This question on The Sunday Times of India in its question-answer column called 'Open Space' made me curious enough to find out if the questioner, presumably a young student, has any links to what I want to call the 'Hindi hatred' belt.
As I went about flipping one after another STOI (as the names of the questioners are published much ahead in this column), my mind fanned out from Assam to Andhra and from Manipur to Mumbai, trying to fix the usual suspect. But no, in no way could one possibly link this 'young student' to the hoodlums killing the 'Hindi-speaking' people in Assam.
The latest killing spree apart, what had made Assam a suspect spot for me was an existing ban by the ULFA on Hindi films, which has been in force for over two years now. So much so that 90 per cent of cinema halls in Assam have stopped operating ever since.
So, is the person questioning the status of Hindi as official language a South Indian then, Karnataka being the prime suspect? The state government's fiat enforcing Kannada in primary schools, the reported ban on the release of non-Kannada films and all such official-unofficial moves asserting 'Kannada nationalism' makes it a fertile ground to influence young minds. Don't they? But again, no links could be established.
How about Mumbai? The larger portion of Mumbai's polyglot population today speak Hindi or the so-called Bambaiya/Mumbaiya - which is a blend of Marathi, Hindi, Indian English and some invented colloquial words - and Marathi has already been relegated to the second place. So, has some Marathi kid actually got frustrated with the overshadowing of his mother tongue in his motherland and thought it's time to raise a voice? Well, I could not quite link up this too.
Could it be Manipur? There has been a ban on Hindi in Manipur for over three years now. The student bodies have put the ban on the use of Hindi in educational institutions as a mode of protest against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. But with just about 2 per cent Hindi-speaking population in the state, I don't really think Manipuris would have as much problem with Hindi as some other regions do.
The Hindi hatred is more palpable in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, West Bengal and even tiny Sikkim then the Northeast. Just two to three years back, even the Sikhs of Delhi raised a voice (I am not sure if it was a move against Hindi), and got Punjabi granted a second language status in the national capital.
Yet, in spite of the love-hate relationships, Hindi remains the official language. Article 343 of the Constitution states that the official language of the Union (India) shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. I am not quite sure if Hindi was accorded the official language status because the majority of states use Hindi as principal official language. But the fact remains that even within the Hindi belt, it's spoken in more than 10 variations. But in linguistic counts, from Rajasthani to Maithali, everything becomes Hindi. That is why at 380 million first-language speakers, Hindi stays unchallenged as the largest spoken language in the country.
At least, it remains so until English takes over. (In fact, English has always been the official working language in the country.)
It sounds a bit incoherent though that many Indians have a problem with their official language. But then the seeds of this hatred were sown at the very foundation of India. For, language was the basis on which almost every Indian state was created in their formative stage: Kerala for Malyalam speakers, Tamil Nadu for Tamil speakers, Orissa for Oriya speakers, Andhra for Telugu speakers, Gujarat for Gujarati speakers and so on and so forth.
Language being one of the main seeds of a person or group's ethnic identity, it is only fair that every state or linguistic group will try to safeguard and develop its own language. But the waves of in-migration that the country is witnessing in the wake of its economic resurgence have often put the smaller linguistic groups in the shadows of Hindi influences.
For, the Hindi speakers simply refuse to learn the language of the land when they migrate, unlike, say, a Malyalam-speaking Keralite or a Nepali-speaking Gorkha, who would quickly learn the local accent of Hindi and blend almost inseparably with a Delhiite or a Lucknowi. The Hindi speakers would, rather, create an island of their own wherever they go. This happens, maybe, because most of these migrants are invariably low on literacy count or simply for their sense of superiority.
But alienated as they are, when their islands expand, the ethnic groups often begin to see them as a threat, instead of developing any fellow-feeling. That's why it's so easy to spot or brand a Hindi-speaking person as such anywhere outside the Hindi heartland and it's so hard to distinguish a Bengali from a Gujarati inside of it.
Thus grew the Hindi hatred, and it continues to grow. There is a very definite bottomline to this debate though. The India of tomorrow belongs to the polyglots and both the Hindi haters and the 'arrogant' among the Hindi speakers will end up as losers in this new India within their narrow boundaries.
And as for the person who raised the question in the first place, I realised fast enough that it sounds almost idiotic to link a person to a region simply by his/her surname at a time when India wants to live as part of a global village. So, I let the questioner remain anonymous in My Space.
first published:January 15, 2007, 16:37 ISTlast updated:January 15, 2007, 16:37 IST
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Why is Hindi India's national language?
