Fwd: Techies debate over India's national language

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Dec 1, 2014, 5:43:38 AM12/1/14
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Edward Jeni <edwar...@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 2:55 PM
Subject: Techies debate over India's national language
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Below conversation is between two techies working in Chennai IT Corridor. They are Elangovan (a.k.a. Elango) from Tamil Nadu & Sunil from Gujarat; they are team mates and often have conversations, if not heated arguments, on various topics. One of the notable hot conversations among them soon after our Honorable Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi visited the USA.

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Sunil: Hey Elango, did you watch NaMo’s speech in Madison Square? If not, watch it today, its available in Youtube. It is incredible and so touching.

Elango: Hi Sunil, No man. I did not and also I am not interested. Anyways his speech is always in Hindi and I don’t know it.

Sunil: Oh man! Don’t worry you may find a link with subtitles. See man, this is another reason to know Hindi man.

Elango: If anything important, I will get to know through Tamil or English media. Why would I need to spend my time when he speaks in a language which I don’t understand?

Sunil: That is not his problem. You have to see it to know how Indian Americans were impressed by his speech. He is a very good orator; you miss his awesome speech because you do not know our national language.

Elango: When he doesn’t care about the person who doesn’t know Hindi, why would I care to listen to his speech man? We have plenty of orators in Tamil too. Try to listen to them, you may enjoy too.

Sunil: Prime Minister cannot speak in all languages so he speaks in our national language, which is Hindi.

Elango: Oh Sunil, don’t keep on insisting that Hindi is our national language. Who told you so? Where did you read?

Sunil: Where should I read it? Everyone in India knows Hindi is our national language. When you can learn a foreign language, English, why not Hindi? It is hypocrisy.

Elango: No, No, don’t switch the topic; I will explain later why we learn English and why we don’t learn Hindi. But let’s stick to the national language topic. I meet a person every other day who says Hindi is a national language of India and as an Indian citizen we are supposed to know it.

Sunil: Yes, as an Indian you are supposed to know it.

Elango: That means we are a qualified citizen of India only if you know Hindi. In other words if you don't learn Hindi you will be treated as a second class citizen?

Sunil: Don’t say you are treated as second class citizen, but you are supposed to learn our national language, you need to be proud of it.

Elango: But that is the reality; anyway I can give you ample evidences to prove that Hindi is not our national language. Search in youtube “Is Hindi our national language”, you will get some useful videos.

Sunil: If Hindi is not a national language then what is our national language?

Elango: Very logical question but the fact is India doesn’t have any national language. Your Gujarat High Court only gave judgment [in January 2010] that Hindi is not a national language and there is no national language in India.

Sunil: You ask anyone; even a small kid will tell you Hindi is a national language.

Elango: No sir, people may say so. That is false claim. It is a wrong perception or collective [un]consciousness; it can't be accepted or it can’t be considered as a law of the land. Gujarat High Court clearly said that "there is nothing on record to suggest that any provision has been made or order issued declaring Hindi as a national language of the country".

Sunil: We have seen a lot of High Court judgments; it can be easily overruled by Supreme Court.

Elango: This judgment came in early 2010. As long as it is not overruled, it is the final verdict. Also it is based on our Constitution only. You can refer Article 343 of our Constitution. As per the Constitution, there are 22 official languages, and Hindi is one of them. Hindi and English are official languages, not a national language.

Sunil: I don’t know what the constitution or law says but doesn’t India need a national language? Why should we depend on the foreign language? It is Indian government’s duty to educate everyone in India. They can offer free language classes if needed.

Elango: They already spend a lot of our tax money in propagating Hindi. The same Constitution of India, the Article 351 says “It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language”.However, The Official Languages Rules (Use for Official Purposes of the Union-1976) clearly states that Hindi can be extended to whole of India, except the State of Tamil Nadu. This rule is related to the use of official language in the Union or Central government offices.Even then the law says Hindi shall not be propagated in Tamil Nadu, India keeps violating the law in many fronts.

Sunil: Why Tamil Nadu is an exception? Isn’t it part of India?

Elango: Yes, as of now it is part of India, not Hindia. I hope you understand the difference. We wish other non Hindi states too claim for this status. You have to learn about Anti Hindi Imposition protest in Tamil Nadu. We call it “language war” man.

Sunil: All states in India accepted Hindi, they all know it. Only Tamil Nadu politicians are using this as a political tool to cheat the Tamil people.

Elango: That is wrong observation. It was the people who fought against Hindi imposition. Without people support any war cannot be won. It is the people mandate that the politicians follow. In fact, it was Odiya people who first protest against Hindi imposition [in 1895] in Sambalpur even before Tamils protested it in 1930s. The protest against Hindi imposition was spread over parts of Karnataka, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala also. We wish other non Hindi states too claim for this status. We will definitely support it. I think already Karnataka stated this demand.

Sunil: Learning a new language is always good. Why you people hate it?

Elango: Yes, learning a new language is good and that should come out of our interest. We are not against Hindi, we don’t hate that language. But we are against the imposition of Hindi.

