I am studying now for my Urdu exam (a little late :-) and I can say that there is difference between Hindi and Urdu. If there wasn't why would I have to learn both Urdu and Hindi in Sofia University?
Of course the problem is both linguistical and political or maybe it is not a problem at all :-) Anyway, I would like to hear the opinion of more experienced indian linguists if there are such in this forum.
I've never studied Urdu and have no idea what is it like. My Hindi ended up in the beginning of the third volume of the Дымшиц Manual. Everything forgotten, except for Tarkika Anubhavavada (Logical Empiricism), tadatmya ka niyama (Law of Identity), nirmadhya niyama (Law of the Excluded Third, TND), paryanta karana ka niyama (Principle of the Sufficient Ground), nirapeksa niyoga (категорический императив Канта), and Hristo Botev - Bulgarian kavi tatha bhautikvadi darshanik. :-)
What about at least some links to forums that have specialists prepared for this subjects?
http://www.nhsf.org.uk/links/index.php
Structurally, Hindi and Urdu are the same language. That is, at the level of grammar (the word "grammar" to be understood as the system of rules of a language, and not by what is taught to us in school), the two languages are virtually identical. There are, however, certain overt differences in their phonetics. For example, the uvular [k] and [g] in Urdu are not present in Hindi. And of course, there is the obvious difference of many more words of Perso-Arabic origin in Urdu, of which Hindi too has plenty. At a linguistic structural level, they are one language--in their phonology, morpho-syntax, and syntax.
Thank you, Shanti. Many people are misled by the different writing systmes to think that these are two different languages. In fact Urdu is closer to Hindi than, say, Marathi which uses the same script, isn't it?
There are two new forums dedicated to Indology in general
http://www.indology.net/forums.html
and academic Indology, Indic linguistics included,
http://www.academic.indology.net/forum