Buffett Q&A: Hindi as a Global Language with Professor Daniel Majchrowicz, Buffett Faculty Fellow

 

For this installment of our Buffett Q&A series profiling faculty and scholars in the Roberta Buffett Institute community, we spoke with Daniel Majchrowicz, Associate Professor of South Asian Literature and Culture in Northwestern’s Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, and 2024–25 Buffett Faculty Fellow. His research explores South Asian literature and culture, with a particular focus on Hindi and Urdu, and his current book project explores Hindi’s global reach. 

Could you tell us about the focus of your research and what inspired you to focus on that topic? 

My research is grounded in South Asia, especially in Hindi and Urdu literature and culture. I became interested in a question: Is it possible to be a global citizen through a language that is not usually thought of as global? 

Hindi is not always treated as a global language in the way that English, Arabic, Spanish, or French often are. And yet, Hindi has become a language of connection for people across regions, especially through shared cultural forms such as Bollywood songs, everyday conversation, popular media, and migration. I wanted to understand what it means when people use Hindi to communicate, build relationships, and express belonging, even when Hindi is not their first language. 

That question brought me to the Roberta Buffett Institute, where I found support for a year of research for my book project, currently titled Hindi: A Global History. 

What is the central question of your book project? 

At the core of the book is the question of how a dialect spoken around the city of Delhi came to have such a far-reaching presence in everyday spoken language, the arts, education, and global culture. 

I look at how Hindi emerged from Delhi and became a pan-Indian and pan-South Asian lingua franca. But I am also interested in how Hindi travels beyond South Asia. The book explores the ways people encounter Hindi across borders and how the language becomes part of their everyday lives, identities, and sense of global connection. 

How did you conduct this research? 

The project has both historical and contemporary dimensions. For the historical part, I spent time in archives, looking for documents that revealed how Hindi developed and circulated across regions. These materials helped me trace the longer history of Hindi’s expansion and its role in cultural and social life. 

The contemporary research involved speaking with many people, especially in the Gulf. I conducted research in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, where I tried to interact with people in Hindi. Often, it worked. The conversations that emerged were always fascinating. 

Many of the people I spoke with did not speak Hindi at home as a mother language. They learned it after moving to the Gulf, often through work, community life, media, or everyday interaction. Their stories showed me that Hindi’s global life is not only about fluency. It is also about shared references, ways of speaking, cultural memory, and forms of communication that bring people together. 

What are your preliminary findings? 

Hindi has an incredible global history. When you begin to scratch the surface, all kinds of unexpected stories come out. Hindi is not simply a national language or a regional language. It has become part of a wider global history of culture, media, migration, labor, and belonging. 

The project shows that people can feel a sense of global belonging through Hindi, even when they do not claim it as their mother tongue. Hindi becomes a way of connecting across differences. It allows people to recognize one another, communicate across communities, and participate in a shared cultural vocabulary. 

How did the Roberta Buffett Institute support your work? 

I am deeply grateful to the Roberta Buffett Institute for making this work possible. The project is ambitious, because it requires both archival research and fieldwork across multiple countries. Without the support and resources I found at Buffett, I do not think I would have been able to pursue it in the same way. 

That support allowed me to ask a broader question about language, mobility, and belonging: What does it mean for a language to become global when it is not usually understood as a global language? The answer, I have found, lies in the lives and stories of the people who use it. 

To learn more, read Professor Majchrowicz's research >>