Remember the last time when you tripped down and then got up with a few bruises on your knees? Remember the scabs that covered your knees after the bruises were healed? Remember what happened when you tried to scratch the scabby knees? It seems that the Modi government has been busy doing that: scratching the scabs. And they are getting to know exactly what happens if you do that. Pus. Blood. If you have any doubt, check this out.
Language is a very complicated thing in India. Not just in India, but all over the world. Wars were fought for it. Plenty of them. Unrest over language is not a very distant thing in the past in India. Anybody who has a common sense understanding of the situation of language in India would know that it is a delicate subject. It is a like a pyramid built using eggs. You have to be careful.And then, all of a sudden, barely after a month of taking power, Modi government wants to see what happens if you apply some pressure on top of this pile of eggs. Somebody wants to figure out what lies beneath the solid dry skin of the scab.
Why can't people let things be?
With nobody forcing anything on anybody, plenty of non-Hindi speakers are watching Hindi movies, listen to Hindi songs and try to converse in Hindi. Across India, not just in the North.
Without nobody forcing anything on anybody, people know by default that learning English is the way to acquire knowledge and get ahead in life.
Without nobody forcing anything on anybody, everybody likes to speak their mother tongue (You must visit our company to see the full power of this natural tendency).
After 1991 (thanks to the two most ridiculed Prime Ministers we had in the recent past who served any considerable time period), India has become globally so integrated that English has become the most prominent national language by default. It is not anybody's fault or agenda or gain. Things like this do happen in the course of history. People speak the language that integrate them to the rest of the world. Otherwise, what is the use of language itself? Indeed, English was the language of the colonialists. But it is no more a colonial language. It is a world language. I am pretty sure that there are more people in India who can read and write English as compared to Britain. It is no shame to any concept of India that people speak more English than Hindi. If anybody is having that kind of a thought, I can only ask them to examine their level of affiliation to the Indian constitution.
If there is one thing that unites India - everybody across the nation - that is Cricket.
If there is one language that unites India - a language everybody is willing to learn and eager to speak - that is English. It is not Hindi. It is not Tamil. It is not Bengali. It is not Malayalam. And there is a reason why people want to speak - it represents the door to opportunities. Not only in India, but around the world.
The attempt to somehow topple English from its default societal position by some kind of social engineering tactic reeks of three things:
1) Absolute political naivety - to simply thing that you get away with this.
2) Strategic stupidity - if at all there is any language that needs to be promoted in India, it is actually English. There is no way that Modi or anybody can expect to uplift the struggling millions without opening them to the door of global opportunities.
3) Cultural narrow-mindedness - that very keenness to mend the society to suit your own ideological agenda.
I just pray that it is just the political naivety. But, having followed BJP's rise to power ever since 1990, my common sense tells me that it is the cultural narrow-mindedness that sometimes even bends its own concepts of the idea of India.
That is a tragedy.
Language is a very complicated thing in India. Not just in India, but all over the world. Wars were fought for it. Plenty of them. Unrest over language is not a very distant thing in the past in India. Anybody who has a common sense understanding of the situation of language in India would know that it is a delicate subject. It is a like a pyramid built using eggs. You have to be careful.And then, all of a sudden, barely after a month of taking power, Modi government wants to see what happens if you apply some pressure on top of this pile of eggs. Somebody wants to figure out what lies beneath the solid dry skin of the scab.
Why can't people let things be?
With nobody forcing anything on anybody, plenty of non-Hindi speakers are watching Hindi movies, listen to Hindi songs and try to converse in Hindi. Across India, not just in the North.
Without nobody forcing anything on anybody, people know by default that learning English is the way to acquire knowledge and get ahead in life.
Without nobody forcing anything on anybody, everybody likes to speak their mother tongue (You must visit our company to see the full power of this natural tendency).
After 1991 (thanks to the two most ridiculed Prime Ministers we had in the recent past who served any considerable time period), India has become globally so integrated that English has become the most prominent national language by default. It is not anybody's fault or agenda or gain. Things like this do happen in the course of history. People speak the language that integrate them to the rest of the world. Otherwise, what is the use of language itself? Indeed, English was the language of the colonialists. But it is no more a colonial language. It is a world language. I am pretty sure that there are more people in India who can read and write English as compared to Britain. It is no shame to any concept of India that people speak more English than Hindi. If anybody is having that kind of a thought, I can only ask them to examine their level of affiliation to the Indian constitution.
If there is one thing that unites India - everybody across the nation - that is Cricket.
If there is one language that unites India - a language everybody is willing to learn and eager to speak - that is English. It is not Hindi. It is not Tamil. It is not Bengali. It is not Malayalam. And there is a reason why people want to speak - it represents the door to opportunities. Not only in India, but around the world.
The attempt to somehow topple English from its default societal position by some kind of social engineering tactic reeks of three things:
1) Absolute political naivety - to simply thing that you get away with this.
2) Strategic stupidity - if at all there is any language that needs to be promoted in India, it is actually English. There is no way that Modi or anybody can expect to uplift the struggling millions without opening them to the door of global opportunities.
3) Cultural narrow-mindedness - that very keenness to mend the society to suit your own ideological agenda.
I just pray that it is just the political naivety. But, having followed BJP's rise to power ever since 1990, my common sense tells me that it is the cultural narrow-mindedness that sometimes even bends its own concepts of the idea of India.
That is a tragedy.
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