yesterday's bussiness line's front page article was on the possibility, a not-so-far-off possibility that all companies in india including the MNCs would have to correspond with the Govt only in hindi, the rashtrabasha.
india is a developing nation though the lines are blurring and development is fast coming within our range of vision. its just when things start looking up that the politicians decide its going too fast for them to comprehend and decide to slow it all down as fast as they can.
first you decide to call bangalore bengaluru. then you decide that all companies operating in india need to correspond only in hindi. how stunted are the brains of the politicians? and it isnt as though there are only a handful of them...there are hundreds of them and each one with an equal say in the happenings on of the country.
it isn't as though every indian speaks hindi. then again it isn't as though hindi is as simple as switching on a switch. i know..really profound..'switchin on a switch' but isn't it so much simpler to tell someone that when you click the switch one way the fan starts whirring or you have the television working or just plain and simple..there is light! is it going top as simple teachiong every one of india's growing populace the nuances of the language? and in a country like india where there are hundreds of languages and a higher number of dialects to each of those languages it would be forcing hindi on the actual non-hindi speaking masses.
our mother tongue, we learn from the day of our birth for that is the language we hear so much. english. it is a foreign language. but one that integrates the people of india. gives them a platform for addressing issues, for making suggestions, for equity in thought. there is nothing wrong with having to communicate in english. it brings the people of india together amongst their differences at the same time enabling the nation to have foriegn ties.
if made a concrete law, it would only go to show the childishness, vanity and joblessness of the men we've put to power to govern us with our best interests at heart.
how much time do these people have to waste? thinking up ways to regression when the population growth is still largely unchecked. when literacy still needs a saviour. communal harmony is still hanging by the thread in numerous places. oppurtunities are still going unchecked. brain drain is not a thing of the 90s, it is still highly prevalent. research can do with a boost, no not nuclear research or arms research, lower cost of medicines, better living conditions, higher yield of crops- research has no limit. the various sports can get a hand up. a little nudge and a little recognition. there are issues aplenty that need more attention and immediate action and none of it has to do with the language of communication.
if language is a hinderance, we'll find a way. it can be worked around. the men at the centre need not worry about that, they can with the blessings of every indian turn their attention to the rural, the poor, impoverished, sick and illiterate.
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8 comments:
a very thought provoking post...i think we need young ppl like "u n me" ;-) to join politics to address issues that really matter rather than wasting our nation's time and money on such trivial issues!
manasvi..i truly agree...its us who should be out there running the country..not a bunch nutcases who want to save up money for teir what i dunno..but yeah..svce is a waste of time...the indian parliment here we come!!
"our mother tongue, we learn from the day of our birth for that is the language we hear so much. english. it is a foreign language. but one that integrates the people of india. gives them a platform for addressing issues, for making suggestions, for equity in thought. there is nothing wrong with having to communicate in english."
I don't think that's a good solution, either. Very very few people in India actually speak English these days, especially out in the more provincial regions, and just as there's bitterness about imposition of Hindi, there's also bitterness among many people about imposition of English. In fact, English can be just as divisive as Hindi as a sole language of communication for government or business. (FWIW, some of the fiercest anti-English resistance lately has been coming out of Chennai, so people in TN have reservations about both English and Hindi encroaching on Tamil.)
It's not that people have bitter memories of their great-great-grandparents starving slowly to death in some British-imposed artificial famine (though this did indeed occur, a lot). The issue is more practical-- there is indeed a collection of people in India, a small minority, who are Anglophone and identify themselves especially with English. A very small group admittedly (since the vast majority of those English-speakers also speak Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and/or something else), but the point us, imposition of English would be just as arbitrary-- it would be privileging one group at the expense of others.
Besides, many of us even harbor doubts about just how useful English will really be in 20-30 years. The United States is $8-9 trillion in debt, their economic dominance won't be lasting much longer. China will soon hold the crown-- so should all Indians then be communicating in Chinese?
I just don't see a quick and easy solution to this. I'm also uncomfortable with the idea of this imposition of Hindi, but imposition of English is just as bad or worse, and this is despite me being one of those Anglophone Indians (raised outside of India). If the central government and commercial organizations in New Delhi have representatives from each state, that would solve much of the problem since there would always be someone around who could communicate in the regional languages. Also, with a subset of the biggest North-South-East languages (e.g. Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Punjabi) being used for "official business," perhaps that could help to diversify things a bit and not privilege any one Indian language too much. But we can't settle on just one language alone. That includes English as much as Hindi-- to settle on one language alone for such communications would grossly disadvantage large masses of people in India who don't speak that language or do not prefer to use it.
Perhaps someday soon we may have good enough computer/automatic translation that we'll be able to easily interconvert among our languages, in fact I've heard there's much research on this very topic. But for now, we'll just need to have people from all the states in high positions in the central government, so that the states can communicate with the center in whatever languages they feel most comfortable.
hey..gopal....yeah i agree too that english would also become an imposition given time but i did not glorify the use of the english language.
instant translations of the language by computers or cell phones would largely solve the problem.
and true. the chinese are the next big thing. and business and communication all being carried out in chinese...that would be an overkill.
and and..english is not associated with the united states as its language of origin as it is with britain.
so gopal..i do agree with you..engliah hindi tamil..generalising anything to be the language of communication solely would be as bad and one tracked as the other..
hey i jus stummbled on ur blog & its pretty nice .. i know this is strange, but are u mithra's sister!??! it could be an incredibly small world!
ketaki..hi..no i'm not mithra's sister but a friend of hers from college...i assume you know mithra from school...well...welcome to my blog..
well small world after all :)
Ha, tell that to a chauvinistic north indian. I've tried giving them the English argument, but they just think its cuz we're incapable of learning hindi in the south (or too arrogant to) that it doesn't work.
Idiot politicians!
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