Forging a New Linguistic Identity: The Hindi Movement in
Banaras, 1868–1914 Christopher R. King Indo-Persian and Hindu
Culture Queen Abode-of-Truth is speaking, testifying before the
court of Maharaja Righteous-Rule on behalf of Queen Devanagari:
Here's where Nagari dwells, here her own dear country, Here our
queen was born, in sacred, holy Kashi. A little later Begam Urdu
speaks on her own behalf before the Maharaja: Persian is my
mother, Urdu is my name. Here my birth took place, and here I
will remain. Each woman claims India as her birthplace, and each
asserts her right to rule (see fig. 14). As this late-
nineteenth-century Hindi drama develops, the reader soon
realizes that the verdict will favor Queen Devanagari, and that
the author, Pandit Gauri Datta of Meerut, has passed chiefly
"moral" rather than technical judgments in presenting the
dispute between the two personified languages and scripts. The
entire action of the play, a short one-act work in the folk
theatre tradition of svang[*] (see chapter 2