Yesterday happened to be 'Hindi Diwas' and as expected there was some cacophony about Hindi imposition especially in some pockets of southern states. Being a Hyderabadi is being in a state of perpetual dichotomy as all through my life, I've been exposed to Hindi literature, movies, music et.al on one hand and equally acquainted with anti-Hindi sentiment and #StopHindiImposition movement which I believed was more of a brouhaha, much to the chagrin of my fellow south Indians.
We all love our own language and hate if others impose an alien language on us by force and it's quite natural but is Hindi really a native tongue of majority of North Indians who want to impose it on us Southies?
When PM Modi (or many of his predecessors) addresses the nation on Aug 15th or at international fora in Hindi, do we ever wonder that his first language was Gujarati but he put forth Hindi as a unifying language to represent the indigeneity. Mumbai being a Bollywood hub and a commercial focal point promoted Hindi more than any other city still retaining their Marathi ethos. Just that they did not cry foul about Hindi imposition.
If you need more data, Biharis speak Bhojpuri, Himachals speak Pahari. Punjabi, Kashmiri, are languages of North Indian states. Awadhi, Marwari, Haryanvi are distinct dialects of Hindi spoken in regions of North India, North Eastern states have their own languages and hence...
Hindi, as we know, is not a universally spoken first language of all North Indians. But they all have risen over their egos and accepted Hindi as the common bridge for communication because 57% of Indians speak and understand the language. The basis of civilization is when two people do not speak the same language, one of them adapt the language with wider comprehensibility or both accept a more commonly spoken language.
Now let us talk about the elephant in the room. Why Hindi and why not make Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam or Kannada a unifying language for the whole country ? As mentioned earlier Hindi is officially understood by 57% of the country's population and the number could be more as many might have denied their intelligibility despite their familiarity. Guess what % of Indians speak Telugu ? barely 8%, Tamil - 6.5% or Kannada or Malayalam less than 5%.
There could be a possible counter argument that number of speakers should not be a parameter to decide that. Touché. If number of speakers should not be a parameter, can Karnataka drop Kannada as the sole official language as there are pockets that exclusively speak Tulu or Konkani ? If Hindi is being imposed on South India, isn't Kannada being imposed on whole of Karnataka ?
Kannada is still an official language as per the constitution along with other languages but Telugu is still not an official language in Tamil Nadu despite spoken by 6% of state population (similar to percentage of Tamil speakers in whole of India) ? Lambadi spoken by 6% of Telangana, Urdu by 6% in Andhra Pradesh but still not official languages. So who is crying wolf here ?
All states have declared their dominant majoritarian language as the first language in their respective states but with 57% of speakers, Hindi is still not the national language but only one of the official languages like all our beloved regional languages and we still crib about somebody imposing Hindi on us.
South Indians instead preferred English as the bridge language which is hardly spoken by 10% of the country and is a first language of under 0.02 % of Indians. We chose to adapt and adopt a foreign language introduced by the guys who killed 100 million Indians (including south Indians) just to camouflage our linguistic chauvinism coupled by jealousy over a much widely spoken indigenous language.
I have nothing against English. I think in English and it is my lifeline. I love and am proud of being a Telugu and am a perennial student of the linguistics of both Telugu and English but I do not feel insecure or threatened by Hindi.
If we were asked to respect a national emblem or a tricolor, that doesn't mean we are being subjected to some imposition because we are equally free to celebrate our regional quintessence too. If we were asked to recite 'Jana Gana Mana', a Bengali anthem, that doesn't make 'Maa Telugu Talliki' any inferior.
Addition of Hindi to already existing vernacular language in signposts or literature isn't tantamount to imposition, it's only facilitation. Embrace if you can, ignore if you can't because nobody is replacing your language with Hindi.
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