So I recently (or a few weeks or even months ago, depending on when I decide to publish this) woke up to the news that India will be issuing passports in Hindi as well as English. The Republic of India, with over at least 22 mutually unintelligible languages, will be issuing passports in two languages.
As a Kannadiga, I got triggered as usual at first but then I remembered that the Indian Constitution, the thing that actually forged into and sustains as one nation what is actually the European Union of the East, does in fact accord special status to English and Hindi. Those two are the 'official' languages as far as purposes of governance go for the Union. So to me, issuing passports in both these languages seemed fine eventually. What purpose it serves is beyond me, of course. A document whose primary purpose is to facilitate travel abroad will have stuff written in a language which less than half of India can read, let alone people of other countries. Smart. I suppose travel to Nepal will become a breeze compared to what it is now... a breeze. Half of the West has trouble identifying us from... less reputable countries* but sure, throw on some strange stuff on our passports too. It's not like our comfort with English is one of the primary reasons we have *something* at least to export for dollars. It's not like it plays a huge role in how successful we are in the West, particularly in the US. No sir, English has forever been and will always be a 'bad influence' on the culture that discovered nuclear fission before Julius Caesar was born. NO benefits at all. We must always conflate English with the English. But that's alright, as long as English is not done away with completely, it's all good.
Snide jokes and my personal politics aside, I will accept that this is not that big an issue. But...
... what this got me thinking about is the main question of Hindi being an official language that has at least some level of precedence over the other languages of India. Also, the arrogance of some "Hindi Humari #Rashtrabhaasha Hain" types that this and other moves triggered. Mind you, I know Hindi well enough. When I write Hindi, I can pass for a native speaker. Perhaps an old-fashioned, but still. My spoken Hindi isn't that great because I don't get to speak much. In fact, I never needed to speak it, except for one year in Gujarat. This point about needing it, I'll come back to it later if I remember. I like Hindi. It's a language, a means of communication that has been used to produce some really good literature, cinema and music. But it's just another language!
I'm willing to bet that a majority of Indians (who are not from the Hindi belt) reading this will understand spoken Hindi to some extent at least. Why is that? There will only be 4 primary reasons: Bollywood, school curriculum, some exposure to Hindi-speakers at work/school or having grown up in the Hindi belt. Take away all of that and how much Hindi would you know? Honestly, tell me. How else would you have learnt Hindi? You wouldn't. Don't even begin to try and explain to me how someone who has lived all their life in, say, Theerthahalli in Shimoga would understand even 'Ek Do Teen'. No way. There is absolutely no way for a non-Hindi speaker to understand Hindi. They are mutually unintelligible. I would have gone for the easiest example of certain people in Bangalore who can't understand a word of Kannada but still expect all the bus conductors and rickshaw drivers to be able to converse in #Rashtrabhaasha, but that's too easy and perhaps a little shallow. Most of India's major languages are mutually unintelligible. Ask the Mysore/Bangalore Kannadiga who has had to endure Tulu speakers around him. Ask me, about how Bangaloreans are shocked about me not understanding Telugu which they think is 'similar'. Why do they think it's similar? I think the answer is obvious. It all goes back to the four reasons I listed. To a native speaker of one of the major languages who hasn't been exposed in any way to another, every other major language will be almost as alien as English. And that's just the spoken part. Written? Forget about it. We have different scripts, for heaven's sake!
Alright, now that we've hopefully agreed on or at least started thinking about how different our languages are, lets talk about why we should fuss about them. Honestly, why should the imposition of one language on states who have their own distinct languages be an issue? Two reasons come to my mind: Culture and Economy.
First, the culture. I will extend this to one's identity itself. Language, more than anything else, shapes one's identity. Try as the organized religions may to change this, they inevitably bow to the might of languages. The language in which you think, which you speak with your family, which your favorite books are written in, that language shapes you. Several extremely important concepts in Christianity are disputed by different adherent simply on the basis of how the original Aramaic or Greek was translated! This is also important when you realize that all languages are not simply ways of expressing the same ideas using different sounds. If that were the case, this wouldn't be a huge issue. It's not like programming languages, where you can achieve the same results in different languages. Or wait a second, come to think of it, this isn't the case even in programming languages, right? I'm no computer science guy, but from what little I know, coding for a specific task in different languages has implications in terms of running time, storage space etc. Right? Leave all that aside, one language might simply let you achieve the same results in significantly less lines of code than another. Kundapur Kannada versus Arabic, anyone? Languages can even shape how we understand the Universe. How, you ask? Ask the people whose language has no concept of of numbers as we know it.
The economy part? I think I've said enough controversial things in this post already and will assume that it's easy to agree knowing which language matters most for an Indian who wants to prosper economically.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to get at, and probably boring you in the effort, is that languages matter. Imposing a language is no different to imposing a religion in my opinion. Even if a language is spoken by a huge majority of a country, imposing it on the minority is wrong. Add to that the facts that Hindi is not a mother-tongue for literally hundreds of millions of us Indians and that it offers no significant advantages in terms of economic progress, and you have a very weak case indeed.
Like everything else to do with us humans, threats and force never work when it comes to matters of the heart. And one's relationship with languages is a matter of the heart. In fact, force actually ruins what could have been a perfectly good situation. Behns and Bhais, why go for force when you can win us over with some choice servings of Gulzar? Or perhaps Harivansh Rai Bacchan?
Zor se nahin, pyaar se (figuratively) maaro. Jeet jaaoge!
