With a breeze of spring knocking and soothing rain in air these holidays gave me a wonderful time to spend luxuriously with my own self. Because of the time constraints knowingly or unknowingly I have developed a habit of storing clips from newspapers which obviously I intend to read but somehow could not most of the times. Shuffling through such clips, catching my eye in the very first glance was a quote- “I am happy England gave us a game of cricket which they can’t play really well and the English language which I can’t speak really well”. This very quote from Kapil Dev former Indian cricketer after receiving a ‘life time achievement award’ at the ‘House of Lords’ gave me heartfelt laugh on his very innocent honest confession.
The language of the colonial masters who came to India as traders and then ruled us for almost two centuries wanted to create a local class of Indians who would have brown skin but English taste very soon became our own language-the official language, the link language, the library language, the language of trade and commerce, the language of science and technology including computer and the Internet, the language of essentiality if u want to excel in life. And trust me the parents working very hard on their kids and desperate to make them converse in the so called ‘elite language’.
Although almost everyone would admit to the fact that English is going through a perilous phase with the current generation least bothered about writing even the simplest of things yet take pride in having a little knowledge of the language. Well then they are too busy to even write the words completely and further goggling for stuff like ‘write as i speak’ with this current fleeting generation. In a country of so many varied languages, English is the only linguistic commonality or we say that this language is increasingly becoming the de facto mother tongue in urban families. It’s a thing of dismay looking at the trend, contending that its rampant use will strip us off our sense of Indian-ness. “English is unifying us with the rest of the world but alienating us from our familial and cultural roots. Are we still under the slavery? Yes we are! It’s ironical when a writer and columnist like Chetan Bhagat says that hindi is a language of poor people, recently published in a leading national daily on editorial page.
‘Swear in English and people think you are cool, swear in hindi and people and people think you are uncouth’
Probably we have to make an astute move to reassure the usage of hindi language and the roots from where we hail. Or we will be sticking with the language bequeathed by India’s British rulers. “The world is moving on, and so are we but sure not at the cost of losing our own language. Let’s just use this language to simply nail it when it comes to making ‘them’ understand the way our former under-secretary general of the United Nations, distinguished writer and essayist and controversial Member of Parliament, Shashi Tharoor did recently....