Author: Anupreeta Das
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: June 24, 2001
What do you do with a language that's
morphed over seven centuries, flirted and allied with scores of dialects,
sulked when you've tried to sully it with bureaucratese, but is ever-willing
to be teased into new life? If you're part of the set which decides what
we, the people (specifically, television viewers), should watch, you follow
a simple rule: if it won't go away, wrap it up in glossy packaging, and
suddenly, everyone's calling it Hip.
The language in question is Hindi,
spoken in eight states of the country and understood in all the others.
But lest you think television is doing its bit to be Socially Responsible
- as the media in developing countries is supposed to do - by pulling the
sarkari out of Hindi and giving the language back to the people, hold it.
Economics, not social responsibility, is giving Hindi its With It-edge.
In the mass media, Hindi has acquired
the smell of freshly minted currency, and is equally spendable. "Television
channels have realised that they will go nowhere if they are not rooted
in Hindi," believes Hindi litterateur Rajendra Yadav, who also edits the
literary journal Hans.
As advertisers and news programmers
discover there is a huge Hindi-speaking audience out there - willing to
tune in to your message and perhaps buy your products - the new outreach
mantra is all about talking to viewers in a language they are comfortable
with. Significantly, original advertising in Hindi for television now comprises
a large chunk of any ad agency's work; between 1997 and 2000, advertising
expenditure in Hindi increased from Rs 168.6 crore to Rs 617 crore, according
to an ORG-MARG survey. And of the new ads released in 2000, 1,780 were
in Hindi, while English ads tagged behind at 1,037.
Most Hindi advertisements today
are glitzy, smart and tailored for the upper middle classes, whether it's
personal care products or foodstuff. "Being upmarket or downmarket isn't
about language anymore, it's about spending power," affirms Ajoy Bhan,
Associate VP and Senior Creative Director, HTA, Delhi.
Or, take the example of Aaj Tak,
originally a 30-minute news programme on DD Metro, which was launched as
a 24-hour news channel last December. Within seven months, Aaj Tak has
nosed ahead of its competitors, and commands the loyalty of 40 per cent
of the people who also watch Star News in English. "The perception that
Hindi is a downmarket language is fast changing, and this is true of both
viewers and advertisers. Premium advertisers, who were once hesitant to
associate themselves with Hindi News are today convinced of its merits,"
claims Aaj Tak's G Krishnan.
It wasn't always like this. Hindi,
despite its status as the nation's official language (or perhaps because
of it), was for long considered infra dig. It skulked in panstained government
corridors, became a Convenient political symbol of 'national in tegration',
and was even usurped by the anti-English lobby but rarely dusted out of
the closet to be shown off to the world. Even a rich literary tradition
couldn't save Hindi from this stepmotherly treatment, since those who spoke
English traditionally belonged to the privileged sections, setting the
aspirational standards for middle India.
Satellite television, believes Purushottam
Aggarwal, who teaches Hindi at the JNU's Centre for Indian Languages, has
done a lot to bridge the gap between speakers of Hindi and English, as
also between Hindi-wallahs and those who speak other regional languages.
"It has ensured that to be pro-Hindi, you no longer have to be anti-English.
The antagonistic relationship between the two languages in urban India
is over," says Aggarwal, who has also scripted Ji Pradhanmantriji (the
sequel to Ji Mantriji, which is currently airing on Star Plus).
In fact, Ji Mantriji has managed
to synthesize the current goodwill between speakers of both languages into
a format where the sensibilities and style are quite like the English version
(repartee and deadpan humour, rather than slapstick or overt comedy), while
the language remains Hindi. Interestingly enough, the book Ji Mantriji,
which was recently published by Penguin India and BBC Books Worldwide,
is in English. Explains BBC Worldwide's Monisha Shah, who translated Tomar's
script into English: "The target reader add audience of the two Ji Mantrijis
are the same." Ergo, the Ji Mantriji viewer understands Hindi, but doesn't
have the facility to read it!
Additionally, the Hindi used in
Ji Mantriji, or even news, is kept strictly simple. Aggarwal insists that
the brief given to both Alok Tomar, who adapted and scripted Ji Mantriji
from the hugely successful British original Yes Minister, and him, was
to keep the Hindi "communicative and colloquial. The idiom had to be what
the average viewer would understand". Indeed, another reason why a news
channel like Aaj Tak has found viewers among a sizeable chunk of the young,
urban elite is because it has been able to combine accessible, everyday
Hindi with slick production values. "It's a major factor bonding us with
our viewers," claims Krishnan. Ditto for Kaun Banega Crorepati, Star Plus'
success story, which has film icon Amitabh Bachchan peaking in simple,
easy-to-understand Hindi, while the programme's format remains pinned on
the original, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
But while television economics has
helped the fence dividing Hindi and English to collapse - at least partially
- and perhaps blurred the class profiles a bit, it's hard to deny the role
of the Hindi-only heroes who have propelled several newly-enfranchised,
hitherto 'backward' castes into the public sphere in the past decade. Leaders
like Laloo Prasad Yadav, Kanshi Ram and Mayawati have used the Hindi language
as a political statement, forcing a re think on the Us Vs Them controversy.
HTA's Bhan also points to the fact
that a far larger number of people belonging to the middle class have now
entered creative professions like advertising and media. "They have brought
a change in the way agencies think and relate to their target audiences.
It's a more accurate reflection of what's being spoken in urban India than
the original English-speaking, upper class, Bandra school of advertising."
However, Sandeep Bindra of TV Ad Index, an advertising research organisation,
offers a contrary opinion: "In advertising, it's always been Hindi. English
ads are creeping up only now."
And then, there is entirely different
dynamic of the print media. Hindi newspapers have always been ahead of
English newspapers in terms of circulation, and the gap between the largest
selling Hindi daily, Dainik Bhaskar (1.12 crore) and the largest selling
English daily (59 lakh) continues to be wide as ever but what has changed
is the quality. Gone in most places are bad newsprint, grainy pictures,
screaming stories. Instead, much like the English national dailies, regional
Hindi papers are relying on colour pictures, slick supplements and aesthetic
design. What emerges then is a rather intriguing picture of the times.
Television has helped negotiate a space where English and Hindi can cohabit
- the first progeny of which was the clumsy Hinglish - and evolve an entirely
new idiom, wherein the vocabulary of thinking is in English, and the final
product, in Hindi.
Purists, who have been trying to
purge Hindi of the 'foreign' influences of Urdu, Arabic and Punjabi, will
undoubtedly attack the new commingling. Others, like Purvanand at the Hindi
International University, which publishes a quarterly journal called Hindi,
argue on a different note. To him, the growing "legitimacy and respectability"
given to Hindi usage by the electronic media is an attempt to camouflage
the class differential between speakers of Hindi and English. "The language
of international capital is English, and if Hindi is being used by the
mass media, it is only to further the interests of capital," he believes.
