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???
Technorati Tags: Hindi, Thackrey, Bachchan, Democracy, National Languge
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