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Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan

Hindi is being imposed on Indians once again. The 11 th 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 st

English vs Hindi

Language is primarily a means of communication.  More importantly, it is the primary means of communication.  Secondarily, it is an integral part of culture; it is the most important carrier of culture. The struggle going on in Delhi against the English questions in the CSAT exams is a multidimensional struggle.  It seeks to anoint Hindi as a dominant language in India.  Indirectly, it is an attempt to impose the lordship of Hindi over the whole of India, though it may appear to be something much simpler and pro-poor. Some time back, when Mr P Chidambaram, then Union Finance Minister, visited Kerala he asked the man sitting near him to translate into English what a bureaucrat was speaking.  “But he is speaking in English,” answered the bewildered man.  [Chidambaram would have understood had it been Malayalam.] George Orwell This anecdote which became a quasi-legend in Kerala illustrates the importance of language as a means of communication.  Language is useless