Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Times of India
Date: January 31, 2010
URL: http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/right-and-wrong/entry/mind-your-language-we-re
For someone whose fluency in the languages
of the Aryavarta is fairly basic, there are few things more exasperating than
being caught in the crossfire of incomprehension at social gatherings where,
as a rule, you meet people of your own social strata. Delhi is ostensibly
the Capital of India, the administrative centre of a country with multiple
languages and cultures. Yet, there is an unstated presumption that most Indians
are sufficiently multi-cultural to able to laugh at risqué jokes in
Punjabi and say 'wahwah' to the Urdu couplet most appropriate for the occasion.
The one occasion when, out of sheer perversity, i feebly asked for subtitles,
there were twenty pairs of eyes accusing me of being a rootless Angrez.
Negotiating the linguistic clutter of India
is never easy and invariably prone to social and political misunderstanding.
I recall a curious encounter with a shopkeeper in Southall, the 'Indian' ghetto
in London, in the early-1980s. Having ordered a takeaway, the man at the counter
asked me politely: "Are you an Indian?" "Yes," i replied.
"Can you speak Punjabi?" he queried. "I'm afraid not,"
i confessed. "Well, can you speak Gujarati?" Again, i confessed
my inability. "What sort of an Indian are you?" he barked indignantly.
It's a question that left me flummoxed. Unwilling
to engage in a discourse on the linguistic complexities of India, i left the
Southall desi content with the satisfaction that he had ticked off a rootless
wonder-one who didn't know the two Indian languages most prevalent in the
UK.
The encounter in Southall came to mind last
week on reading a report from the Jaipur Literary Festival, an event that
is fast becoming the place-to-be-seen each January. In a bewildering intervention,
diplomat-author Pavan Varma suggested that independent India began on the
wrong culture when Jawaharlal Nehru delivered his memorable "tryst with
destiny" speech in English. According to him, it was indicative of a
perverse mindset and "testimony to how the roots of our own languages
were weakened in 200 years of colonial rule." Nehru, it would, seem,
set the tone for the subsequent marginalization of the mother tongues in India.
Like the man from Southall, Varma seemed to
be asking: "What sort of Indian was Nehru?"
Having tasted the Jaipur experience for two
consecutive years, it may be presumed that Varma's tirade against the cultural
inadequacies of those Indians who see English as a status symbol went down
rather well. The festival has always been marked by an undercurrent of tension
between those who crave the opportunity to hear and interact with internationallyacclaimed
writers and those who turn to protest against the less exalted billing to
bhasha-the newspeak for what was earlier called the 'vernacular'. The bhasha
brigade tends to be somewhat assertive in flaunting their victimhood and,
like Varma, invariably succeed in guilt-tripping the Angrezi-wallas. Denouncing
the apparent colonization of the mind is trendy.
Bhasha may be shorthand for Indian languages
but in practice it has become a euphemism for Hindi. The real grievance of
the Hindi chauvinists isn't that the language has been ignored. Hindi is the
primary language of politics (but not statecraft). It dominates TV and Bollywood,
and it is the language most understood throughout India. Its functional importance
is undeniable. Apart from Tamil Nadu where its encroachments are fiercely
resisted, a smattering of Hindi can see you through most of India.
However, there is one shortcoming Hindi hasn't
been able to overcome: its lack of respectability. It suffers from a deep,
age-old inferiority vis-a-vis Urdu and an inability to cope with the disdain
of more evolved languages. Contrary to what Varma believes, colonial rule
and exposure to European ideas saw a flowering of regional languages in the
three presidencies. Hindi's rise was post-1947 and dictated by political necessity.
In Bengal, a state familiar to me, the upwardly
mobile, concurrently fluent in English, were never embarrassed by the presence
of bhasha newspapers and books in their homes. In Hindi-dominated Delhi, material
prosperity has triggered a comic Westernization, not least of which is the
massacre of the English language.
India is routinely embroiled in contrived
controversies over language. Periodically, nationalist assertion involves
Angrezi-bashing and shadow boxing with a colonial past. Yet, thanks to a globalization
from which India has profited greatly, these outbreaks of seasonal hysteria
rarely cross the bounds of a phoney war. English has continued to gain in
usage but India isn't likely to become a cultural outpost of the Anglosphere.
India's English is the language of abstraction, ideas and business; Hindi
is for everyday communication.
It's a replay of the Persian-Hindustani hierarchy
in Mughal India. Perhaps Nehru anticipated this: he spoke to the nation in
English and to voters in Hindi.