Thursday, December 14, 2006

Unravelling the Myths - V

8)One Nation, One Language – National Integration.

This is another one of the major myths that is brought into the picture quite often.

The point put forth is this:

US, UK, France have one language and hence have developed.

Counterpoints:

Switzerland has Four National Languages – Romansh, Italian, French, and German and it is well-developed.

There are quite a few countries even in India’s neighborhood that show the negatives of imposing a language on a huge chunk of population.

Pakistan-B’desh:

After a lot of controversy over the language issue, the final demand from East Pakistan was that Bangla must be the official language and the medium of instruction in East Pakistan and for the central government it would be one of the state languages along with Urdu. The first movement on this issue was mobilised by Tamaddun Majlish headed by Professor Abul Kashem. Gradually many other non-communal and progressive organisations joined the movement, which finally turned into a mass movement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bangladesh#The_Language_Movement

Sri Lanka:

One of the main reasons for the civil war in Sri Lanka is the Sinhala only act 1956 which gives importance to Sinhala at the expense of Tamil.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2304/stories/20060310001305500.htm

http://www.languageinindia.com/jan2002/srilanka1.html

As seen in both the cases, imposition of one language causes trouble and not “integration”.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you could link to my post as well. The url is:
http://nitawriter.wordpress.com/2006/11/02/are-south-indians-superior-to-north-indians/

JC said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
JC said...

There is a different perspective to it
Language is not the root cause of the strife in Srilanka and Bangladesh...discrimination was...instead of integration there was subjugation...
England, Scotland and Wales integration stands testimony to the power of the language as an integrating force
Language is neither a necessary nor sufficient force for integration but it still is a factor
But the divisive forces will always choose to ignore such voices

Om said...

//Language is not the root cause of the strife in Srilanka and Bangladesh...discrimination was//

JC,

Language was the tool to differentiate and subjugate, I have provided necessary links to prove it, please go through it :)

England, Scotland, Wales could have worked out because the Scots and Wales ppl had an advantage in learning English which is a global/technology/academic/business language.

The Tamils dont have any such reasons. The Tamils/TN is comparatively better off than the BIMARU/hindi belt. If the Tamils have to progress more, they have to learn/emulate the western world which is largely English speaking and not the hindi belt.

The above may seem a bit harsh but that is the reality, you must learn from the ppl who are better off not worse off than you are :)

Please, do google the ill-effects of imposition of language - the so called "divise forces" are NOT asking for the hindi speaking ppl to learn their language :)

Anonymous said...

I don't know whether you meant my post. But if you did, it was never removed.
However links do not appear properly in comments here.
If you click on my name you will find my blog and then my post. A most detailed discussion has been going on there and people from all parts of India have participated.

nubin said...

Are you crazy? English is not an official language in Switzerland. It is German infact.

Om said...

Nubin,

These are the official languages of Switzerland:

German,
French,
Italian,
Romansh.