Skip to main content

Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan


Hindi is being imposed on Indians once again. The 11th volume of the Report of the Official Language Committee headed by Amit Shah has been submitted for the approval of the President. The chief ministers of both Kerala and Tamil Nadu have registered their protest against this fresh move to impose Hindi on people who have nothing to do with that language. This move of Amit Shah is yet another instance of the ruling party’s objective of decimating the minority cultures in the country.

Language is an integral part of a culture. Amit Shah and his accomplice Modi nurture the dream of creating a Hindu Rashtra in India. The latest move to impose Hindi on the entire country is part of the materialization of that dream. The Shah panel has made around 100 recommendations one of which is that the medium of instruction in IITs, IIMs, and central universities should be Hindi in the Hindi-speaking states. There are numerous students from non-Hindi-speaking states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu studying in those universities. This latest move seems to be meant to keep such students away from the premier institutions and universities of the country. If this is not discrimination, what is?

The situation is rather bizarre. Shah and his team want every central government employee to use only Hindi. Their language panel has warned state governments that the employees’ reluctance to use Hindi would reflect in their Annual Performance Assessment Report [APAR]. Does this mean that the people of South India and Northeast India as well as those from other states where Hindi is not taken too seriously do not deserve to get central government jobs?

This obsession with Hindi will do no good to India. Amit Shah is becoming a dangerous enemy of the country with this kind of policies that will endanger the future of the country’s youth. Let us remember that there are about 32 million Indians living abroad. Indians make up the world’s largest overseas diaspora. This country has little to offer to the emerging youth. What will they do with the kind of sectarianism and regressive attitudes that Shah’s party is foisting on the country? There are jobs available abroad. The future is lying in those countries. Let the youth learn English and save themselves. Here we are given holy cows of no use whatever.

Let India live, please. Do not impose dead weights on people who are already bogged down with the filth of obsolete visions. Slogans like Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan may sound patriotic. They may help to win elections. But they won’t buy anyone food. It is high time India woke up and gave a massive kick in the capacious bums of its overfed politicians.

Comments

  1. Hari Om
    With regard the universities/teaching - students from other states not speaking Hindi means that the teaching had to have been in a language common to all. This, I am assuming, must have been English. Is it, then, that the aim is to supplant English as the common denominator in teahing and administrative use?

    Long back, the English demanded of the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh that only English be spoken - but not that alone, they also banned the use of Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic and Welsh at risk of punishment. I am hoping that at least that is not the case in India? Though the 'making of law' suggests that there may be consequences for not following that law.

    The idea of one language understood nationally is not necessarily a bad thing, but it should certainly not be enforced in a manner that demeans or belittles regional variation. Or threatens the rights and freedoms of those with different oral tradition. Here, the two dialects of Gaelic and the Welsh are revived and vibrant in each of our countries and placed equal to the language that unites us - the other dialect of these isles which dominated as a result of subjugation.

    A big and emotive subject! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. English is the only language that is common to all the states of India as of now. Why disregard that simple practical fact? Nationalism has nothing to do with the future of the youth of the country. Quite many of my students from Kerala are abroad now either studying or working. English is what helped them. They pass IELTS/OET quite easily because Kerala has excellent schools that give English education. I am an English teacher and I know what I'm speaking about. My school does not provide Hindi even as an optional subject at the senior secondary level because there are no takers for it. Now If the central govt imposes Hindi this way - by making it the medium of instruction in prominent institutions - a lot of students in South India will be victims. This is not fair.

      A friend of mine sent me a WhatsApp message after reading this post. It claims that all of the 100,000 crore rupee loans from India's nationalised banks waived by the Modi govt were taken by Gujaratis. I am yet to verify the data. But I won't be surprised if that's true. There is a small mafia that is governing India today. And that's a Gujarati mafia. Since they can't impose Gujarati on all Indians they impose Hindi. They don't love Hindi. They don't love anything or anybody. Hatred is the only language they know. And they call it nationalism.

      This has to end. Sooner the better.

      Delete
  2. I fail to understand, what is the problem with accepting regional languages? Why do we need one language across such a diverse and vibrant country?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is a slow process of bringing back the hegemony of a particular group or class of people. It's not about language really. It's about power. It's about who gets to sit on the throne. It's about the king and his diwans.

      Delete
  3. Replies
    1. Indeed. When they say 'Go to Pakistan' or 'Go to Italy', the implication is some people are just not wanted here.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

Empuraan – Review

Revenge is an ancient theme in human narratives. Give a moral rationale for the revenge and make the antagonist look monstrously evil, then you have the material for a good work of art. Add to that some spices from contemporary politics and the recipe is quite right for a hit movie. This is what you get in the Malayalam movie, Empuraan , which is running full houses now despite the trenchant opposition to it from the emergent Hindutva forces in the state. First of all, I fail to understand why so much brouhaha was hollered by the Hindutvans [let me coin that word for sheer convenience] who managed to get some 3 minutes censored from the 3-hour movie. The movie doesn’t make any explicit mention of any of the existing Hindutva political parties or other organisations. On the other hand, Allahu Akbar is shouted menacingly by Islamic terrorists, albeit towards the end. True, the movie begins with an implicit reference to what happened in Gujarat in 2002 after the Godhra train burnin...