horde, "ordu". Urdu was the language of the army and the common people before it became, as the poet Mir called it "Urdu-e-Mu'alla" or a courtly language of the Mughals of Delhi and the Nawabs of Lucknow.
Hindi, for most part, retained its closeness to Sanskrit, although it didn't shy back from adapting some Persian either. In their everyday lives, people switched effortlessly from Hindi to Urdu or vice versa. It wasn't considered a very big deal. Certainly there weren't many people taking umbrage over or making an issue about language differences at this point.
When the British gained ascendancy in India, it suited them, as part of their Divide-and-Rule policy, to encourage a rift between Hindi and Urdu. Language is capable of taking on a nationalistic or communalistic turn, inflaming emotions all around, and that's what happened here. Along with script and vocabulary differences, social, cultural and religious differences began to be emphasized.
Hindu intellectuals like Acharya Ramchandra Shukla and Muslim intellectuals like Sir Syed Ahmed Khan Bahadur did their bit in widening the conscious differences. Urdu began to be known as the language of the Muslims and Hindi began to be known as the language of the Hindus. Gandhi tried to bridge the differences by merging the two into a common national language, Hindustani, and kept the script option open. It didn't work.
The rift widened, along with the widening rift between the people and the country split into two. After the partition of India in 1947, Pakistan embraced Urdu as their national language and India adopted Hindi as one of her 23 national languages. Ever since, the politicians have joined the linguists in demarcating the language differences.
Most people in Pakistan speak Urdu either as a first or second language. In India, Urdu retains its stronghold in the cities of Lucknow, Aligarh and Hyderabad, and in the states of Jammu and Kashmir and Andhra Pradesh. However, few Hindi speakers in other states in modern India can write and read in Urdu. Urdu - one of the most beautiful languages in the world - also maintains its presence in both the Indian and Pakistani Film Industries.