An office, governmental department, or administrative record-keeping place; a term used in South Asian administrative systems.
From Persian 'daftar' (office, bureau, record), originally from Arabic root meaning 'to arrange' or 'to register'. Widely adopted in Urdu, Hindi, and English in South Asia.
This Persian word traveled through the Ottoman Empire and Mughal India, becoming embedded in South Asian English—'daftar' shows how colonial and pre-colonial empires shaped the vocabulary of government and administration across Asia.
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