I have come for the first time to study out of my hometown, and that too almost 2000 kms away from my native place...! But I feel very happy to become a part of a prestigious institute like IIT Kharagpur...!!!
IIT or any such national level institutes are the place where you can smell the fragrance of India, you can feel that the whole India is situated in the campus of the university..!! But are we Integrated? Is our nation, where you can find many different culture integrated...?
The answer is PARTIALLY yes. Not, fully...!!
whenever I go to mess to have food, and sit with group of persons coming from same region but other than that of mine, I feel like undergoing a big torture..!! and sense like we are lacking in National Integrity..! sometimes I am confused that are we lacking national integrity or not trying to integrate??
The reason behind this is the Language...!!
If you people have forgotten, I ll recall you that Hindi is our national language, and after coming to here only I came to know that there are some states in India, especially southern regions, where people do not know Hindi..!! Isn't it shameful?
I had once a chat with my friend who is studying right now in Tamilnadu, and I came to know that Hindi is not being taught in some schools there..!! Inspite of being an Indian, if one cannot speak hindi, nothing is more shamelful than this..!!
I ll like to put my own experience..!! Some months ago we, some classmates had gone to
Sikkim to roam in the beautiful lap of the nature. During our travelling we used to hire taxis and go to different places. One day I was in a taxi with my 5 other friends who are Telugu..!! and they just start chattering....''chepu anna...anta...nennu...something like that..!", you can feel what torture i had had for 2 hrs..!! I was just sitting like a statue..!! Sorry my friends (Balu, shiva, Rajendra...) please, don't mind..!! Not only Telugu, I found this things happeing with all regions like Bengali, Gujarati and almost all...!!
The meaning of my saying is yes, you do give priority to your mothetongue, do preserve its cultural heritage, do talk with your same cultural friends in your mothertongue but when you are sitting in a group with persons coming from other regions of India, please talk in hindi and don't put that fellow into extremly awkward position..!!
One more thing I have seen here is communities...we are from Gujarati community, we are from bengali association, we are telugu association and bla bla..!! Ofcourse, that is good thing which gives you the feel of your native land but these communities should not go beyond the identity of being an Indian...!!
Unity has always been a most striking characteristic of India, so please does not let it seperate from the name of our great nation..!! Atleast communicate in Hindi when it is needed, and if you don't know, start learning hindi..!! If you are from a state where Hindi is not being taught in school than please write to minister of that state to make students of school learn hindi...!!! We are the responsible citizen of India and we have to preserve its valuable integrity..!!
Please cooperate with my thoughts and start building a United India...!!
ya i do agree with you priyal, regarding the language issue...
ReplyDeletehowever there is a other side to this point.
generally we are comfortable with speaking in our mother tongue and when a group is formed from a particular region , it is easy for the people to go together and share with each other ,as it comes naturally , but however it is equally disappointing for the other guy who doesn't understand the language and feels left out and alienated,
but from my experiences i learnt that we can share some those moments with such friends by asking them for meaning of words , telling them to translate for us, and so on.
it was really enjoying on my part to watch Telugu movies suggested by my roommate ,and i equally enjoyed with him, ( ofcourse "srt's are required) and regarding " table groups" well here i have seen many of my telugu friends even joining me and my group , and freely chit chatting in hindi/english , even they did not hesitated asking us meaning of our words, so maybe from my experience i can tell that , ofcourse some differences are bound to be there, but we together need to erase them out and put up all as a unified society...
Yes, ofcourse you are right that we can share our moments with them by translating them into some other language that is ENGLISH, and I also love to watch Telugu movies but that are I guess different issues..!!
ReplyDeleteMy main concern is why inspite of being an Indian, people of some states do not no Hindi? How the government of those states are so irresponsible not to have Hindi been taught in schools?? Isn't it shameful??
PRIYAL ..I m not agree with ur views ... HIndi is national language .. but it is nt acceptable to all .. because ..
ReplyDeleteif u think about language system in India ... there are two major languages from which other languages came ... first, Sankskrit .. from it north indian languages like HIndi gujrati marathi bengali came ... second is Dravid .. from which south indian languages came ..
In independant India , Govt declared HIndi as national language ..but they didnt think about south indian languages .. HIndi is not totally acceptable to them ... but forcfully it has been done .. so we cannot expect them to learn hindi properly .. because to them learning hindi is as difficult as english .. so they want to learn english ..because that will help them in future ...
Most of my south indian frnds know 3-4 south indian languages .. they are not in their course work . but they know because they are very simmiler to their own languages ...
I think u dont come in contact with any north-east indian frnd (i.e., MAnupur MIjoram arunachal Nagaland etc.) .. in our clg I hav a frnd from that region also .. they are also facing the same problem .. they didnt know hindi well ..
In a Country like India ..It is nt good to have a national language like hindi .. because we have many cultural differences .. if we have hindi as national language then south indian languages or some north- eastern languages should be declared as national language ..
BUt these are not in our hand ... there are many political resons of this system ...
yes, what you said is correct, that is another point to look at..!! but, when in independent India, Hindi has been declared as our national language and independent India is now 62 years old, it is very strange to see that proper efforts haven't been made by government and by us to make people in all corners of country speak Hindi....!!! Isn't is strange??
ReplyDeleteYa, political systems may be a reason behind it but it not like nothing is there in our hands. Instead of just hoping for the best, it is our responsibility to open eyes of state governments to make people learn Hindi...!!
once I had chat with my friend who is studying in IIT madras right now and badly facing the problem of not knowing tamil,and after taking views from his many friends who are facing this problem, he has sent a mail regarding the same to the secretary of school education, government of Tamilnadu and now hoping for them to reply and if reply doesn't come we are ready to write to the central government...!!
my qestion is why he south indians or north-east indians will be forced to learn hindi ?? because HIndi is already declared as national language ?? english is also national language .. there should be another national language from south .. otherwise it is injustice to them .. why will they suffer for it ??? the main reason is .. our indian political power is of mainly north based .. If someday it changes .. Only one south indian language becomes the national language .. will it be acceptable to us ???
