Hindustani

Hindustani is a term used for a continuum of spoken languages and registers that underpins Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu. It is spoken across much of northern and western South Asia, especially in India and Pakistan. The form emerged from the Khariboli dialect around the Delhi region during the late medieval period, and served as a common lingua franca under the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire.

Linguistically, Hindustani sits at the crossroads of Sanskrit-derived Hindi vocabulary and Persian/Arabic-influenced Urdu vocabulary. It encompasses a range of dialects and sociolects, including Khariboli, Braj Bhasha, and Awadhi, with the standardized registers Hindi and Urdu used in formal writing. Standard Hindi is typically written in Devanagari, while standard Urdu is written in a Perso-Arabic script (Nastaliq). The two formal varieties are mutually intelligible to a degree, and bilingual speakers commonly mix elements of both in everyday speech.

Hindustani is not a separate official language at the federal level, but its standardized forms—Hindi and Urdu—are the dominant registers used in education, media, and public life in their respective spheres. Hindi is widely used in India (in Devanagari script), and Urdu is widely used in Pakistan (and in parts of India) with distinct literary and cultural traditions attached to each form.

In addition to its linguistic sense, Hindustani also refers to Hindustani classical music, the North Indian school of classical music. This tradition, which emphasizes raga and tala, developed in the same cultural region and remains closely associated with Hindustani-speaking areas.