Shiban Khaibri
As of 2015 , the annual ritual of “commemorating” and not celebrating the Hindi Divas has gone, to be revisited next year in a few states of the country when some Hindi related activities and the “onerous” report filing job shall be looked after, during the second week of September. Are we doing a disservice to, if not a crude joke with our official (and not national) language, across the country even after 67 years of our independence? When shall we treat the language as something belonging to our country and being easiest medium to communicate, to extensively use it in our official routine work and above all, see a national mindset attuned to adopt, accept, promote and propagate its use? Is celebrating Hindi Divas really an honour to Hindi or is just a stereo formality undertaken casually during the Hindi fortnight to bring home that it was not a vibrant and living language for we Indians to feel proud of, and needed official support to stand on ?
President Pranab Mukherjee described Hindi as a link between the country’s ancient civilization and modern progress and hoped that it will soon get its due recognition as one of the official languages of the United Nations. He, while speaking on Hindi Divas, described Hindi as a vehicle of Indian thought and culture and that “it had achieved many a milestone since Independence”. He sincerely wants Hindi’s use to be extended to the vital areas of science and technology. This was vital for the development process of the country by participating in it actively by all, including those from the rural areas. “Hindi, added the President, “had its own role to play in the ongoing changes in the global economic scenario.” He admitted that millions of Indians across the globe, use Hindi as a medium of exchange with one another and it had given it a particular recognition. These feelings based on reality in respect of Hindi coming from the President of India do, undoubtedly carry a lot of meaning but looking at the ground realities about Hindi in our country, they speak volumes of neglect, victimhood of petty politics, unjustified bias against it and above all our mindset not still inclined to move away from the cloistered viewpoint about our own language, Hindi. It is the main tragedy about Hindi and there seems none to stem the rot. We are not against English but we are surely treating Hindi very harshly and not according it its due place.
Take the case of the Prime Minister who categorically admitted that he had learnt Hindi while selling tea, thus setting at rest, the illogical excuse about Hindi being difficult to be learnt. Shri Modi trying rightfully to accord Hindi its due place and to argue for its full relevance in the context of the present digital era, held the view that there were three languages in the world as most important, namely Chinese, Hindi and English. It is strange that those who unfortunately feign to not understand and thus not write or speak Hindi were the ones who watched Hindi movies the most and Modi Ji in this context said that to popularize Hindi world over, Indian cinema had to its credit an outstanding contribution not only nationally but internationally.
The Home Minister Rajnath Singh on the occasion said that he felt concerned over Hindi not getting the due prominence in various spheres of life the way it should have got. He said,” We have not given the kind of respect we should have given to Hindi.” He came down heavily on some self styled intellectuals who according to him continued to promote English (only). It may be noted that the wing in charge of promoting Hindi is being looked after by the Home Ministry and Rajnath Singh gave certain figures to prove his point by saying that 75% of the people speak Hindi or understand Hindi and in almost every village of the country , people either speak their mother tongue or Hindi, even if little and they do not know English and it is from one of the non Hindi speaking areas, the demand for making Hindi the official language came from a leader like Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The leaders of the Independence movement were absolutely above castes , regions and language barriers and always wanted India as a cohesive, united and a strong India , that is why leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Netaji Subhash Bose, Sardar Patel, Tilak, and many others wanted Hindi to be our official as well as national language but the diversity of our linguistic environment warranted a fixed definite time frame within which, more or less, Hindi would replace and phase out the usage of English in our day to day work and activities. That “time frame” seems infinite.
It is a travesty and a sad story about our country when the words like “impose” or “thrust” are used with regard to Hindi. Who is imposing or thrusting and on whom and even if imposing is assumed for illustration, what can be said about English which is by no means our native language? When Russian, French, Chinese, German, Arab, and other countries’ leaders visit our country, they feel proud in conversing with us, not in English, but in their country’s language and they care not too hoots about whether we understand or not but take special care in conveying to us proudly that they love their country and everything it had there for them. We take care in “ispeaking” at times and if we could, every time, in “Hinglish”, most of us cannot pronounce English correctly and very often commit grammatical mistakes in trying to do things in English but deride, detest and denounce our sweet, all round complete language known as Hindi which is wholly Indian and more often than not, even treat it belonging to the North , if not to Hindus and likewise recognize Urdu as the one belonging to or synonymous with Muslims , that is why even name plates of many “secular” leaders and other descriptions are found in bold letters in Urdu and in smaller font in Hindi followed by English at times in states like Bihar and U.P. These “secular” mindset political leaders forget the contribution of Muslims towards Hindi being spectacular as well as those of the great literary figures professing Hindu faith contributing a lot towards popularizing and adding new areas in the literature of Urdu language.
Now see the double standards of some political Parties. They use Hindi widely selectively either to put forth their political views across the country or use it to show down their political opponents but when its stature as a “Rashtra Bhasha” is there, they resort to the alibi of “imposing” and “thrusting”.
They pretend to respect Mahatma Gandhi but are silent over his assertion that “the country is dumb without Hindi”. We have achieved freedom but our own language is still rue- ably in a state of bondage. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that the neglect and the damage inflicted by us on Hindi is much more and severe than what happened under the British rule. Those who took the guard of the country after the British left, never introduced policies which could ensure due place and importance to Hindi and it won’t be out of context to say that the new generation leaders after the exit of Indira Gandhi are seen , with a few exceptions, totally hostile to Hindi and the neglect is to this extent that as per a survey, even most of the Hindi teachers at primary and High school levels do not know the elements of this language , not even how many consonants and vowels were there in Hindi and even not the name of a famous Hindi novel and the like. A language which cannot provide jobs or employment more or less sends the feeling of its level of utility and relevance in the present day competitive environs. Who is responsible for this “Durdasha” of Hindi must introspect and atone for their reckless attitude towards Hindi. Till then ritual of Sept 14 shall remain there.
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