Why Chennai can't and won't speak Hindi

[Kaniska]

I donot mind any Tamil people saying any Hindi language as long as they make life of Pakistan friends miserable in PDF.........
It does not matter if Tamil people of India piss our rivals in Tamil language or Hindi language...I am with them..

Why Chennai can't and won't speak Hindi
HyappY!: Why Chennai can't and won't speak Hindi

Recently, I’ve been barraged on facebook with status messages from my friends who when to Chennai for their summer internships. To summarize all the status messages in one line, people weren’t exactly happy with Chennaites not being able to speak in Hindi. To all those people, let me ask you a simple question –why should they?

People who can speak only Hindi expect that everyone else in India should speak Hindi and this is based on the assumption that Hindi is the national language of India and it should stand true to its name by being spoken across the country. Allow me to correct such beliefs by quoting that as per the constitution of India, Hindi is not the national language. In fact, India doesn’t have a national language and it doesn’t need one. This fact acknowledged by Gujarat High court as well. So it would be prudent to lower the expectations which were supported by a myth rather than a fact.

Now to the most important question. Why won’t Chennai learn Hindi? There is a two edged answer to this.

One – Love of Tamil. Do you know that Tamil is the only classical language (amongst the eight in the world) still to be in practice? Being more than 2300 years old, the language has stood its time and is currently spoken by more than 8 crore people across the world. It even has official status in three countries other than India. Sanskrit, India’s oldest language and mother of Hindi couldn’t do that. Why? Because People just love the Tamil language. Fortunately or unfortunately, the language is very close to the people than you can imagine. And this reflects in being supportive any to Tamil community outside the country irrespective of what is right or wrong. Read this article by an American Professor why he thinks that Tamil deserves the classical language status.

Two – Fear. The more you love something, the more you’ll be afraid that you’ll lose it one day. And you’ll do everything at your power to protect what you love dearly. That’s what people in actual power in 1960s did by opposing point blank to the proposal of making Hindi as the national language based on the fear that nationalizing Hindi will slowly erode Tamil. A fair and a justified fear.

There are several points that I can put forward to enforce my side of the argument.

If you travel to Tokyo/Beijing, do you expect people to speak in Hindi? Obviously not Hindi when you can’t expect them to know English either! Will you complain that English is a global language and they should have known it? On the same note, why should you expect someone in Tamil Nadu to do so? Because, it is a part of India? The greatest strength of India is its diversity in languages and sustainable cultural diversity. Don’t try to nullify that strength by expecting the entire nation to speak in a single language.

If you are moving to a land that doesn’t speak the language you do, the onus is on you to learn the new language and not the other way around. When I moved to Hyderabad, I knew neither Telugu nor Hindi, but I managed to learn a bit of both. And even in Mumbai, I managed to survive with the half cooked Hindi I knew. Most importantly, you should have sorry-i-don’t-know-please-help-me attitude and not something like god-you-dont-know-hindi. The latter will get you nowhere.

And finally it comes to personal choice. Nobody in this country stops anyone from learning Hindi. It’s just people don’t choose to.

The above arguments are not only for Tamil. It stands true for other regional languages such as Telugu (another language that I’m very fond of), Kannada, and Bengali which are much older than Hindi and boasts of richer literature. These regional languages have stood their time too and I would watch with glee when they make it to the classical status as well. It's sad that Indian government has done nothing to further the growth of the regional languages across the country. And the state governments take it upon themselves to protect the language and their actions sometimes come as being fanatic (sometimes they really are!).

I do agree that not knowing Hindi does add to the communication problem when people from different region interact. But I would prefer the solution in the form of English rather than Hindi. My rational is that English is already the language of the world and it has reached almost every part of the world. So why can’t English be the unified language in India? Why Hindi when it’s penetration in India is less successful than English? Think and think hard!

And remember both our national anthem and national song are in Bengali!

 

[Sriram]

There are many many working class people from south india who dont dpeak english but speak hindi.

Not everyone gets a white collar job and there are so many people wanting to do business. Set up small shops eateries construction etc etc.

There are so many such people tamil people in mumbai or delhi n otherwise.

Most tamils of sl speak sinhalese too.

U dont have to learn hindi but dont let poor prople starve for the sake of ur ego.

U r the one being emotional giving bullshit theories of annadurai in 2014.

Those construction workers come down south , no construction worker goes north to work.. when they come here they pick tamil no one will help if they talk in hindi..
I see queues of them in SBI branch in my town... talking in broken english ...

India is getting developed so u will see more ppl coming to white collar job and not becoming labourers , so even in that logic, future is for english and not hindi as link language...