This question on The Sunday Times of India in its question-answer column called 'Open Space' made me curious enough to find out if the questioner, presumably a young student, has any links to what I want to call the 'Hindi hatred' belt.
As I went about flipping one after another STOI (as the names of the questioners are published much ahead in this column), my mind fanned out from Assam to Andhra and from Manipur to Mumbai, trying to fix the usual suspect. But no, in no way could one possibly link this 'young student' to the hoodlums killing the 'Hindi-speaking' people in Assam.
The latest killing spree apart, what had made Assam a suspect spot for me was an existing ban by the ULFA on Hindi films, which has been in force for over two years now. So much so that 90 per cent of cinema halls in Assam have stopped operating ever since.
So, is the person questioning the status of Hindi as official language a South Indian then, Karnataka being the prime suspect? The state government's fiat enforcing Kannada in primary schools, the reported ban on the release of non-Kannada films and all such official-unofficial moves asserting 'Kannada nationalism' makes it a fertile ground to influence young minds. Don't they? But again, no links could be established.
How about Mumbai? The larger portion of Mumbai's polyglot population today speak Hindi or the so-called Bambaiya/Mumbaiya - which is a blend of Marathi, Hindi, Indian English and some invented colloquial words - and Marathi has already been relegated to the second place. So, has some Marathi kid actually got frustrated with the overshadowing of his mother tongue in his motherland and thought it's time to raise a voice? Well, I could not quite link up this too.
Could it be Manipur? There has been a ban on Hindi in Manipur for over three years now. The student bodies have put the ban on the use of Hindi in educational institutions as a mode of protest against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. But with just about 2 per cent Hindi-speaking population in the state, I don't really think Manipuris would have as much problem with Hindi as some other regions do.
The Hindi hatred is more palpable in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, West Bengal and even tiny Sikkim then the Northeast. Just two to three years back, even the Sikhs of Delhi raised a voice (I am not sure if it was a move against Hindi), and got Punjabi granted a second language status in the national capital.
Yet, in spite of the love-hate relationships, Hindi remains the official language. Article 343 of the Constitution states that the official language of the Union (India) shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. I am not quite sure if Hindi was accorded the official language status because the majority of states use Hindi as principal official language. But the fact remains that even within the Hindi belt, it's spoken in more than 10 variations. But in linguistic counts, from Rajasthani to Maithali, everything becomes Hindi. That is why at 380 million first-language speakers, Hindi stays unchallenged as the largest spoken language in the country.
At least, it remains so until English takes over. (In fact, English has always been the official working language in the country.)
It sounds a bit incoherent though that many Indians have a problem with their official language. But then the seeds of this hatred were sown at the very foundation of India. For, language was the basis on which almost every Indian state was created in their formative stage: Kerala for Malyalam speakers, Tamil Nadu for Tamil speakers, Orissa for Oriya speakers, Andhra for Telugu speakers, Gujarat for Gujarati speakers and so on and so forth.
Language being one of the main seeds of a person or group's ethnic identity, it is only fair that every state or linguistic group will try to safeguard and develop its own language. But the waves of in-migration that the country is witnessing in the wake of its economic resurgence have often put the smaller linguistic groups in the shadows of Hindi influences.
For, the Hindi speakers simply refuse to learn the language of the land when they migrate, unlike, say, a Malyalam-speaking Keralite or a Nepali-speaking Gorkha, who would quickly learn the local accent of Hindi and blend almost inseparably with a Delhiite or a Lucknowi. The Hindi speakers would, rather, create an island of their own wherever they go. This happens, maybe, because most of these migrants are invariably low on literacy count or simply for their sense of superiority.
But alienated as they are, when their islands expand, the ethnic groups often begin to see them as a threat, instead of developing any fellow-feeling. That's why it's so easy to spot or brand a Hindi-speaking person as such anywhere outside the Hindi heartland and it's so hard to distinguish a Bengali from a Gujarati inside of it.
Thus grew the Hindi hatred, and it continues to grow. There is a very definite bottomline to this debate though. The India of tomorrow belongs to the polyglots and both the Hindi haters and the 'arrogant' among the Hindi speakers will end up as losers in this new India within their narrow boundaries.
And as for the person who raised the question in the first place, I realised fast enough that it sounds almost idiotic to link a person to a region simply by his/her surname at a time when India wants to live as part of a global village. So, I let the questioner remain anonymous in My Space.
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