Yet another lazy bum: My thoughts on one of the official languages of India

I have been itching to write this for a long time and an incident that happened a couple of days back at a Chinese restaurant with my colleagues and friends during my dinner at Washington DC. So, I started enjoying my dinner and was having a very pleasant evening after a long day at the Neuroscience conference. And in the neighbouring table sat another research group that consisted of Chinese, Europeans, Americans and one Indian guy. I could not help eavesdropping, but, this Indian guy was talking in a loud tone about languages in India and how Hindi is the National language of India and how Tamil Nadu is the only “anti-Hindi” state in India. That is when I got annoyed and excused myself to interrupt him and I told him – I speak Tamil, what is your problem? He backed off and I went on to say – don’t spread false facts about our country. I could have gone further, but decided to end it because, it was a pleasant evening for my friends and for his group and did not want to spoil the good time.

But, I could not abstain from venting out my thoughts here.
To start with a few facts:
1. Hindi was never and never ever shall be India’s national language.
2. Hindi is just an official language along side English for the Central Govt. for administrative reasons.
3. The Supreme Court of India speaks English and not any other language.

There are several official documents that stand as a proof, grow out of your retardation and educate yourself of the facts.

In my opinion, Hindi is only as equal as Santhali or Nepali and my great country can say with pride – India is multi-lingual and has more than one national language.

And now, to the point of Tamils being anti-Hindi. What is the deal about Hindi? It is after all, 'yet another language' among 100s of Indian languages and where from do you people conceive this false fact – Hindi is India’s national language and people who don’t speak Hindi are anti-Hindi and therefore anti-Indian? Give me a break. And you go on to talk about the anti-hindi protests of the 60s. Well, to start with the politicians who visualized the idea of one single language to unite this only sub-continent of the world were, in one word, “foolish”. For they ignored the fact that British has been in India only for over a century that time and that for centuries before British spread in India, there existed only kingdoms. For they sought to erase that strong fact over which the British Raj was built. For they were desperate to seek a “single-language-identity” for India, that was “non-English”. The anti-Hindi protests that took place in Tamil Nadu or elsewhere was not against the language, but it was just a fight equivalent to the ‘mothering instinct’ of a Big Cat protective of its new-born kitten.

The fight was not for asking the Hindi Belt to learn my language or one more language compulsorily, it was just for not asking me to learn your language. As once the great leader Annadurai resounded in the parliament of India about the big door- small door for the big dog and the small dog analogy for the linguistic politics at that time, it is more than silly and foolish to even think about single language to unite India linguistically. India is multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, multi-climatic and that is the figment that unites us and that is our Greatness. And any person who would not appreciate this fact should be ashamed to call yourself as an Indian.

Now, I defend your anti-hindi rhetoric with the following points.
1. Newly released Hindi movies run to full houses in Chennai.
2. Local FM radio in Chennai or other metros below Vindhya-Satpura play Hindi movie songs.
3. Schools teach Hindi as a second language and waste the time of the school kids making them learn 3 languages in comparison to 2 languages for the school kids in the Hindi belt of India.
4. There are still Dakshin Bharath Hindi Prachar Sabha running in my part of my country.
5. Lastly, there are some popular “Hindi Pandits” trying to eke out a living by teaching the language.

That is enough for Hindi acceptance, for I wonder what would possibly happen if the converse was true… we would hear headlines like “Tamil Nadu Express torched by angry mob in Mathura”; “Frenetic mob vandalizes a movie hall that ran a Telugu movie and beat up the manager in Patiala”… and I could go on and on to rub it in my friends. But, I stop here, because, next time if I hear any crap from an Indian about National language of India and how some people are ‘anti-Hindi’ I would break that person's jaw first and then tell you the facts so that it will get engraved in your brain until you hit your death-bed.