words even in his time. That language which had under-
gone evolution was the interprovincial speech written in
the two scripts. The provincial languages must be helped
to develop and become richer. The all India speech or
national language must displace English, which blocked
the progress of all the Indian languages. With the dis-
appearance of English rule must disappear English speech.
Its proper and unrivalled place was as an international
medium. Urdu was a language replete with Arabian
and Persian words including some of the grammar.
Hindi tended to exclude Arabic and Persian words.
Hindustani was a happy blend of the two with the
grammatical structure unaffected by Arabic or Persian.
SHEER IGNORANCE
The correspondent then reminded Gandhiji that if
it was difficult for Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru to forget Urdu,
was it not equally difficult for the South Indians to
forget English? This question again betrayed ignorance.
He had been to Madras often enough. When he went
there before he had become a Mahatma, he could not
make himself understood by the jatkawala in English,
but he could do so in his broken Hindustani. English
was not the mother-tongue of the Tamilians as Urdu
was of Sir Tej. Lala Lajpat Rai was a friend of his.
Gandhiji used to twit him by asking him when he would
learn to speak and write in pure Hindi. Lalaji said that
he could not do that. And yet Lalaji was a staunch
Arya Samajist. He said that his mother-tongue was Urdu
in which he could hold audiences spell-bound. Gandhiji
had twice been the President of the Hindi Sahitya
Sammelan. They had then welcomed his drive for the
national language as defined by him. Why did they
now resent it? Was he any the less Hindu or Indian
for his desire for a blend between Hindi and Urdu?
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