They were essentially the same language also known as "Hindustani" with the distinction being that Hindi was written in the Devanagari script and Urdu written in the Nastaliq script. However, starting a few years before independence, the Hindus gradually Sankritized Hindi, while the Muslims Persianized Urdu. An example of this is the news in the national TV channels of India and Pakistan are in versions of Hindi and Urdu respectively that hardly anyone uses colloquially.