Fort William Established: Vernaculars Rise in India
The British Indian government established Fort William College in Calcutta to train colonial administrators in Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, and other regional languages. The college became an unexpected catalyst for vernacular literary movements, producing standardized prose styles that shaped modern Indian literature. Its language programs helped codify the distinction between Hindi and Urdu that persists today.
July 10, 1800
226 years ago
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