Hindustan is the Persian name for the Indus Valley, broadly the Indian subcontinent, which later became used by its inhabitants in Hindi–Urdu (Hindustani).

Quotes

  • [Hindustan] is a wonderful country. Compared with our countries it is a different world ; its mountains, rivers, jungles and deserts, its towns, its cultivated lands, its animals and plants, its peoples and their tongues, its rains, and its winds, are all different. ...Once the water of Sind is crossed, everything is in the Hindustan way, land, water, tree, rock, people and horde, opinion and custom.
  • “The sea borders Hindustan on the east, west and south. In the north, the great mountain ranges separate India from Turan, Iran and China.” ... “Intelligent men of the past have considered Kabul and Qandahar as the twin gates of Hindustan… By guarding these two places, Hindustan obtains peace from the alien (raider) and global traffic by these two routes can prosper”.
    • Abul Fazl in his Akbar Namah (also in Athar Ali, The Evolution of the Perception of India’ in his Mughal India, p. 113-14). also in
  • You have engulfed Hindustan in dread... Oh Lord, these dogs have destroyed this diamond-like Hindustan, (so great is their terror that) no one asks after those who have been killed, and yet You do not pay heed.
    • Guru Granth Sahib, [Mahla 1.360] quoted in Arun Shourie, "The Litmus Test of Whether Your History is Secular" and in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers.
  • Happy Hindustan, the splendour of Religion. where the Law finds perfect honour and security... The whole country, by means of the sword of our holy warriors, has become like a forest denuded of its thorns by fire. The land has been saturated with the water of the sword, and the vapours of infidelity have been dispersed. The strong men of Hind have been trodden under foot, and all are ready to pay tribute. ... Had not the law [of Imam Hanifa] granted exemption from death by the payment of poll-tax, the very name of hind, root and branch, would have been extinguished.
  • The whole of Hind, from Peshawar to the shores of the Ocean, and in the other direction from Siwistan to the hills of Chin.
    • Hasan Nizami (A.D. 1220), quoted in The Indian Magazine, Issues 193-204. National Indian Association in Aid of Social Progress and Education in India. 1887. p. 292.
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