Using Roman Alphabets for Hindi Language

Hindi is most spoken and most popular language in South Asia, but it is not so popular in written form. The reason is the script in which it is written.

Hindi is spoken in a large geographical area. It is spoken as a first language in all over northern India and some parts of Nepal. It is spoken as a second language all over India, Nepal and Bangla Desh. Further, Urdu, a twin language of Hindi is spoken as first or second language all over Pakistan.

Outside the 4 countries I have mentioned above, a combined form of Hindi-Urdu is spoken in many countries in western Asia, including Afghanistan, United Arab Emirates, Bahrin, Oman, Saudi Arabia etc.

There are Hindi speakers in large number in Fiji Islands, Mauritius, Suriname, Kenya, South Africa and few other countries.

Hindi is a link language between South Asians in North America and United Kingdom.

Total number of Hindi speakers (Including Urdu and Hindustani) in the world is 700 Millions, out of which 500 Millions are native speakers.

The main problem of this language having such a huge number of speakers living in big geographical area is that there is no common script for this language. It is written mainly in Devanagari script in India, and in Nasta'liq script in India and Pakistan. People who do not know Devanagari or Nasta'liq script are not able to read and write Hindi language in these scripts. This is the biggest barrier in written communication between people speaking the same language.

The only solution to this problem is to have a common script. The only common script we can use is Roman, as it is the only script understood by almost all the educated people worldwide.

The concept of using Roman script for Hindi and Urdu is not new. The British rulers successfully used it in 19th century. Further, Subhash Chandra Bose, Supremo of Indian National Army also used Roman script for Hindi-Urdu language.

There are many benefits of using Roman script for Hindi and Urdu. The very first benefit is that the Hindi-Urdu written in this script will be understood by the highest number of people spread in a huge geographical area, covering many countries worldwide.

Further, in this age of modern technology, Devnagari and Nasta'liq scripts are coming out of dated and they can not compete with Roman script. If Hindi adopts Roman script, it will get all the benefits which Roman script is enjoying.

Adopting Roman script for Hindi will make this language more important and the language will become one of the international languages.

At present Hindi in Roman script is being used on large scale for catch lines of advertisements, Hindi slogans and Short messages (SMS). There is a Roman script Hindi Newspaper published from Fiji Islands.

However, this is not enough, and we should write Hindi in Roman script everywhere.