U are also ignorant, only ppl in cities ever come accross hindi... 90% of students in TN learn only tamil..
They are starting to learn english to get exposirure they will only laugh if i say hindi is better than hindi as link language.. I can assure u no one ever wants to learn hindi ...

I want u to come out of ur ego and let ppl to come and grow forward... it can happen through english and definately not hindi..

I am saddened that u want TN students to learn hindi and become migrant labourers..

TN students will learn tamil and english and will get white colllar jobs.. no one goes wants their child to go hindi tuition and become migrant worker/ non-white collar worker..


And please read about our Anna before talking of him... We are blessed with him who understood hindi will only burden us unnecessarily.

He is one of the best CMs of this country... unlike ur hindi belt lalu and mulayam who stick with hindi and paper tables to deny the population the exposure they deserve by giving them hindi alone and taking away computers making them unfit for modern technology and associated jobs

 

[Rajaraja Chola]

@Sriram and @INDIC @bronxbull Shall we give this topic a rest and close this old thread?

 

[Sriram]

English is a useful language that's why people learn English in North, but again the fact is English is still a language of an elite, only few can speak it. Most of the people can speak English if they are pursuing graduate course in some professional college or English medium school. Even many people who study English can't speak a sentence in English. So, English can give you jobs but can't get penetration as lingua Franca unlike Hindi even if literacy rate of India reaches 100%. People spend years to master English language and our society generally don't accept people speaking broken English lacking fluency.



That's the other thing, he was refusing to acknowledge that Hindi acts as a link language in most of India.

I agree with ur words but if we want to bring all our population forward we cant ignore english,
Day by day more ppl are learning english as they prefer english medium schools..
English literates are increasing and not decreasing..


I know that english is not native to our land etc etc..
im extremely proud of my tongue ie. tamil and would wanna see it everywhere, but,I can see no alternative but to learn english to thrive in the technology driven world..
Im sure deep down u understand that too

 

[dray]

With all due respect to the post and point of view it wishes to put forth, I find it highly distressing as well as insulting that we need to have a language imported just so we can communicate with our own countrymen. But leaving aside all other stuff, I will try to answer to your questions based on logic and practicality :-

1. Firstly Tamil Nadu is not Beiging/Tokyo therefore your argument that people in Tamil Nadu should speak English , a foreign language and not hindi is unfounded.

2. For any country, be it small or large especially for a large and diverse country as ours, you need to have one national identity and it is true for every country on this planet. Does this mean that a bihari should stop speaking bhojpuri or magahi OR a marathi should stop speaking marathi OR an assamese should stop speaking assamese?? No certainly not for they provide the individual with the regional identity but NOT THE NATIONAL ONE.

3. Tamil is spoken language in one state primarily but hindi is speaken in almost the entire country leaving few states possibly in north-east or in south. Hindi is the mother language for most if not all the other regional languages. Therefore integrating Hindi is far more easier than any other regional language say telgu, kashmiri, punjabi etc.

4. English is a foreign language and can be used outside of India to integrate with the world. It is absurd to think that you have to rely on a foreign language even after more than a six decades of independence is absurd at best.

5. Will a kashmiri learn telgu or tamil?? Will a manipuri be willing to learn gujrati?? Will a kerlaite be willing to learn punjabi?? No because all of these are regional language associated with a region. But should a region be allowed to overpower ones sense of national identity. With so much diversification, all of us from different backgrounds have to find a common ground. That can only be a national identy and Hindi can play a big role. This does in no way mean that regional culture and language should not have a national level patronage. But the patronage cannot be at the expense of nation.

6. Furthermore your comparison of Sanskrit with these regional languages shows the extent of your knowledge about our own history vis-a-vis language and impact on culture. Sanskrit was never a mass based spoken language as hindi or any other language has been . It was mostly spoken by Brahimins in vedic or pre-vedic age. It was never a language of masses. Where as hindi is.

7. There comes a time when too much diversification can become a curse rather than a boon for an entire nation. That doesnot mean that i am not for protecting regional identity but not at the cost of nation.

8. Lastly, my view on tamils not speaking hindi is that they do it not because they are afraid of loosing regionalism but to be difficult on purpose. Even when they know it they would not speak hindi just like a common chinese does not wants to speak in anything but mandarin/cantonese. Just like most italians or germans would speak in their national language.

It is sad that Hindi is dragged into all this just to gain political mileage and few votes even by people who are educated and should know about these pitfalls when hindi could have united India like no other while protecting regional identities as well. Regionalism has harmed this nation more than anything else in the entire history of our nation. British ruled and destroyed India's economy, culture and moral values because of the regionalism.

