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Hindi Divas vs. National Language : A question mark to Democratic Governance

For last 59 years, we are celebrating Hindi Day on 14th September - A good idea to publicize our national language across the country. A national language means Ruling Language in which the Government of that country conducts it day to day business (Raj Bhasha as its called in Hindi).

But many times this question crops up into my mind :

Do we really need a National Language?

Hindi is of course our country’s widespread language today and deserve to be called a National Language. It descended from Sanskrit and is easy to learn. But at times it seems to me that its not very techno-friendly and words are quite difficult to pronounce and grasp. In contrast, our South Indian languages like Tamil are very musical and easy to speak (I mean we need to exert less force and thrust lesser air out of our throats while speaking these languages).

Secondly, if there should be a national language, why there should not be a language which could be accorded an International Language status? In fact, history had done the humankind a favour by the spread of British colonial culture resulting in the widespread use of English in most parts of the world. Today its considered as the language of business.

Today, we are supposed to learn at least three languages : first our mother tongue (some regional language or dialect), then our national language Hindi and then English to readily steer through our life. Isn’t much of the human resources being wasted in this? How many human hours are consumed in learning three languages when, if given a choice for one, many would do away with one.

I recall my interaction with one friend, a couple of years back whom I met at some wedding ceremony in Mumbai. Unfortunately, neither he knew Marathi (the local vernacular) nor Hindi, and had a lot of trouble to get past the local buses and trains, which had no signs in English. He knew two languages. One his native tongue viz. Tamil and the other was the business language English. He never traveled northward in the country. It was his first journey this long to Mumbai. He was successfully living his life and running his well-settled business at Chennai with the help of those two languages he knew. Yet he was at loss when in Mumbai. With this experience, he decided to not to travel across our country anytime in future. He will prefer to travel in English speaking countries for holidaying than in India. He never wants to learn Hindi because he said he don’t need to. Why should he?

In my view point, if anyone should learn an additional language, it should be the universal Sign Language. This I concluded when I had an employee, who was deaf as well as dumb. All my other employees (including me) had great difficulty in communicating with him. In my view, a sign language should be our first language in which anyone could do the basic communication with anyone irrespective of the cast, creed, religion, locality and culture and yes, including handicaps like the deaf and dumbs who don’t have any other way to communicate. Only after that comes the mother tongue (which anyhow we don’t need to learn :) ) and the next language should be the most prevalent and acceptable language in the world. So a national language gets the last priority! Why should handicaps be out casted or punished because of their communication barrier for they can use only sign language? Won’t it will be being inhuman of ourselves?

Recently, when celebrity actress Jaya Bachchan expressed her willingness to speak in Hindi (our national language as well as her mother tongue) to an audience who could very well understand it at an award ceremony in Mumbai, our politician Raj Thackrey started threatening her whole family. His insistence to use Marathi in Maharashtra made Jaya and his husband Amitabh Bachchan to publicly apologize for using Hindi …our national tongue. What an absurdity!

And a person of Mr. Amitabh Bachchan’s stature had to apologize for using his national language in his own country. Then how come Hindi could be called our national language?

Earlier too I wrote that democracy is a mere game of numbers. If there are more fools in the country than the wise (which is always the case every where), then fools being a majority will rule the country and such foolish acts will continue in a democratic world. So its due to the democratic set up that a super celebrity and the international figure had to apologize to our country’s politician for the use of our national language. Raj Thackrey will has his way because he is not worried with national philosophies or sentiments. His eyes are set on the strong Marathi vote bank which he is fast gaining up due to such acts. Professionally he is doing everything right to safeguard his interests. Its not solely his fault. Its the democratic system which compelled him to do this to win loacalite’s favour at the cost of …damn it! who’s concerned for that!

So what we are supposed to do???

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6 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

    MyAvatars 0.2
  1. Mr. Ashutosh, you are totally wrong. India does not have any National Language and Hindi is just one of the official languages just as there are other 14 recognized official languages. Hindi is mostly spoken in majority of the states. Will you as a North Indian ever recognize any of the south Indian languages or Bengali etc. if you had to study it ? Just read article 353 of the Indian constitution and correct yourself.

    1. Prasad INDIA on April 14th, 2009 at 4:43 am
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  3. hello,
    my indian friends ,
    i am an indian so iam prraud on hindi language,
    vande mataram,

    2. kamlesh UNITED STATES on January 15th, 2009 at 8:07 am
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  5. @Brian Barker: I agree with you. Esperanto could definitely be a better choice for the International Language.
    I think you are referring to the Sign Language, when you say that we need a spoken global language as well.
    @Chetan: Thanks for taking pains to compile a long Hindi write-up to express your view points here. In the first place, I would like to clarify that this post was meant to provoke our thinking process and to vouch for better available alternatives and not to take it for granted that we don’t have any other alternative!
    Of course, there are talented people like you who can quickly learn and adopt a new language. But what for persons like me :) (I have met many people who challenge that they can learn any language within three months time frame, if they live in that community and that too without any tutorials). It depends on person to person, so don’t think ill of that keralite.
    @Bill Chapman: Thanks Bill for enlightening here that Esperanto is more widespread than English. In fact, I had not heard more than its name for some years. Actually, the problem here is the unavailability of sufficient resources and tools to learn this language from HIndi or any other Indian languages. I hope this will be taken care of in due course.
    I feel that some countries or international body should officially adopt this language as the international language. Only then it will become more popular.

