Passive voice with जाना

The productive Hindi passive combines a verb's perfective participle with जाना: लिखना → लिखा जाना “to be written,” खोलना → खोला जाना “to be opened.” In a finite clause, the patient normally becomes the grammatical agreement controller, while जाना carries the clause's tense, aspect, mood, and number-gender marking. This layered structure is more useful than trying to match each form to a single English passive tense.

The next pages separate the mechanics of the passive stem plus जाना from the larger system of tense and aspect. Here we build the core construction and learn to identify its controller.

The core pattern

Start with a transitive event such as “someone writes a letter.” Suppress or demote the writer, promote पत्र “letter,” and place the perfective participle लिखा before the appropriate form of जाना.

The formula is:

lexical perfective participle + finite form of जाना (+ copular auxiliary where required)

The lexical participle and the agreeing part of जाना track the same controller. The first example has masculine singular पत्र, so it has लिखा जाता है. The second has masculine singular दरवाज़ा, so it has किया गया.

Agreement with the patient

An unmarked nominative patient controls masculine/feminine and singular/plural agreement throughout the passive predicate. The human agent does not control these forms, even when an agent phrase is present.

Notice that feminine plural uses लिखी जाती हैं, not a special feminine-plural participle: feminine adjectives and participles have the same -ī shape in both numbers, while plurality appears in हैं. Masculine plural is visible in लिखे जाते हैं.

If the patient is marked with को, it cannot control ordinary nominative agreement. Hindi then commonly uses default masculine singular morphology:

Here बच्चों को is semantically plural, but the predicate is default बुलाया गया, not plural बुलाए गए. English gives no visible clue of this contrast because its passive participle does not agree with the patient.

Tense, aspect, and mood live on the outer layers

The passive relationship itself does not determine time. Forms of जाना, aspectual material, and the final auxiliary locate the event as customary, ongoing, completed, future, or desired.

English often uses “is” in both “is sold here” and “is being sold now.” Hindi makes the contrast structural: customary बेचा जाता है versus progressive बेचा जा रहा है. Conversely, a Hindi jussive किया जाए may correspond to English “should be done,” “is to be done,” or an impersonal instruction; tense matching word for word will not work.

Affirmative, negative, and question contrasts

Negation normally precedes the passive predicate or its finite complex. It does not replace जाना, and a question does not require English-style do-support.

All three predicates agree with feminine singular रिपोर्ट. The question particle क्या marks a neutral yes-no question; it does not alter the passive morphology.

The passive infinitive itself is nonfinite किया जाना, but a finite sentence needs an outer finite element. Compare यह काम किया जाना “this work to be done,” which is only a phrase, with यह काम आज किया जाना है “this work is to be done today.” In the latter, है makes the predicate finite and gives it an obligation-like interpretation.

Expressing—or omitting—the agent

Hindi passives are useful when the doer is unknown, predictable, deliberately backgrounded, or less important than the affected entity. That makes them common in instructions, reporting, and official or academic prose. An agent may be added with के द्वारा / द्वारा, especially (formal) writing, but ordinary conversation frequently prefers an active clause when the agent matters.

Agreement remains masculine singular because निर्णय, not समिति, is the promoted patient. In everyday speech, समिति ने यह निर्णय लिया is often more direct. Hindi से has several agent-like and ability-related uses, but it is not mechanically interchangeable with every English “by”; the dedicated page on expressed agents treats that choice in detail.

Transitivity and the edge of the construction

The ordinary personal passive starts from a transitive verb with a patient that can be promoted: पुलिस ने रास्ता बंद किया → रास्ता बंद किया गया. A basic intransitive such as पहुँचना “arrive” has no patient to promote, so वह पहुँचा गया is not the ordinary passive of “he arrived.” Hindi does have impersonal patterns such as यहाँ बैठा नहीं जाता “one cannot manage to sit here / sitting here is not done,” but those have their own semantics and should not be treated as free passives of every intransitive verb.

Complex predicates also preserve layers. In फ़ॉर्म भर दिया गया, भर दिया presents filling as brought to completion, and गया passivizes the complex event. The internal vector and passive vector have different jobs; translating both as separate English verbs obscures the analysis.

Common Mistakes

Letting the implied actor control agreement

Missing masculine plural agreement

Copying English auxiliary structure

Leaving a passive infinitive without a finite ending

Passivizing an ordinary intransitive as though it had a patient

Key Takeaways

• Build the productive passive with an agreeing perfective participle plus a form of जाना.
• An unmarked patient normally controls gender-number agreement; a को-marked patient commonly triggers default masculine singular.
• The outer layers distinguish customary किया जाता है, progressive किया जा रहा है, past किया गया, future किया जाएगा, and jussive किया जाए.
• A passive infinitive such as किया जाना is not a complete finite clause unless a suitable finite element completes it.
• Use the passive when the patient, result, or procedure is central; Hindi often prefers an active clause when the agent is central.