How Indian Culture Returns to India Changed

During one of my recent visits to Delhi I saw the name of a Hindu god, Krishnaa, written like this (with a long “a”) at the end, on the back of an autorickshaw. The thing is, this is an incorrect spelling in the Devanagari script, as the name should be written with short “a” (Krishna), and would in fact be pronounced “Krishn” in modern Hindi. And no, this not one of those articles that are nearly completely based on a conversation with a chanced-upon taxi driver. This instance is, I assume, an example of a much wider, and quite fascinating process. And believe it or not, if one stretches this example far and wide enough, this story may be compared to two others: that of a dish called “tikka masala” and of the numerals usually referred to as “Arabic,” today widely used around the world.

Tikka masala is probably one of the best-known of these three cases. We would expect this dish, greatly popular as it is in Britain, to have come from India, wouldn’t we? Its name and its seasonings, are, after all, clearly Indian. And yet, while this remains uncertain, it seems that the dish was born in Great Britain (even if people of Indian origin created it there). Popularized in Britain, and considered Indian, it travelled back to India and became considerably popular there too. 

Now, the cases of the numerals and the long “a” at the end of names like Krishna are topics I’m more familiar with, and thus I will devote a bit more space to. 

Zero Coherence

One of the greatest achievements of the ancient Indian civilization was developing a decimal system, which applied the cipher 0 as both a number and an element of full decimal numbers. This notation then travelled to Europe through the Arab-ruled states. While the Catholic Church first rejected the concept and found it repulsive (because how can you use “nothing” as part of a number?) it eventually endorsed it too, and the system was popularized across Europe.

However, while the method of noting was the same as devised in ancient India, the graphic shape of the numerals as introduced in Europe was different. This is because the way of writing those numerals partially changed, first in Arabic sources, and then in European texts. The numbers written as 1, 2, 3, etc. today are thus referred to as “Arabic numerals,” though that name is far from precise: The original form was Indian, and their final shape was due to graphic changes made partially in Arabic, but partially in Europe, too. Thus, some authors promote the name “Hindu-Arabic numerals,” but it does not seem to be a dominant term in English. 

At any rate, the decimal system, together with its final form of notation, would then travel, along with European languages, to other continents on the rising wave of colonialism. One of the places it reached this way was… India. And thus history demonstrated its deep sense of irony once again. The numerals that had been created in India, but achieved a different graphic shape in Europe, were many centuries later forced upon the Indians by the European colonizers (mainly the British) in their European form.

The use of this variant has become so common in India that once the British left the country in 1947, a debate arose over which numerals the new, independent republic should adopt in official language. As for the choice of that language as such, a compromise was reached in which that status was given to Hindi, but English was given the position of a “temporary auxiliary language.” However, it remains the de facto language of elites and elite institutions to this day. 

That English would use “Arabic” numerals, in their European variant, was a given. But what of the official language, Hindi? After long debates between two wings of the ruling party, the Indian National Congress – the left-wing, progressive one, and the right-wing, conservative one – the latter prevailed, and the style of the language chosen was Shuddh Hindi, or pure Hindi.

The choice of this purified, literary, Sanskritized form over the more common, spoken style (which was filled with English, Arabic and Persian words) should have by default meant that the numerals that would go with it would be the old, Sanskrit ones (not their “Arabic” variant that had come from Europe). This was even more likely given that it was decided that Hindi was to be written in the Devanagari script (and thus the same script in which Sanskrit had been written, and the script with which the ancient Indian numerals were used). 

And yet that is not what happened.

As described by Granville Austin in his seminal work on the Indian Constitution, the Constituent Assembly debates on which numerals should be adapted reached a near-deadlock, with both sides apparently being able to prove they had the same numbers of lawmakers to back their stand (74 to 74). As Austin wrote:

On 16 August [1948] the debate over numerals lasted a tense and acrimonious three hours. [...] The meeting decided, however, evidently on Sitarammayya’s and Nehru’s urging, that [Deva]Nagari numerals could not be forced on the country by such a narrow margin. [Nehru was the prime minister of India and the leader of the Left, progressive faction of the ruling party]

And so it was decided that the public Indian institutions would use Sanskritized Hindi in the Devanagari script, but with Arabic numerals. While the ancient Indian numerals are still very commonly used in the country, the Arabic ones seem to be in wider use today. Many Indian users probably no longer find it awkward to write a sentence in the Devanagari but with words intertwined with so-called Arabic numerals.

Short “A,” Long Story

How is this story similar to the one of the short “a” in Krishna? In many ways, it is a completely different one. The Devanagari script devised in ancient India is not an alphabet but an abugida: a segmental writing system. The Roman script uses letters that represent either vowels or consonants. The symbols used in Devanagari are usually whole segments that incorporate both vowels and consonants (although sometimes separate vowels and consonants are marked as well). A standalone symbol is not a consonant therefore but a consonant with a short “a” at the end of it (if another vowel is to follow the consonant, additional symbols are written with the consonant symbols). 

