Hindustan

Hindustan (/ˈhɪndustæn/ or /ˈhɪndustɑn/, HIN-doo-stan; pronunciationⓘ), along with its shortened form Hind,[1] is the Persian-language name for India, broadly the Indian subcontinent, that later became commonly used by its inhabitants in Hindi–Urdu.[2][3][4][5] Historically the term also referred to the northern Indian subcontinent and the Doab region of northern India.[6] Since the partition of India in 1947, Hindustan continues to be used to the present day as a historic name for the Republic of India.[7][8][9]

It has historically been understood to apply to the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, in distinction to the Deccan, the southern part of the Indian subcontinent. In particular, it covers the basin of the five rivers of the Punjab and the superior part of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. The term Hindustan is used to describe the regions north of the Vindhya Range. It covers most of northern India and Bangladesh, almost all of Nepal, most of Pakistan except for its south-east, eastern Afghanistan, and a very small part of Bhutan.[10] It is also occasionally employed as a shorthand for the complete Indian subcontinent.

The Arabic equivalent of the term is al-Hind.[6] Hindustan was also commonly spelt as Hindostan or Hindoostan in English.[11]

  1. ^ Kapur, Anu (2019). Mapping Place Names of India. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-429-61421-7.
  2. ^ Goel, Koeli Moitra (2 March 2018). "In Other Spaces: Contestations of National Identity in "New" India's Globalized Mediascapes". Journalism & Communication Monographs. 20 (1): 4–73. doi:10.1177/1522637917750131. "Hindustan," or the land of the Hindus, is another Hindi name for India.
  3. ^ Śivaprasāda, Rājā (1874). A History of Hindustan. Medical Hall Press. p. 15. The Persians called the tract lying on the left bank of the Sindhu (Indus) Hind, which is but a corruption of the word Sindh.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Brill was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Mukherjee, The Foreign Names of the Indian Subcontinent (1989), p. 46: "They used the name Hindustan for India Intra Gangem or taking the latter expression rather loosely for the Indian subcontinent proper. The term Hindustan, which in the "Naqsh-i-Rustam" inscription of Shapur I denoted India on the lower Indus, and which later gradually began to denote more or less the whole of the subcontinent, was used by some of the European authors concerned as a part of bigger India. Hindustan was of course a well-known name for the subcontinent used in India and outside in medieval times."
  6. ^ a b Kapur, Anu (2019). Mapping Place Names of India. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-429-61421-7.
  7. ^ "Sindh: An Introduction", Shaikh Ayaz International Conference – Language & Literature, archived from the original on 20 October 2007
  8. ^ Sarina Singh (2009). Lonely Planet India (13, illustrated ed.). Lonely Planet. p. 276. ISBN 9781741791518.
  9. ^ Christine Everaer (2010). Tracing the Boundaries Between Hindi and Urdu: Lost and Added in Translation Between 20th Century Short Stories (annotated ed.). BRILL. p. 82. ISBN 9789004177314.
  10. ^ [1] The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica (2025, 3 March). Hindustan. Encyclopedia Britannica.
  11. ^ Grierson, George A. (February 1933). "Hindustan and Hindostan". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 7 (1): 257–260. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00105889. ISSN 1474-0699. S2CID 176975272.
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