ReplyDeleteBecause it is very awkward if an Indian cannot communicate in India..!! In some states, inspite of knowing hindi people do not speak it, even to outsiders...!!
ReplyDeleteActually my intention was not to hurt my telugu friends here (I am sorry, I guess some of my friends may have been hurt by my talks above), but I was just talking about general issue..!!
Fortunately, here in IIT, all persons are having good understanding and cooperation..Especially if I talk about my class MECHANICAL SYSTEM DESIGN and also DYNAMICS, we are just making perfect UNITED INDIA...!!!I am proud of that..!!
ya I know about it ... but my qstn is why hindi ??? because it is already declared as national language ???
ReplyDeletecommunication is nessecary .. so .. my opinion is .. if for south indian schools hindi becomes a language to read ... in north indian schools telegu should be tought .. If any pepople went to south indian states he should know somthing about their language also ...
Ya, ofcourse because it is declared as our national language..Rashtra bhasha..!! The national symbols are not meant to be changed..!!
ReplyDeleteMy point was for atleast 5 years Hindi should be taught in each and every schools in India, so that any Indian can communicate anywhere in India without any difficulty..!!
And you are talking about teaching telugu in northen school, but you say me how many states are there in India where telugu is spoken and how many states are there where hindi is spoken and if not people even know hindi there...I guess, whole west zone, central zone, most of the north region and some east and south regions too where people atleast know hindi..so why can't we give importance to our symbol of nation...!!!
hindi is the main language in mainly UP MP Chattisgar rajasthan hariyana[partly] .... the languages in gujrat bengal panjub bihar are based on sanskrit .. which are very similar to hindi .. that is the reason why they know it .. but in the entire south india ... kerala karnatak tamilnadu andhra some places in orrissa .. some portion of bengal .. and north-east part i.e., meghalaya nagaland arunachal tripura mijoram manipur ... they dont know hindi well ..because their language is not simillar ..and if u aware of tribal languages ... In India , origin of all the tribal languages is Tamil .. and tribal percentage is near about 10% in India
ReplyDeletesuppose according to u 5 yr course is granted through out the country ... then hindi spoken people will learn it faster ... they will not face any difficulty .. but those people which I mentioned will be facing problem .. why they will suffer???
I m nt talking about teaching telegu in schools .. this is an example .. in my opinion if needed ,, India can have only one national language which is english ... because it should be accepted to all ...[although it is not INdian language]
I think I have written so much things .. So its enough for this post ... :P will be back in next post
ReplyDeleteA few facts and figures.
ReplyDeleteBy the way I am the one from IIT Madras about whom Priyal has mentioned.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_in_India
According to the above webpage, as of 2001, there were 422 million Hindi speakers in the country. Amounting to be almost 50%. The second is Bengali with 83 million, not even 10%.
This clearly justifies Hindi as the national language, and mind you, these figures pertain to the class of people whose mothertongue is Hindi or any dialect. If you try and find out no. of people knowing Hindi, it will turn out to be more than 90%, and I guess no other language will be known even to 15% of Indian population.
If my history is right, C N Annadurai, former CM of Tamilnadu was the person to belittle the importance of Hindi in TN. On grounds of popularizing Tamil language, he won the elections and is still remembered as one of the best Chief Ministers in TN.
I would firmly disagree. This would be considered similar as what Raj Thackeray has been doing now and what his uncle Bal Thackeray (Don't expect me to write Balasaheb Thackeray, that is done by cowardly slaves of him).
Even a friend of mine was suggesting me to start something like Gujarat Navnirman Sena (inspired from MNS). I thrashed her for being so self centered.
What if this starts in all the Indian states? How about the great struggle of the iron man Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to unite India post independence? All will be ruined.
We may not be capable of doing great, let us at least be accountable by preserving whatever we have.
And the idea of having three national languages seems preposterous. Hindi is national language, and to learn it should be the duty of all Indians. Southern or north eastern states are not forced to learn Hindi, and probably that only is the mistake of the central government. If the whole India is to be brought on the same platform, Hindi is the only way out.
And so far as English is concerned, I bet, not even 5% of Indians use English as their mothertongue. This is a completely outrageous suggestion. It seems, anything but Hindi will do. Let 90% of Indians know Hindi, we won't speak, that's the kind of attitude people have in TN; and probably that is why in the race of IT revolution in South, Chennai is way behind Bangalore and Hyderabad despite being a metro and a port city, because in the other two cities, though Hindi is not well known, people have the courtesy to speak Hindi when needed unlike the false ego in the rest including most of South Indian and north east Indian population.
http://ashutoshjani.blogspot.com/2009/07/integrity.html
ReplyDeletepriyal .... im not totaly agreed wid you...look, may be HINDI is our national language but i think we all are too much comfortable wid english except our mother tongue.after all english is much necessary than hindi..and i think most of the people can talk in hindi anyhow..may be all are not totally correct but that must be understandable..and i dunno think that our national integrity can be depend on language...itz all about a feelings that we have to realize from our heart that we r from same country..national integrity depends on our humanity , and our thought..language is not a barrier there....sangita.
ReplyDeleteThis is the precise weblog for anybody who needs to seek out out about this topic. You notice so much its almost arduous to argue with you. You positively put a brand new spin on a subject that's been written about for years. Nice stuff, simply nice!
ReplyDelete