Page 36 - Education World November 2022

ANNIVERSARY ESSAY

Hindi language zealots

should calm down

SANJAYA BARU

FTEN DISPARAGED BY INTELLECTUALS, Food, clothing and language are uniting
no institution has played a bigger role in the
popularisation of Hindi across the country than people without officious diktats from
OBollywood cinema. When crowds throng cinema elevated pulpits. Militant Hindi-Hindu
halls in Madurai and Kolkata, Vijayawada and Vadodara organisations insisting on Hindi as the
to watch Rajesh Khanna romance Hema Malini, they
voluntarily learnt the language in which this Punjabi national language should relax
matinee idol was wooing a Tambrahm beauty. No, it is
not the Hindi Prachar Sabha that popularised Hindi. It is
popular cinema that did it. understood what I had said. New Delhi is a stage on which
Same goes for couture. The Punjabi salw ar k urta is many fancy people dance and sing, pretending to govern.
ubiquitous in rural south India because young women prefer However if Hindi enthusiasts are hurting the cause of
easy-to-wear clothing, not because the home minister of their language, so are language enthusiasts in other parts
India wanted them to. Ditto for cuisine. Delhi’s restaurants of the country. The obsession with Tamil in Tamil Nadu has
are full of people demanding dosa, while paneer has entered already damaged the economy of the state. Compared with
the cuisine of non-milk consuming Kerala households. the linguistic cosmopolitanism of other southern states,
Food, clothing and language are uniting people which are increasingly bilingual and trilingual — mother
countrywide without officious diktats from elevated pulpits. tongue, Hindi and English — Tamil Nadu is becoming
Union home minister Amit Shah should relax. So too should increasingly unilingual. Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K.
all militant Hindi-Hindu organisations that are insistent Stalin has become as much a Tamil chauvinist as Hindi
upon legislating Hindi as India’s national language. champions of the BJP.
In response to a recent Hindi promotion order emanating ilingual states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka,
from New Delhi, several political leaders across non-Hindi BTelangana and Punjab have better economic
speaking states have highlighted the reality that Hindi is opportunities to offer for their own residents and
not the dominant language of the majority of Indians, since Hindi-speaking north Indians. The lack of employment
many who may profess Hindi as their mother tongue in opportunities in unilingual Hindi-speaking Uttar Pradesh
census surveys, speak Bhojpuri or Mythili. Yet, a rising and Bihar is forcing people to migrate to the Deccan where
number of Indians are learning to speak and even read and they can find work because they can communicate in their
write Hindi. Incremental usage of Hindi is the outcome of language with bilingual southerners.
several social, cultural and economic phenomena which Globally too, the record shows that bilingualism is
have little to do with the activities of busybodies of the increasingly becoming normative. Countries opting for one
Official Language Committee. language policy are paying a heavy price for their obsession.
On the other hand, imposition of Hindi upon non- Most of Europe, Latin America, Africa and East and South-
Hindi states by the Central government and Central public east Asia is, or on the way to bilingualism.
sector enterprises, including nationalised banks, is causing In the interests of national unity and improving the ease
needless resentment. I was recently at a nationalised bank of doing business, the Union government should promote
branch in Hyderabad where all forms were required to be the three language policy. This means, all bank forms
completed in Hindi, using terms that even the bank clerk should be in Hindi, state language and English. This also
couldn’t explain. When I asked for an English language means that Hindi speaking states should actively promote
form, I was told that despite repeated reminders to head the learning of a second language, preferably English or
office, only Hindi forms were supplied. The bank manager, another Indian language.
teller and I were all forced to transact in Hindi. Contemporary political leaders should learn from
I also recall a New Delhi conference a few years ago at the debates in the Constituent Assembly which drafted
which a Hindi-enthusiast began speaking in Hindi and the Constitution of India. In fact, no subject generated
devoted the first few minutes of her speech criticising as much heat and took as much time as debates on the
English-speakers at the conference for having no contact national language issue. If the great leaders of the freedom
with India's ground realities, whereas she was in touch movement and members of the Constituent Assembly could
with the heart and soul of the nation because she spoke the not satisfy all and settled for compromise, why should
language of the people. When it was my turn to speak, I contemporary lesser mortals attempt to impose their will
addressed the conclave in Telugu. Initially, the audience was on 1.4 billion Indians?
nonplussed and confused, but as my message dawned upon
them and they began to applaud. I persisted with my speech (Sanjaya Baru is former media advisor to the prime minister and author of
in Telugu and asked the nonplussed Hindi enthusiast if she The Accidental Prime Minister)

36 EDUCATIONWORLD NOVEMBER 2022