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The great linguistic injustice
The great linguistic injustice, Unless we realise the ground realities of the Indian languages, emotional integration of the Language Policy is not possible.
‘History repeats,’ goes the adage. That is what exactly is happening in the case of Madrasas and RSS schools too (The Hans India, January 19). Great injustice is being done to the vernacular languages and Sanskrit by giving them communal colour: Sanskrit is Brahmins' language; Urdu is Muslims' language and Hindi the North Indian language.
Unless we realise the ground realities of the Indian languages, emotional integration of the Language Policy is not possible. Hindi and Urdu were born in India. Sanskrit is one of the ancient languages and it has almost all the technical terms equivalent to English. It unites country—morally and ethically. Jawaharlal Nehru said, “Though the country was split in the past into various political entities, the basic language Sanskrit and the thought it represented continued to keep and preserve Bharat as a whole.”
Urdu has borrowed grammar from Hindi and Script from Parsee and Arabic. Sanskrit words were replaced by the Parsee words. It evolved during the Moghul rule as language of administration and in Military (Fauj) replacing the Parsee. Even now, the Urdu technical terms like Zilla, Taluk, Vakalat, Amin, Sirasthadar have not yielded place to English.
As early as 1909 Gandhi wrote in his newsletter Hind Swaraj, “Universal language for India should be Hindi.” By 1917 the argument for Hindustani, the term carefully neutral between Hindi and Urdu, had become constant in Gandhi's thinking.
Gandhi defined Hindustani as “a resultant of Hindi and Urdu, neither highly Sanskritised nor highly Persianised nor Arabianised''. The first Jnanpith award winner n 1969 in Urdu for his Magnum Opus, "Gul-e-Naghma"(Flower of Poetry/Song), was Raghupathi Sahay (Professor of English in Allahabad University). His pen name was Firaq Gorakhpur for he was born in Gorakhpur.
Because of our opposition to these three languages, English has made inroads into our system. Is it justifiable to administer through a language which is not known to 90% of population?
Now-a-days, even the lower middle class people send their children only to English Medium schools. Not a single upper caste student is on the rolls of the ZP, Aided, Municipal and Government institutions. As a result, only the children belonging to the Minority communities (Christian and Muslim), Schedule Castes and Tribes and some backward classes seek admission in Oriental High Schools, wherein Sanskrit is the major subject.
A harmonious construction of the policy needs to be strictly adhered to the Three Language Formula. Oft quoted complaint is that the Northern States lag in implementing the formula. It is
their loss.
Once we learn and earn proficiency in Hindi/Hindustani, we stand on a par with them in competition and they lag in South Indian languages. Our ancestors stood the ground with the English in their own language.
By: K C Kalkura
