Be it a single tweet or be it His book releases whether it is “An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India” or “Why I am a Hindu”, this Man always comes up with astonishing the youths of India. The “lexicon genius” Shashi Tharoor whenever comes up with a tweet or a speech, makes the English lover or English language learner to open up the dictionary or thesaurus. He himself can be undoubtedly called “Tharoor Thesaurus”. He introduced us with a number of terms like “farrago”, “webaqoof”, “rodomontade” the last year. His sentence-binding always gives a language goal to every grammar Nazi. Despite different political ideologies lingering amidst the Indian youths, it is hard to figure out the haters of this man.
This year in less than twenty days, He exhilarated the Indians with His enthusiastic moves ranging it from joining THE QUINT’s fight to make “Stalking a non-bailable offense” and His strong rational opposition in making “Hindi- an official language of the UN”.
Likewise He is an inspiration to the most of the youths of India, He inspired me to write this piece on His speech in Parliament.
“Hindi is not the national language, it is an official language. So for us to be spending government resources in seeking to promote Hindi in this purpose raises an important question. Why do we need an official language in the UN? Arabic does not have more speakers than Hindi, but Arabic is spoken by 22 countries, whereas Hindi is only used as an official language by one country – us.” “If indeed we have a Prime Minister or Foreign Minister who prefers to speak Hindi, they can do so and we can pay to get that speech to be translated. Why should we put our future Foreign Ministers and Prime Ministers who may be from Tamil Nadu or Bengal in a position where they are condemned to be speaking a language that we’re paying for.” “The government has to defend its position. I understand the pride of Hindi-speaking people, but people of this country who do not speak in Hindi also take pride in being Indian.”- The quotes from Shashi Tharoor’s argument.
The 8th schedule of the Constitution deals with the languages. The schedule shows 22languages to be grouped as schedule languages, 6 languages as classical languages and 2 official languages i.e, English and Hindi. There are 39demanding languages that demands for the inclusion in the schedule. As per the Ministry of Home Affairs, ‘English’ too is a language of those 39 languages. The paradox here is that the government is going to expend a significant capital to assure the place of Hindi as an official language alongside the 6 languages ; Arabic, English, French, Russian, Spanish and Chinese, when the government has shown no move better say constantly denying to the inclusion of those 39 languages! According to the census 2001, 41.1% of the total population in India speaks Hindi, hence the rest 58.9% are non-hindi speakers. Glorifying Hindi(one of our official language) in front of the other nations will definitely be a matter of pride for us. But being a non-hindi speaker, I do take pride in my Indian identity. India is a land of diverse cultures. Today differentiation is all happening in the name of diversity.
What is the need of investing Rs.400 crore annually to achieve the place of official language of the UN? Besides garnering media attention or nation applause, what is the advantage of this move?
Article120 of the Constitution of India suggests, “Though the business in Parliament shall be transacted in Hindi and English, the Speaker of the House of the people or the Chairman of the Council of States may permit a member to address the House in His mother tongue who cannot express him in either Hindi or English”. And now we are forcing a non-Hindi speaker member to speak Hindi in U.N.! Why? The English language is accessible to the North Indian people and South Indians as well and even the most neglected Northeastern part of the country. So where is the problem to go away with English?
Here, the points to be cited:
Firstly, Hindi is not our “Rajbhasha” or National language. Our Constitution do not provide any such affiliation. Hindi is an official language as per Article 343.
Secondly, yes Hindi is an official language in Fiji, but before calling Shashi Tharoor ‘ignorant’, may I cite here that though a little difference it is, but there do are some differences between Hindi and Fiji Hindi:
The only single lined difference I will cite is, “Fiji Hindi is a variant of Awadhi. Indian Hindi is a variant of Hindustani and Khariboli”. I think this is enough to point out the difference.
And lastly, opposing any Government move, do not makes a man “Anti-national”. The truth is today India thinks more politically than democratically .
Now today, in the year 2018, when India still stands on 100rank in “Global Hunger Index”. The rank India holds is gloomy and tragic and should not be an arsenal for political hypocrisy or only a matter of argument blaming one another. This is definitely a burning issue for India. India is a home to 1.324billion (2016 census) citizens of which 194.6 million are undernourished! The Government of India is now all set to spend Rs.400 crore annually to achieve the acceptance of Hindi as one of the official language of alongside the 6 languages; Arabic, English, French, Russian, Spanish and Chinese!
India will become the youngest country by the year 2020, and as an youth of this country before seeing Hindi as an official language of the U.N., I prefer to see the demolishing rate of hunger in my country. It is an Herculean task to pull out India from the curse of chronic hunger, but definitely a figure of Rs.400crore can help in the betterment of this situation. The country is home to 25 percent of the world’s hungry population.The amount of Rs.400crore annually will surely ensure availability and accessibility of nutritious food for all. Despite rapid economic growth and while food production is quite sufficient, many remain without access to adequate food and nutrition in India.
To conclude my piece, must I quote the saying of the youth role model Swami Vivekananda here,
“So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them”.
Picture courtesy : Internet