*I mean no disrespect personally to these countries but the fact is that the West has grown deeply suspicious of certain nationalities. It is extremely saddening to me that people are being discriminated again based on such things but it is a reality of modern life. I hope it changes.
As a Kannadiga, I got triggered as usual at first but then I remembered that the Indian Constitution, the thing that actually forged into and sustains as one nation what is actually the European Union of the East, does in fact accord special status to English and Hindi. Those two are the 'official' languages as far as purposes of governance go for the Union. So to me, issuing passports in both these languages seemed fine eventually. What purpose it serves is beyond me, of course. A document whose primary purpose is to facilitate travel abroad will have stuff written in a language which less than half of India can read, let alone people of other countries. Smart. I suppose travel to Nepal will become a breeze compared to what it is now... a breeze. Half of the West has trouble identifying us from... less reputable countries* but sure, throw on some strange stuff on our passports too. It's not like our comfort with English is one of the primary reasons we have *something* at least to export for dollars. It's not like it plays a huge role in how successful we are in the West, particularly in the US. No sir, English has forever been and will always be a 'bad influence' on the culture that discovered nuclear fission before Julius Caesar was born. NO benefits at all. We must always conflate English with the English. But that's alright, as long as English is not done away with completely, it's all good.
Snide jokes and my personal politics aside, I will accept that this is not that big an issue. But...
... what this got me thinking about is the main question of Hindi being an official language that has at least some level of precedence over the other languages of India. Also, the arrogance of some "Hindi Humari #Rashtrabhaasha Hain" types that this and other moves triggered. Mind you, I know Hindi well enough. When I write Hindi, I can pass for a native speaker. Perhaps an old-fashioned, but still. My spoken Hindi isn't that great because I don't get to speak much. In fact, I never needed to speak it, except for one year in Gujarat. This point about needing it, I'll come back to it later if I remember. I like Hindi. It's a language, a means of communication that has been used to produce some really good literature, cinema and music. But it's just another language!
I'm willing to bet that a majority of Indians (who are not from the Hindi belt) reading this will understand spoken Hindi to some extent at least. Why is that? There will only be 4 primary reasons: Bollywood, school curriculum, some exposure to Hindi-speakers at work/school or having grown up in the Hindi belt. Take away all of that and how much Hindi would you know? Honestly, tell me. How else would you have learnt Hindi? You wouldn't. Don't even begin to try and explain to me how someone who has lived all their life in, say, Theerthahalli in Shimoga would understand even 'Ek Do Teen'. No way. There is absolutely no way for a non-Hindi speaker to understand Hindi. They are mutually unintelligible. I would have gone for the easiest example of certain people in Bangalore who can't understand a word of Kannada but still expect all the bus conductors and rickshaw drivers to be able to converse in #Rashtrabhaasha, but that's too easy and perhaps a little shallow. Most of India's major languages are mutually unintelligible. Ask the Mysore/Bangalore Kannadiga who has had to endure Tulu speakers around him. Ask me, about how Bangaloreans are shocked about me not understanding Telugu which they think is 'similar'. Why do they think it's similar? I think the answer is obvious. It all goes back to the four reasons I listed. To a native speaker of one of the major languages who hasn't been exposed in any way to another, every other major language will be almost as alien as English. And that's just the spoken part. Written? Forget about it. We have different scripts, for heaven's sake!
Alright, now that we've hopefully agreed on or at least started thinking about how different our languages are, lets talk about why we should fuss about them. Honestly, why should the imposition of one language on states who have their own distinct languages be an issue? Two reasons come to my mind: Culture and Economy.
First, the culture. I will extend this to one's identity itself. Language, more than anything else, shapes one's identity. Try as the organized religions may to change this, they inevitably bow to the might of languages. The language in which you think, which you speak with your family, which your favorite books are written in, that language shapes you. Several extremely important concepts in Christianity are disputed by different adherent simply on the basis of how the original Aramaic or Greek was translated! This is also important when you realize that all languages are not simply ways of expressing the same ideas using different sounds. If that were the case, this wouldn't be a huge issue. It's not like programming languages, where you can achieve the same results in different languages. Or wait a second, come to think of it, this isn't the case even in programming languages, right? I'm no computer science guy, but from what little I know, coding for a specific task in different languages has implications in terms of running time, storage space etc. Right? Leave all that aside, one language might simply let you achieve the same results in significantly less lines of code than another. Kundapur Kannada versus Arabic, anyone? Languages can even shape how we understand the Universe. How, you ask? Ask the people whose language has no concept of of numbers as we know it.
The economy part? I think I've said enough controversial things in this post already and will assume that it's easy to agree knowing which language matters most for an Indian who wants to prosper economically.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to get at, and probably boring you in the effort, is that languages matter. Imposing a language is no different to imposing a religion in my opinion. Even if a language is spoken by a huge majority of a country, imposing it on the minority is wrong. Add to that the facts that Hindi is not a mother-tongue for literally hundreds of millions of us Indians and that it offers no significant advantages in terms of economic progress, and you have a very weak case indeed.
Like everything else to do with us humans, threats and force never work when it comes to matters of the heart. And one's relationship with languages is a matter of the heart. In fact, force actually ruins what could have been a perfectly good situation. Behns and Bhais, why go for force when you can win us over with some choice servings of Gulzar? Or perhaps Harivansh Rai Bacchan?
Zor se nahin, pyaar se (figuratively) maaro. Jeet jaaoge!
*I mean no disrespect personally to these countries but the fact is that the West has grown deeply suspicious of certain nationalities. It is extremely saddening to me that people are being discriminated again based on such things but it is a reality of modern life. I hope it changes.
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