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Hindi is the national language of India. More than 180 million people in India speak Hindi as their mother tongue. Another 300 million use it as second language. And there are millions of Hindi speakers outside India also.
Hindi is a direct descendant of Sanskrit. The word Hindi is actually of Persian origin and it means Indian. Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, which is said to be the most scientific writing system of all in the world. The Devanagari script is written from left to right and descended from the Brahmi script, which was well established in India before 500 B.C. The script is phonetic in nature and there is uniform correspondence between the letters and their pronunciation.
The literary history of Hindi goes back to the twelfth century. Some notable literary figures of Hindi are Kabir, Surdas, and Tulsidas. It also has a rich grammatical tradition of its own.
The first Hindi newspaper 'Udant Martanda' was published in 1826 from Calcutta. At the same time, authors like Raja Shivprasad Sitare Hind and Raja Lakshman Singh had established new trends in Hindi literature. Later on, Hindi became the national symbol in India's fight against the British colonial rule. Many Indian leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, revolutionaries, poets and reformists resorted to Hindi to propagate their ideology.
After India won the independence, the new constitution, which was adopted on January 26, 1950 which granted to Hindi the status of the Official Language of the Republic of India. Today Hindi is world's third most spoken language and is spreading all over the world.
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