In English, something that one does is active, where something that is done to someone or something is passive. Thus, the sentence "I ate my lunch" is active, whereas the sentence "The lunch was eaten" is passive.

In order to fully grasp how to form the passive in Hindi, it is first important to understand the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. The simple answer is that a transitive verb is something acting on something else, an intransitive verb is merely an action that is performed by someone or something. That is, transitive verbs have direct objects, intransitive verbs do not. The passive is simply reversing the connotation of a sentence with a transitive verb, making the object the subject and, optionally, marking the subject in a special way. ("by" in English, for example)

In Hindi, the equivalent form is to use the perfective participle followed by the verb जाना. To mark who is performing the action, the equivalent of "by" in English, use postpositions: either द्वारा or के द्वारा in an affirmative sentence, and से in a negative sentence.

In negative sentences, verbs not normally thought of as being transitive can also be used in the passive, with the connotation of "not being able to bring oneself to." For example, मुझसे नहीं बैठ गया would be translated as "I couldn't sit there." When जाना is used in a passive sentence in this way, its past participle is जाया, not गया. Thus, one would say मुझसे वहाँ नहीं जाया गया.

Due to the distinction that Hindi makes between transitive and intransitive verbs, there are many cases where a passive would be needed in English but is not needed in Hindi. It is important for students to learn the most common transitive and intransitive verb pairs. A list will be added in a later lesson.