Good question by Arnab Goswami

by goodcitizn Sat Jun 21, 2014 1:37 am

In the language debate last night in Times Now TV channel, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju, maintained that the circular by the governmant on prioritizing Hindi to the social media was merely a directive to keep the Hindi-speaking people informed, but the government was dedicated to supporting all Indian languages. Arnab Goswami then asked, "Why do you need to just use Hindi when the social network is used by all, not just Hindi speakers, and why can't you, given today's availability of language softwares, send the same message in other regional languages too?" Rijiju had no sensible answer except to say that he was just prioritizing Hindi since it is spoken by the majority. And when Arnab explained to him that Hindi speakers at best represented only 45% of the population which makes non Hindi speakers the majority in India, he again reiterated that he was for all languages but was promoting Hindi because of its official status. When Arnab brought up the sections in the constitution that clearly required English to be the medium of communication to non-Hindi regions, the guy had no answer.

by Marathadi-Saamiyaar Sat Jun 21, 2014 2:18 am

RSS strongly believes that all people speaking one Indian language - mother tongue or not - will unify India. Since Hindi is spoken by "most" (they mean the larger than speakers of all other language. They cite Japan, China as "great" examples.

This made me think:

The Swiss speak two languages

Canadians speak2 languages

South Africans speak at least a dozen languages

They are all fine. How can hoisting Hindi on people who speak 50 other major languages unify India?

If BJP used the "hindutva" to unify various castes, their Hinditva will divide the country into various country-states.

P.S. They can create a small unit of 3 or 4 web-surfing high school dropouts to translate English posting, blogs, and websites daily using Google or Yahoo. Problem solved.

by Kris Sat Jun 21, 2014 3:23 am

goodcitizn wrote:In the language debate last night in Times Now TV channel, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju, maintained that the circular by the governmant on prioritizing Hindi to the social media was merely a directive to keep the Hindi-speaking people informed, but the government was dedicated to supporting all Indian languages. Arnab Goswami then asked, "Why do you need to just use Hindi when the social network is used by all, not just Hindi speakers, and why can't you, given today's availability of language softwares, send the same message in other regional languages too?" Rijiju had no sensible answer except to say that he was just prioritizing Hindi since it is spoken by the majority. And when Arnab explained to him that Hindi speakers at best represented only 45% of the population which makes non Hindi speakers the majority in India, he again reiterated that he was for all languages but was promoting Hindi because of its official status. When Arnab brought up the sections in the constitution that clearly required English to be the medium of communication to non-Hindi regions, the guy had no answer.

>>>>Good question! This is a practical way of looking at it. This preoccupation is going to do two things, neither of which will be in the country's best interest: (1) it will shift the focus away from important things like economic development; (2) it will cause resentment in the non-hindi south. The latter is definitely the opposite effect of what the center should want, given the south's inroads into the global IT sector.

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Good question by Arnab Goswami

Good question by Arnab Goswami

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