Sunil: Why don’t you people give Hindi as optional language? Is there a space if anyone wants to learn it?

Elango: Yes, there are plenty of options to learn Hindi and even some of our colleagues from Tamil Nadu know a little bit of Hindi. But teaching Hindi in government schools is prohibited, it is not the duty of Tamil Nadu government to teach Hindi; if we keep it, it becomes imposition of Hindi.

Sunil: Man, you keep saying Hindi imposition, when did Indian government do it?

Elango: It still does, even today. Why Indian government announces to follow Sanskrit week, every year? Why do they change the event names as Guru Utsav, Daan Utsav? Why our PM asks to use Hindi in Social media? The agenda is to bring Hindi as a national language by forcing everyone in India to learn it. They think they can make Hindi as national language by saying so. We are only against Hindi imposition until now, but I think they would eventually turn us against Hindi itself.

Sunil: If Tamil people learn Hindi, then it benefits them only. They can get job outside Tamil Nadu.

Elango: Do you mean Tamils are not crossing Tamil Nadu for jobs? Hope you remember our company’s training program in Mumbai last year where we met lot of Tamil colleagues who never studied Hindi in schools but they learnt a bit of Marathi and Hindi to communicate to the local people and use English in office. If I learn English I can use it almost anywhere in the world. When already English had become a common link language in India and also almost globally, let’s use it. Haven’t you heard about a book called “Development as Freedom” written by Noble prize winner, economist Amartya Sen? He says Tamil Nadu is leading in India and India benefits from Tamil Nadu. I would say it is because we did not accept Hindi Imposition. Only if one masters his mother tongue, he can become a thoughtful person. I can cite a plenty of research results. I mean Malayalam for Kerala, Marathi for Maharastra, Bengali for West Bengal, Gujarati for Gujarat and so on….

Sunil: Don’t always do cost benefit analysis; if you know Hindi then  you can watch Hindi movies and we can use Hindi to converse instead of using a foreign language.

Elango: No, return on investment (ROI) is very important in any sense. If English is a foreign language, so as Hindi; it is neither your mother tongue nor mine. So no harm in using English to communicate; we make a lot of good movies in Tamil, you guys will have to learn Tamil to watch them.. What do you say? :-) Film loving people watch any good movies cutting across language. I knew many Tamils watch very good movies of Hindi, Bengali, Iranian too..Please do remember that too.

Sunil: Ok, leave it. Don’t you think it would be better if we have one common language and culture across India?

Elango: No, it won’t be good. If you don’t mind, can you please define India in one sentence?

Sunil: Do you want me to define India?

Elango: Yes

Sunil: Hmm…. India is a unique country which has unity in diversity.

Elango: So you answered your question. It is Unity in Diversity which makes India unique in the world, not uniformity. I again tell you, it is India and not Hindia

Sunil: what do you mean by Hindia?

Elango: India is a federation of different nationalities in the Indian subcontinent. If you wish for Hindia, you people can form it by consolidating only Hindi states, where you can have one national language and one culture. It is as simple as it is.

Sunil: So you people love your language but you don’t give logical reason for not learning Hindi.

Elango: Oh my goodness, I have given you plenty of logical reasons for not learning Hindi. There are already plenty of school dropouts due to not scoring pass marks in English, if we add one more foreign language on top of it, then that will definitely increase the school dropouts. This means, those kids education will be over. Why should one end his education because he or she can’t master a foreign language? After all, language is not knowledge; it is just a medium to express his/her thoughts.

Sunil: You guys will never learn Hindi then.

Elango: If I wish or someone wishes, [s]he can learn it, but it can’t be mandatory to all. When Hindi people don’t even want to learn one foreign language, why should we alone take the burden of learning one more foreign language when there is no benefit and only disadvantage?

Sunil: How do you say that Hindi people don’t want to learn English?

Elango: Hindi students protested against English language marks in civil services aptitude test. If they are so worried that their rights violated since they had to face a few English questions, what about us? We were denied to write the exams in our language and forced to give exam in one of the foreign language, English or Hindi? Isn’t this hypocrisy?

Sunil: So you want them to accept English in civil service exams?

Elango: There are two possible solutions; the first solution is to let everyone write the exam in their own mother tongue which gives benefit to all. The second solution is to keep a common foreign language to all, which gives a common platform or equal disadvantage to all.

Sunil: Think about the second solution again, are you kidding buddy?

Elango: This is not a joke, this is implemented in Singapore.

Sunil: Ok man, I will check in net about the things we discussed. I still can’t believe it.

Elango: Yes, check it.

Sunil: Oh, time up. I need to join a conf call now with US client. I will talk to you later.

Elango: Okay, see you buddy.

(The above debate written by Ranganathan , a software professional from Tamil Nadu working now in United States)
Note: Below are the links cited in above conversation.
Know about India - Is Hindi our national language?




Regards
P.Edward Jeni
+91 9443002949
 edwar...@yahoo.com
 edwar...@gmail.com


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