Pride and Prejudice - Language Divide

Life has a weird way of throwing surprises at you. Sometimes it makes me stop and wonder if there is a grand plan according to which every event in our life happens. Of late I have been surprised repeatedly by the offensive hatred posts in Rediff news between the North and South Indians. I was faintly aware of the divide but didn’t realize the extent until I joined the bandwagon of the NRI genre. It is more specifically North India vs. Chennai (which most assume as the representative of South India!). Our North Indian counterparts seem to have a general hatred for many things South Indian including food, culture, skin texture etc and South Indians seem to be indifferent to North Indians.

Whose fault is it anyways? Browsing our history, back in the sixties, the government of India was trying to come up with an official language that was Indian so as to phase out English. Since Hindi was popular in the North and due to its similarity to Sanskrit, which again is the origin for many Dravidian languages, the government assumed that South India would be fine with Hindi as an official language. While, Hindi was being drafted as an official language, a simultaneous movement to popularise Hindi as the national language sprung up. The states of South India, particularly Tamil Nadu took exception to Hindi being touted as the national language and that's where the whole language issue began. Please note that nowhere in the Indian Constitution is it stated that Hindi is the national language of India. The Indian government tried to incorporate Hindi into the school curriculum but the Tamil Nadu government revolted against this and took to enforcing English in the school curriculum, sidelining Hindi. At the same time, North Indians revolted against this anti-Hindi campaign and hence reinforced Hindi and side-lined English. It's interesting to note that Bengalis shared the same intensity of pro-Bengali/anti-Hindi feeling as Tamilians did for Tamil apparently for the same reasons of cultural and historical significance.

Indians love to laugh at another person’s failures, while we are standing in deep shit. Why do most of us have this attitude that “We have the best culture, language, community; and that we are the best analyzers, psychologists” and of course rest of the world lives in Stone Age. I consider my great nation and my fellow Indians to be a little more tolerant and accommodative. I believe that a majority populace makes a genuine effort to patch up some words and strike a conversation with a neighbour in Hindi, even though most of the words are those used in the movies and news from Doordarshan. I too joined my voice to the saying - "Hindi is the national language - Rashtra Bhasha. And everyone should know it" because atleast in that way we Indians can stay united. But the question that lingers in my mind is why choose Hindi as the Rashtra Bhasha? Because a majority of people speak it! Simple isn’t it? So what about the minority? Be it a minority or majority, every person and race has an identity which is unique to them and represents who they are - a sum total of their upbringing, values, habits and beliefs. Is it fair to force anyone to give it up? Probably not. The counter argument is that there is a difference between being accommodative and giving up your identity. Are the south Indians forced to give up too much? Why does not a North Indian learn Kannada, Telugu or Tamil even after living in a place for a decade in some instances? While I have seen many South Indians living in Mumbai speaking Hindi, even knowing that they are mocked at their accent. They know that it’s important to speak the language of the land to survive. It is rather surprising to see someone going to Germany for a short stint take German language classes, while the same can only mock at the other languages even if he is to stay there for a lifetime.

We can pool in lots of inspirations from other developed nations like European Union who have succeeded to come up with a common currency inspite of their diversity. Indians have the same currency across the nation, but still have our boundaries and drift further into small States and independent entity. We stubbornly refuse to look beyond our boundaries. There used to be a time when the Nation as a whole watched Buniyaad and Hum Log which spread unity among the populace. Recently my friend forwarded an old song – “Mile sur mera tumhara….” a multi-lingual patriotic song aired in DD. How many people watch Doordarshan nowadays? Probably a hand few to watch test cricket matches and that too has been taken over by tear-jerkers like Chitthi, Kyunki Saas bhi Kabhi Bahu thi etc.

India is a mélange of multiple worlds and that is something we keep forgetting. We cover ourselves with an illusion of One India, India Shining and Incredible India slogans. While ideally, all of it is true - we are a million worlds jam-packed into one small nation. How long are we going to accuse each other on a trivial issue like language? We tend to forget that every state has its share of culture, traditions and values. As long as you don’t appreciate and blend in, you remain an outsider living in India. We cannot stop this vicious cycle unless one side steps down for a while. But the bigger question is how deep is the issue? Does it matter at all, now that most people in India are familiar with English and its variants such as Hinglish, Tanglish, etc. We have various goals to achieve together and not dispute amongst ourselves. Let’s voice our views to greater causes and rise above trivialities.