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Sunday, May 18, 2008

Hindi and Hindustaan

हिन्दी और हिन्दुस्तान (Hindi and Hindustaan) does not seem to be an interesting topic; you would be willing to kill your time for, but it is something which forces me to think about the condition of my country and language Hindi some 80 or 90 years later. Why are we adopting the English way rather than following our Hindi way?
The very first question that would come to your mind is "Why is this person commenting on the condition of Hindi and Hindustaan when he himself is using English to write this stuff?"
Same question came to my mind also just before writing this article but the reason why i am writing this in English is some of my fellow countrymen don't understand Hindi and among those few who understand, 70% think that this language is not worthy at all so if this was written in Hindi; they would have clicked to the cross sign at right most top corner of the window by now.(In terms of cyber aware population)

One thing which i could not understand till now in this regard (as i do have this not understanding problem in so many topics) is why we Indians don't give a damn about our own language despite of the fact that we know plenty of examples like Germany, UK, Russia, Japan and many others who used their own languages as the building block of their achievements. What better example can i give you than the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia which is available online in languages like French Portuguese Spanish .!.but not in Hindi .!. Only we ourselves are to be blamed not anyone else. Why we just follow others, to the level of of adopting their language. I am not against English or any other regional language but why can't we be united. Wouldn't it be better if every body from Himalaya to Kanyakumari speaks Hindi leading to prosperous and powerful India as it would lead to great coordination in terms of business and trade (where Marwari from Gujarat don't feel like trading with some trader of U.P.) as well as defense sector (here Rajput regiment of Rajasthan think themselves different from Gorkha regiment of Utterakhand ). As Bhartendu Harishchandra has said :
"निज भाषा उन्नति अहें, सब उन्नति को मूल |
बिन निज भाषा ज्ञान के, मिटे हिय को शूल ||"
One can raise a point why same can’t be done using English which is used by so many others around the globe. It can be done but it would take another century to do that as more than 70% of our country's population don't have any exposure to this foreign language and those who know it have all different levels of understanding,(4 percent of the population use English - http://www.chillibreeze.com/EnglishinIndia.asp) I would rather say "Kab tak hum dusaron ka bojhe dhote rahenge" its time to do our own stuff , to unite the country in a whole new way. Shri Maithli Sharan Gupta has said:
"जिसको न निज भाषा तथा निज देश का अभिमान है|
वह नर नहीं हैं पशु निरा और मृतक समान है ||"
Oh! you must be thinking about that 80 or 90 years later thing, I am coming to that point :
Imagine your children sitting along with your Grand children talking and behaving in some Hi Fi English manner, when suddenly your Grand son asks his father about Hindi and he replies "this was a cryptic(in sarcastic way) language which was used by few foolish and illiterate human being in some parts of the country at time of your Grand father. He himself never used that and never allowed me to do the same!"
How would sobbing heart of your soul feel about what you had done to your मातृभाषा and मातृभूमि, sitting in Heaven/Hell ???
I don't know if i made some sense to you, anyways thanks for investing your valuable time.

4 comments:

cute girl said...

it was a nice blog but the time has changed & u have to change according time......so the thing is u have to change the whole system which i think is not possible.but on the other way u should always respect ur language that's hindi....

Kashish Pal said...

Nice blog, and nice thoughts, worth appreciating. And yes, very valuable!

zarna said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Aakash said...

Well, nice writing. And I agree to some extent but not fully. I myself loathe people who feel English is superior to Hindi or to that matter any language. For me all languages are equally great. And this brings me to my second point, 'All languages are great' including English. I don't mind people speaking English, but you must not disregard other languages. Afterall thats the greatness of 'Hindustan'. We have never repelled any culture and accepted and blended every other culture with ours. You won't find this any where else in the world.

And politically speaking, u cannot have one language, specifically Hindi all over the nation. Read about Tamil followers views and u will understand wht I mean and hence u require some other common lang and tht condition is fulfilled by English very well... Moreover, India is a service oriented country and in this globalized world u need to know and b able to speak the global lang else IT boom and all this hype abt BPO, KPO the present drivers of the nations GDP would fail. Now, China and Japan can do with Chinese and Japanese as they are in manufacturing business and for them its important to deliver product and this requires minimum communication compared to services with the other nations.....

I hope I have made my point. But certainly I agree with the point - Respect your language as well as other languages and cultures also.