A perspective of a language problem
On several occasions,
I have faced a question here in West Bengal that left me, to an extent,
perturbed and annoyed. This question, first of all, stems from a genuine
sentiment and therefore cannot be avoided; and, it is quite relevant in terms
of the fact India is a nation within all sorts of diversity. This question
pertains to the lingual problem of the Indian nation. The question that I have
faced occasionally is that if a person there in Bihar does not talk to a
Bengali fellow in Bangla then why a Bengali should talk to a Bihari in Hindi
while being in Bengal. The question is genuine. This is the sentiment that has
always been there since we declared ourselves a nation under a constitution.
Every time I confronted this ‘genuine question’ someone within me inspired me
to say something on this problem. First of all, let us know that the language
of interaction between a Bihari and a Bengali would be Hindi. And here
sentiment of a Bengali gets hurts when he find that the Bihari has a clear cut
opportunity to express in his ‘own’ language, whereas, the later is rather
forced to Hindi, an ‘alien’ language, for his reply. Such a sentiment is based
on the assumption that the mother tongue of the Biharis is Hindi. Second
assumption may be that Hindi is an alien language. Let us see how far the first
assumption is well founded.
In 1900s, the
proportion of population speaking Hindi was not more than 10 to 20 percent
which was roughly comparable to the literacy rate in Bihar. There were only few
people in the rural areas that were able to read write or speak in Hindi.
Census data of that period might not be truly reflective of the lingual status
of the rural population as there are instances where census officers were at
liberty to enter the answer asked in the lingual column of the questionnaire.
Very few were quite aware of their own lingual status. That area where literacy
was sizable, mother tongue is claimed in terms of their local affinity to the
language the population had. For example, the Maithili speaking areas of Bihar
always insisted on their mother tongue and not Hindi. Over the years this trend
has grown, and now many of the Bihari identify themselves in the censuses as a
Maithili, Bhjpuri, Magahi, or Vajjika speakers. Here, Hindi is registered only
as the second language. Hindi as a mother tongue is claimed by only those
Biharis who reside in urban regions. In this way one can find that in the due
course of time Biharis have accepted Hindi as a language of interaction for
inter regional interaction. This was due to the belief that Hindi was to be the
national language of the ‘new India’. Other factor for the acceptance of Hindi ‘as
their own’ was the lack of rivalry with any local allegiance. Sense of
allegiance towards local dialects was emerging only in few areas like in
Mithila. Acceptance was also facilitated by the political expediency. If Hindi
would not been accepted as a common language for administrative or interactive
purposes, Bihar as a political reality would not have been possible. Here politics
played a determining role in the growth and acceptance of a language. This
situation is not just unique in the context of Bihar; it applies to almost
every part of so called Hindi-belt of India. Everywhere Hindi is the language
of urban and literate population; the local languages still occupy the majority
rural population. Here, the feeling of alienation toward Hindi is not
politically strong; the fact has been accepted as for granted. This is
historically established and accepted which is not the case in the context of
Bangla and Hindi.
The sentiment against
Hindi is also buttressed by the assumption of 'one language one people'. In
fact, with the advancement of culture, man has been moving from uni-lingual to
multi-lingual cultural atmosphere. With growing social, economic, cultural and
political complexities lingual fabric of a society change to give rather more
complex patterns. In the same society, there emerge languages of different hues
and identity for different classes. Hardly one would find any complex society
with only one language. Locally one can use one language at the home, in the
street switches to another, and for official purposes still some another is
used. This is the a reality, beyond sentiments and prejudices.
First of all, Bangla was
a well established language with a fully fledged literature. Overall, Bengal
was not so politically integrated with either Delhi sultanate or during the
Mughal era. Political integration of Bengal into Imperial set up of India was
only accomplished in the wake of British period. Bangla personality emerged as
a vanguard of modern India. Modern Bangla language and literature that emerged
during the nineteenth century created such a strong sentiment of ‘Bangla
consciousnesses’ that it always stood against anything in its way. Politically, Bangla language has acquired
such a strong and dignified position in a well defined geographical region that
it appears to be in natural confrontation with Hindi. This confrontation is not
natural, but only apparent, because here the language ‘Hindi’ is not to compete
with Bangla; rather it is to supplement it in the wider reality of Indian
nation. It is something like a utility of interaction between the persons of
two lingual regions of India. It facilitates exchange of views, ideas, feeling
between a Bengali on the one side and a Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, or a
Kannada on the other. Here the political reality of India has given rise to the
spread of a language which, despite being apparently alien to the peripheral
lingual communities, is only serving as a link language.
Evolution of Hindi is
a phenomenon reflecting the complex evolutionary process of the Indian nation.
It started with the emergence of Delhi sultanate in the thirteenth century and
gradually and intermittently, passed through the phases of history, to the
modern age. This Hindi is connotative of the need of a common language of
interaction between so many diverse motley of people in the northern part of
India. Hindi was language that occupied the space provided by the creation of
an empire from Kashmir to Karnataka and from Sindh to Assam. It was an
evolution of a language in the wake of the rise of an empire. Here, one should
be careful in making a conclusion that Hindi was imposed by anyone. Before Hindi,
Persian was the language of official interaction, which was alien, and an
imposed one. In this respect Hindi, quite denotative in its meaning, emerged
and spread in the Indian soil to serve the new needs of a community that came
into existence. Hindi served, in the Indian context, somewhat the same purpose
as the English is serving globally today. With the spread of English among
upper classes of the Indian society the use of Hindi has come down in that
class. In the wake of globalization, liberalization and the most importantly,
in the age of internet, there has emerged a class of English speaking people in
the county. This is a new phenomenon that one can welcome or decry, but cannot
avoid. Emergence of a common global language, sic English, is due to a demand
created by an emergence of global community. Therefore, one can find that the
cultural, political, and economic interaction over geographical set up gives
rise to a very dynamic change in the lingual pattern. Languages emerge out of
political reasons, cultural interaction and economic factors. Emergence of
internet has created a very complex type of opportunities as well as challenges
for various lingual communities. Now, languages are in a position to live
within a community which is scattered geographically but so well kitted in the
cyberspace. This new space has provided an extra lease of life to numerous
languages with very limited numbers of speakers. On the other hand, the
cyberspace has enabled people to reach out to the whole world without moving in
real space. In turn, this ease in connectivity has enabled a person with
limited knowledge of English to learn it quickly; thus in turn enlarging the
scope of one language globally even larger. Any view in regard to language
should be borne out in one’s mind in a dynamic form. It is not static, not
unidirectional, not having a fixed form. It is always provisional.
