I’ve forgotten where I’d read this, but way back when we were a newly independent nation wondering what our national language would be, someone (I forgot who) made a suggestion (which, fortunately, I do remember, or else I would have had to begin this post in some other way) that was dismissed immediately as ridiculous.Southerners (among others) objected strongly to the proposal that our national language should be Hindi. There were many reasons for this, but one related to script. Devanagari is not the script of the South, so the suggestion was this: to make Hindi more palatable to people from the South, it should be written in Roman – i.e., using the English script.
The suggestion was, as I said, dismissed immediately as ridiculous. Because who on earth would read Hindi in English and why should they anyway, when Hindi has its own script?
I think of this every time I see an advertising hoarding that writes Hindi (or Marathi) in English. It never, ever fails to make me chortle. Because it is ridiculous, but, since the 90s, this is what’s been happening in our popular culture. Perhaps old whatzisname who made that suggestion was right after all.
I’m not certain at all, but I think I read about this Hindi-in-Roman suggestion in Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi, which is a history of the country since Independence. It is a huge, massive tome, the kind that is really hard on your wrists, but I found it utterly fascinating and read it at almost one stretch through a weekend.
Full article here Hindustan Times
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