Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Unravelling the Myths - VI

9) Southies need to be thankful that the northies are NOT forcing hindi.

First, Southies are NOT immigrants in India - their ancestors have ruled the land that can be to some extent associated with present day linguistic states. For example, TN associated with places where the Tamil kingdoms, Chola, Chera, Pandyan, Pallavas ruled.

Second, southies, if they move up north, they have picked up the language of that region and they expect the same from the northies when they move down south.

Third, India is NOT like France or Germany or Britain - its more like the European Union. - that is also why it is called the Indian union. What you are saying is like asking the French to speak English in France for the sake of numbers of english.

Fourth, northies do tend to "force" their language or hindi on southies and also on fellow northies wherever they go or some are like you - trying to act as if they are doing a favour by NOT forcing their language on others - which aint a favour by any means.

Fifth, even now, the govt spends around 100 crores a year for hindi evangelization and the rest of the languages combined together get less than 10 crores for their development - which is lopsided and biased to say the least.

Even in 1965, when the literacy rate was a paltry 24 % and when we were importing 2 shiploads of wheat/day to barely survive the govt spent 2.1 Million US dollars for hindi propagation. This was the time when shashtri gave the famous call for fellow Indians to skip one meal a day since we were short on food supplies - this is the best possible example of "forceful imposition / usurping common resources for the benefit of a single language"

To spread Hindi, the government is spending $2,100,000 this year. - this is in 1965 !!!
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,839158,00.htm

4 comments:

Iniyaal said...

Everything in this blog is very informative and good - from it's name to the contents, links given. Thanks for all the info.

வாழ்க தமிழ் அறம் தாரணி தழைத்திட! வாழ்க தமிழ் மொழி இனிமை பொங்கிட!

a blue eyed girl said...

Your blog is very interesting to me,as out of all my indian friends only one is from the south. Some of my other friends make constant remarks about how "Southies" as describe noticed in your blog should be learning hindi. There is a definite feeling of resentment there, but I always tell them when they start going on about the subject, "You know my friend - is from Chennai, I don't like it when you make such remarks." But I know they just shake their head at me because I'm American, therefore they feel I really can't comment on that.

Om said...

Blue eyed girl,

Thanks for dropping in.

This issue is a perennial issue.

People (even Indians) fail to understand that India has 1652 different languages of which 51 languages have more than million speakers - each state having a different language which is around 1000+ years old.

What you consider as "feeling of resentment" is pretty strong.

The first time there was a major agitation against language imposition was in 1937 (10 years before british left) and then there was another one in 1965 - you can find more posts/articles about those things.

This blog is completely dedicated to language issue in India :)

Om said...

Blue eyed girl,

You might want to check out this blog by a North Indian who spent a significant time of her childhood in Africa.

Read through the comments - gives a pretty good picture.

http://nitawriter.wordpress.com/2006/11/02/are-south-indians-superior-to-north-indians/