Even today relations with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have been overlooked because of this curse of regionalism. Regionalism has harmed nationalism be it in India or outside and all of you have to do is read and under our history.

English is a language spoken by the few.
The government supports all languages.
Every school has to teach 3 languages .mandatory.
1. Hindi
2. English
3. Local Language - Tamil/Bengali/19 languages

So Govt supports all languages. And in the States, people speak the local languages.

However Its just not feasible to have any other language apart from Hindi and English as the link languages of India. And everyone understands this. The people like this guy are among the very few who disagree. And their number is reducing every year.

India is a federal state, and it was decided that all major regional languages including Hindi are our national languages, let's not try to harm our federal structure by trying to impose one regional language on other regions.
@abhinav.mehrotra Hindi is not mother of all languages, you can say Sanskrit is for many north Indian languages, and Hindi is not the national identity of India, it is one of the national languages, we are a diversified country, don't change facts.
@Contrarian Every school need not teach 3 languages, nor Hindi is mandatory in every school.

 

[INDIC]

@Sriram and @INDIC @bronxbull Shall we give this topic a rest and close this old thread?

I have lived with Tamils since so many years and never talked and never saw people talking about this outdated language issue. That guy with the name Chola Warrior brought all those craps here.

 

[dray]

Hindi is still a link language across India, English will never match the extent of penetration Hindi has across India, people only use English for office or academic work.

That's only in cities, you go to rural areas or even in small towns in non-Hindi speaking regions, people barely understand Hindi. If anybody needs to learn Hindi, then he/she would learn it, no need to impose Hindi on everybody.

 

[Shahmir]

Hindi is a cultural expressions of bhayyas of UP and bihar, they want to make all the people of their country bhayyas like them. It is such an ugly language, I cannot bear it for more than 5 minutes.

 

[INDIC]

I agree with ur words but if we want to bring all our population forward we cant ignore english,
Day by day more ppl are learning english as they prefer english medium schools..
English literates are increasing and not decreasing..


I know that english is not native to our land etc etc..
im extremely proud of my tongue ie. tamil and would wanna see it everywhere, but,I can see no alternative but to learn english to thrive in the technology driven world..
Im sure deep down u understand that too

I agree with your point. I also agree Hindi shouldn't be enforced on others, my only point was greater penetration of Hindi compared to English.

 

[Rajaraja Chola]

I have lived with Tamils since so many years and never talked and never saw people talking about this outdated language issue. That guy with the name Chola Warrior brought all those craps here.

I understand ur point of view and also his. The matter is still in south, language is a important thing, that even above development, language talks gets you votes. And many Tamil people are still emotionally attached to the DMK started anti- Hindi riots when Central govt planned to implement Hindi across India, and have only 2 official languages. So his response.
Whateva maybe the issue, the matter is we are Indians, and finally, if there is a threat to our motherland, even Chola warrior will stand up along with his north Indian brothers. He could have been bit more polite. Peace.

 

[INDIC]

That's only in cities, you go to rural areas or even in small towns in non-Hindi speaking regions, people barely understand Hindi. If anybody needs to learn Hindi, then he/she would learn it, no need to impose Hindi on everybody.

I agree but I was only making comparison of Hindi with respect to English.

 

[Chola warrior]

agree but I was only making comparison of Hindi with respect to English.

I have lived with Tamils since so many years and never talked and never saw people talking about this outdated language issue. That guy with the name Chola Warrior brought all those craps here.

and after all these discussion..it became outdated for you..Good luck

try to go and live outside,even in hyderabad.
hahaha.
Learning hindi makes you communicate with everyone in the subcontinent,even many srilankan tamils learn hindi for business purposes in the middle east.
Learning english doesn't mean u ll forget your mother tongue,english is only an official language and can never replace hindi as the link language of india.

For everything same argument..try going outside blah blah...
Most of us here been outside TN, seen and experience various cultures. Stop your non-sense logic if you have nothing to counter.

 

[INDIC]

and after all these discussion..it became outdated for you..Good luck

But you seemed to disagree with me.

 

[Chola warrior]

well,the people who wrote all those things may be brahmins but they wrote it for everyone,not just themselves.
Agathiar/Tholkappiar are common for all tamils.
it is an anomaly because they are confused themselves,dravidian movement is a shallow empty headed movement based on thin ice and just an official excuse for some people to loot the natural resources of TN.

Oh yeah..I have read about meat eating in Tamil literature. So brahmins wrote that too?

But you seemed to be disagree with me.

As I had stated self consolation is better cure.Carry on

 

[Chola warrior]

He could have been bit more polite. Peace.

I haven't spoke anything inhuman or in-polite..just stated some facts and hypocrisy.