How politics of language rips into India's diversity

I would like to stress the beautiful diversity that has been growing in this country for the past many centuries. The country has been a fertile ground for many languages. Because we have many languages, this linguistic plurality has created cultural diversity and these cultures need to be nurtured for creativity to flourish.

English and Hindi tend to act like tractors, so empowered that they can serve as levellers, sometimes capable of mowing down other linguistic identities. Everybody may look the same and behave in a similar fashion because they may all be the products of English or Hindi culture. These languages are the dominant ones today; English is on top, Hindi after it and then comes our mother tongue - Bhojpuri, Awadhi and or other languages. They remain dormant and get pushed into vague margins. We allow the tractor to run us over because we come from an education system handed to us by the monocultural, mono-lingual imperial powers. We have not evolved our own indigenous methods and philosophy of education in keeping with the multilingual culture of our nation. We need to retain our plurality of languages and not sacrifice one for the other. Creativity arises out of diversity, not from an education that will homogenise us all. What we need is a conscious effort to build upon our great cultural resource of multilinguality and not lose this huge asset with which we are blessed.

If we were to examine closely, in our country, even Hindi and English have actually acquired multiple identities, thanks to interaction with the local languages of the region! Yes, we have many forms of Hindi. Can anyone deny this reality? I urge you to think about the differences instead of the similarities. Because if we understand the difference, only then will we respect it. If I am a Punjabi, my Hindi is bound to be affected by my Punjabi, Urdu and even my English, as well as perhaps my little knowledge of Marathi or Gujarati. If I closed the door on this inherent linguistic and culturally-rich diversity in the name of purity of one language, I would become an extremely boring human being, not the exciting complex Indian. A foreigner who visits India from the monolingual West, often complains about the complexity and "chaos" here, but in the same breath, also mentions how life is so challenging and exciting here. It is exciting precisely because of the diversity. In India, the beauty lies in the fact that one faces cultural confluences and divergences at the same time.

Yes, Awadhi is a full-fledged language, so is Bhojpuri. They are not to be seen merely from under the umbrella of one specific language. If they are clubbed as one language, they are likely to be subsumed within the identity of the politically "powerful" language. But if you look at the Hindi language on its own, it stands in its autonomy in as much glory as Braj or Awadhi or Magadhi - the languages that we usually tend to sideline. We must remember these have actually identities unto themselves with rich literature of their own. Tulsidas wrote a whole epic, Ramayana, in Awadhi because it was an evolved language. Linguistic hierarchies need not be created. Investing one language with more power than others is detrimental to cultural harmony and expression. There was a point in time when Sanskrit was imposed on everyone as it was the language of the Brahmins. The other languages during this time were seen to be lower in status and were repressed or neglected. This was succeeded by the rule of Persian and then came the rule of English. There is no denying the fact that these three languages are beautiful, cultivated and evolved. However, we need to question the hierarchy of languages created by politicisation. We need to realise that we are not monolingual people. We can exist simultaneously amongst many languages. We need to resist market forces and globalisation that can subsume diversity. The local is as significant as the global.

The individual identity linked to the mother tongue needs to be acknowledged and we need to find a voice and space for it. "Expression of the self" is as much the need of the hour as understanding the "other". Language, after all, exists for self expression and communication. Social harmony is possible only if due status is granted to the mother tongue and, indeed, to those of the others. This will lead to a mutuality essential for fair cultural negotiation.

(As told to Ursila Ali.)