Thus, when a child names the letters of the Roman script in English, she would say A, B, C and so on, while an Indian child naming the consonant symbols of the Devanagari script would say ka, kha, ga, gha, and so on. A name like Rama is basically two symbols in Devanagari: the first is “ra,” the second is “ma,” and the “a” in them is not marked – as long as it is short, it is inherent in these symbols by default.

Over time, however, the short “a” at the end of words began to disappear in many spoken Indian languages. An ancient Indian would name his god “Rama,” while a modern northern Indian would pronounce the name as “Ram.” Across the world, writing systems often lag behind changes in pronunciation. And thus, many Indians still write “Rama” even though the final “a” is not pronounced (and it is inherent in the consonant symbol, rather than being a separate symbol, anyway).

However, it is customary in English and other European languages to write Indian names of ancient ancestry the way they would be spoken in Sanskrit (not in modern Indian languages). This applies to names of deities or historical figures, titles of texts, and many others. Thus, when we encounter a name of a god like Rama, a figure like Buddha, or an epic like Mahabharata, we pronounce it the way we see it in English, with an “a” at the end. But a modern Hindi speaker would say “Buddh” and “Mahabharat” instead. Rather puzzlingly, and probably only in this one regard, the English pronunciation of Indian words is closer to the ancient Sanskrit original than the modern north Indian one.

This obviously leads to confusion because, as mentioned above, English is widely used in India. To follow the custom of each language, one should thus write “Rama” in both English and Hindi, but pronounce “Rama” when reading out from an English text and “Ram” from a Hindi one.

Another group that functioned, and functions, on the intersection of India and West is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). It represents an “intersection” not in the sense that it is a mixture of two religions – the society’s beliefs and customs are clearly Hindu and thus from India. However, historically, many of the society members came from the West. It is either for this reason, or perhaps because of the society’s insistence on following ancient forms, that the principal mantra uttered by members of ISKCON is “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.” 

We have thus another curious situation. As explained above, a modern north Indian Hindu pronounces this popular mantra as “Hare Krishn, Hare Ram.” But the same religious prayer will be pronounced as “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama” if it is uttered by an Indian member of ISKCON (which I heard many times during my visits to the temples of this society in India). As the short “a” cannot be separately marked in the Devanagari script (as it is inherent in the consonant symbol it follows), there is no way to mark when or if it should be pronounced. 

And thus, the autorickshaw I saw on a crowded Delhi street had, exceptionally, “Hare Krishnaa” written with long “a” at the end (contrary to short “a,” long “a” functions as an additional symbol), to put stress on the pronunciation with the vowel.

But did I attempt such a long, convoluted description just to explain one curious spelling at the back of a recently seen vehicle? To the contrary – that one instance inspired me to make a sweeping comparison (perhaps a dangerously sweeping one). What these three instances – tikka masala, Arabic numerals, and the short “a” in historical names – have in common is that in all three cases, some part of Indian culture and civilization travelled outside India, including to the West, and then came back to India in a different form.

All Is Constantly Changing on the Western Front, and the Eastern One Too

There are, obviously, significant differences between the three cases. The history of the journey of Indian numerals is fairly well-proven, and the complexities of spelling with “a” at the end of words are every Indologist’s daily dread. In comparison, the exact way tikka masala was invented and why ISKCON chose its spelling of the mantra is less clear (to me, that is). 

Second, while in the case of the short “a” Western languages retained an ancient form, the story of the numerals is exactly opposite in this regard – changed numerals were imposed by Westerners on India, and popularized there, even though the ancient numerals were current in use.

Third, the story of the numerals stands apart as an imposition, while tikka masala spread back to India organically, on its own. The issue of retaining the short “a”’ at the end of words is a yet a different case since it is mostly retained in English (but also those Indian languages that, unlike Hindi, still traditionally use it), and the usage by ISKCON seems to me mostly limited to its own circle. This is thus an “imposition” as far as English is an imposition on India, but even then it should rather be considered a “re-imposition” and so far not a very successful one (since most north Indians still say Krishn, not Krishna).

Still, what links these instances is that in each case, a particular part of Indian culture and civilization as we know it today (be it cuisine, mathematical notation, or spelling) has come back to India in a changed form from the West. This attests to how much influence the West still holds over India (as we can see from these and many other cases, the outcome may be good as well as bad). 

And yet, in each instance, Indians did play a role in shaping those aspects – not only in their original form, but sometimes even in how they were modified and reintroduced to India. Globalization is not a one-way street and not a two-way one either, but a complex grid of avenues.