The language politics of India!!!

I am from Chennai (formerly Madras), a metropolis in south India. The languages I speak are Tamil (My mother tongue) and English (forced on us by the British who ruled us for over 300 years!!!). I completed my schooling and engineering from here. Madras has a lot of engineering colleges and it is not uncommon for students from other states to come here to attend college or grad school. My class in engineering had a few of these students too!!!

In India, different states speak different languages. So these other students in my class obviously didn’t know Tamil, the local language. They had problems communicating with us as most of them were shy to converse in English. So they (these students from the other states) hung out together and we (The Tamil speakers) never interacted well with them and vice-versa. Surprisingly these other students spoke Hindi even thought they were not all from the Hindi speaking BIMARU (Bihar, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh) belt. One student was from Kerala, two from Andhra and one I think!! from Maharashtra. (Kerala and Andhra are our neighboring states and don’t speak Hindi).

I began to think that Tamilnadu was the only state that didn’t approve of Hindi (which is true to an extent!!. The reasons for which I am not delving into here) and felt that we were secluding ourselves from the rest of the country by not learning the National Language (I had read that in my history textbook!!). So I felt the need to tell my fellow students to learn Hindi as a language that would unite us and give us an identity outside India. At this time I learn't very little Hindi even though I learnt how to read the script.

After my undergraduate education, I came to the United States to pursue a graduate degree in Engineering. I had to give the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) and TOEFL (“Test of English as a Foreign Language”). It is a common requirement for most programs. The reason I mention this is that the students who get admitted to schools in the US are generally good in English and have a decent vocabulary.

While studying at the US, I met some fellow Indians (the term used to refer to them is “desi”) or “desis” who went to the same school as me. In my experience most of the desis I met here assumed that I spoke Hindi by default and would start of with “Arre, tera naam kya hai?” (What is your name?) or “tum kahan say aa raha hai?” (Where are you from?) (Please pardon my grammar!!!). And since I neither spoke Hindi nor understood it well, I would reply in English that I didn’t understand what he/she asked also mentioning that I didn’t understand Hindi.

Typically, there could be two different reactions in this situation (its almost like a pattern of behavior!!!). Either the person would look at you and say “Oh!!! Tum South Indian eh kya??” (Are you a South Indian?) with disdain!!, or he or she would be totally oblivious to what you just said and would continue talking in Hindi. I can understand this attitude if it was India. People don’t speak English unless it is officially required. But in the United States where they attend graduate school this is not the case. From answering in a class, to shopping at the grocery store all of these students speak English. But when it comes to answering a fellow desi they wouldn’t reply unless you spoke in Hindi.

(However, it wouldn't be fair if I didn't mention about the few nice people who had no signs of the above problem.)

When I enquired what the problem was, all of them would reply “arre yaar!!! Hindi hamara Rastra Baasha” (Hindi is our National language!!). In effect all of them converged to one idea, that you are not patriotic if you didn’t know Hindi.(!!!!???) So I decided to do a little bit of research in this. Even the constitution of India (Article 343 deals with the languages of India) doesn't mention Hindi as the National language. It is one of the many (if I remember right 23) official languages of the republic of India. All this while I believed Hindi to be the national language as wrongly reported by the History textbook!!! When I told these other desi’s that Hindi is NOT the National Language they would totally refute the fact!!!!

The question I ask here is “Is Hindi language the identity card for an Indian?”, “Is language more of an identity to me than me being an Indian at heart and in my thoughts?” I don’t think so. Would it make sense if I told these people to converse in Tamil?

I am not against people learning other languages. In fact I am a proponent for the same. However if I chose not to learn some language, that’s my choice and should be respected. Respect for freedom of right and freedom of speech has more Indian-ness to it than just knowing Hindi!!