    3. Ashutosh INDIA on September 15th, 2008 at 9:57 am
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  7. As an outsider, I won’t comment on the status of Hindi. However, I am not sure that English is as widespread or useful as people claim. I would like to argue the case for Esperanto as the international language. It is a planned language which belongs to no one country or group of states.

    Take a look at www.esperanto.net

    Esperanto works! I’ve used it in speech and writing in a dozen countries over recent years.

    4. Bill Chapman UNITED KINGDOM on September 14th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
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  9. चूँकि हमारा देश विविधताओ से भरा देश है जहाँ कई भाषायें और धर्म हैं , हमारे पास कोई और रास्ता नही है सिवाय इसके की हमें ३ भाषाओ का ज्ञान हो. जैसा की लेखक ने कहा कि हमें मातृ भाषा सिखने की कोशिश नही करनी पड़ती वह तो अपने आप ही आ जाती है मैं इससे सहमत हूँ . अब हम हिंदुस्तान मैं रहते है तो हमें देश में सबसे ज्यादा प्रचलित भाषा का ज्ञान होना आवश्यक है चाहे दक्षिण प्रान्त मैं रहने वाला व्यक्ति हिन्दी का अच्छा जानकर ना हो परन्तु उसे इतना ज्ञान तो होना ही चाहिए की उसे कभी ऐसा ना सोचना ना पड़े जैसा की लेखक श्री आशुतोष के मित्र को सोचना पड़ा की वो हिंदुस्तान के बजाये हिन्दुस्तान से बाहर घूमना पसंद करंगे. मैं समझता हूँ की इससे बड़ा दुर्भाग्य हमारा नही हो सकता. अब चूँकि की दुनिया मैं अंग्रेजी एक ऐसी भाषा के रूप मैं उभरी है कि ज्यादातर ज्ञान विज्ञानं इसे भाषा मैं उपलब्ध है, अतः अंग्रेजी का ज्ञान होना भी जरुरी है. अब सवाल यह है कि हम इतना समय भाषाओ को सिखने मैं क्यों बर्बाद करे तो मैं यहे कहना चाहता हूँ कि हमें अपनी मातृ भाषा के आलावा अंग्रजी या हिन्दी किसी एक मैं अच्छी पकड़ होनी चाहिए जो कि हमें रोजगार मैं सहायक हो और दूसरी का काम चलाऊ ज्ञान हो जो कि आवशयकता के अनुसार बढाया जा सकता है.
    वैसे भी भाषा एक ऐसा ज्ञान है जो बिना ज्यादा मेहनत के आसानी से लिया जा सकता है बशर्ते आप उस समूह मैं रहे जो भाषा आप सीखना चाहते हैं.
    मैंने अपने जीवन मैं ५ साल पहले तक कभी नही सोचा था कि मैं अरेबिक भाषा भी बोल सकूँगा पर मुझे पता भी नही चला कि मैं कब यह भाषा सीख गया और बोलने और समझने लगा. मैंने थोड़ा और प्रयत्न किया और अब मैं थोडी थोडी अरेबिक पढ़ भी सकता हूँ. यह सब इसलिए हुआ क्योकि मैं अरेबिक लोगो के बीच मैं रहता हूँ और काम करता हूँ.
    कभी कभी दुःख और आश्चर्य इसलिए भी होता है कि यहाँ एक बंगलादेश का व्यक्ति हिन्दी मैं बात करता है और केरला का व्यक्ति जो कि हिन्दुस्तानी है हिन्दी बोलने मैं मुश्किल महसूस करता है.
    अंत मैं मैं यह कहना चाहता हूँ कि भाषा बहुत महत्तवपूर्ण है और हम भारत देश मैं दूसरे कि भाषा का सम्मान करके और सीख कर ही देश कि एकता कायम रख सकते है न कि हम इस बात पर अडिग हो जाए कि मैं “हिन्दी क्यों सीखूं इससे अच्छा है कि मैं विदेश घुमने चला जाऊ”

    5. चेतन OMAN on September 14th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
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  11. Talking of an international language why not consider a non-national, neutral language, like Esperanto.

    I think we need a spoken global language as well.

    Can I suggest http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670

    Or http://www.lernu.net

    6. Brian Barker on September 14th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

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