Slow death of hindi?

The title might have got you wondering. After all, Hindi is language spoken by over three hundred million people, in heartland of North India. Moreover, people in this part of world seem to enjoy procreation much more than elsewhere, and consequently in near future this number is supposed to continue to increase. But, you might have also felt that while speakers are multiplying, the language is not getting enriched, instead getting poorer by the day. What makes a language poorer? Lack of intellectual content produced originally in the language. Be it literature, science, politics, law, music - when pioneers of any of these fields discourse in a language, they enrich the language in the process.

We call Hindi our mother-tongue but actually we treat her as a step-daugher, and have done so for centuries, even before her birth. Hindi (and its native precedent languages) have had the misfortune of always been second class language in their own homeland. Tomes of mathematical research by Aryabhatta and Bhramgupta were in Sanskrit and not in language of masses. We had language of elite, the pure Sanskrit and the language of masses which presumably formed genesis of modern day hindi. After Sanskrit, it was turn of Persian to acquire the status of  'language of educated'. We even have saying in hindi - 'padhe likhe ko faarsi kya'. Later, Persian gave way to Urdu in Mughal courts, and that was perhaps closest Hindi itself came closest to be spoken and written by the elite. Then came the British, and with them the Macaulay's policy to create 'brown Britishers'. This introduced English as the language of governance in India, and soon English took the role which was once held by Sanskrit, then by Persian and Urdu. After independence, there was a conscious effort to de-Macaulay-nize the education system but the hangover persisted. Macaulay's clerks had now become doctors, engineers, lawyers. Middle class grew increasingly obsessed with 'convent schools' which mushroomed in all small towns in every nook and corner. Education became needlessly costly, but the middle class was ready to stretch every bit to make their young kids the new brown sahibs. Government did its part by providing free/cheap education with instruction in hindi but somehow even that became counter-productive. Hindi got associated with cheap and free education, and english with private, costly and hence better education. Anyhow, higher learning in technical areas remained to be in English and I agree that is the most pragmatic approach. India is not technical superpower of sufficient research and influence of its own, so English has to be the medium of learning there. Still, Hindi survived as primary language of communication, while english became the choice for technical discussions.

Next came the PC, the internet, and with it the 'english keyboard'. This necessarily meant, that all written communication - would at least be in roman alphabet if not in english language. While hindi typewriters were widely adopted, hindi software fonts are difficult to use and have failed to gain much popularity. Also, the kind of confluence of people/cultures that internet has brought together means that people have to converge on a language to efficiently communicate - and no doubt that language has come to be English. It is due to this final blow, that I feel that death of Hindi has been written in stone, and we are just waiting for it to happen. For example, as a first step some people are suggesting that Roman alphabet for Hindi be standardized( as that is what most people are using in emails/sms/twitter anyways). This will be most unfortunate, as the 'written alphabet' is what is most important part of Hindi. Borrowed directly from Sanskrit, Hindi script is almost fully phonetic, the arrangement as well as name of alphabets are patterned scientifically(unlike Roman alphabet which has completely random order and quite random names of alphabets). There are no spelling-bees of Hindi. Because if quizmaster 'pronounces' the word correctly, 'anybody' can spell it correctly. You need not learn spelling and pronunciation separately, as one implies other. Standardizing roman alphabet to write hindi will introduce the not-currently-existing problems into the language making it harder and even less attractive. If Hindi has to die, let her die with her own beauty. If she is to survive, let her survive with full glory, not hidden under an imported cloak.

You might be wondering why this blogpost is in English and not in hindi. Well, I do blog in hindi, but not only the keyboard, but also the authoring tools, the authoring experience is way better supported in English. Furthermore, no body searches on google in hindi, so any hope of discoverability is lost if you write in hindi. This effect is clearly seen in journalism, where increasingly political analysts, sports analysts are choosing english on Hindi (business analysis has always been in english anyway). Worse, the quality of most of journalism in Hindi is so pathetic that one wishes that they rather abandon reporting in Hindi( there are few exceptions but they are far and between). As of today,  bureaucracy in Hindi speaking states function exclusively in Hindi. But, one can also sense the wind direction considering the recent recommendation of UPSC to make English marks count towards final merit in nation's top civil services examination. So UPSC feels that in future english shall play a more important role in discharge of duty by top bureaucrats of country, than it did before.


While Hindi is consistently losing ground in academics, science, law, journalism not all is in doom with language. It is still holding its ground(maybe even gaining) in parliamentary debates and entertainment. Major part of parliamentary debates are in Hindi, almost all debates in legislative assemblies in Hindi heartland are in Hindi. Most Prime Ministers continue to deliver important speeches in Hindi ( and this perhaps need special mention of Mr. Vajpayee who gave speeches in Hindi even outside India, while representing in international forums). And bollywood continues to invest millions of dollar in hindi content. Purists may despise bollywood, but bollywood alone has achieved what countless government schemes for promotion of hindi failed to achieve.Within India, non-hindi speaking states still listen bollywood music and non-native speakers pick up the language better from that than from academic curriculum(exactly the same way as live cricket commentary has taught english to many kids in India).  Outside India, its achievements are even more profound. Pushto speaking Afghans understand hindi due to bollywood. Middle-eastern colleagues would speak to you of Raj Kapur, Amitabh Bacchan, Sholay. Many will greet you with Namaste or discuss some 60s-70s song with you. Raj Kapur might well have been most popular Indian since independence in middle-east and central asia. On this note enjoy one of his most beautiful songs and hope our mother tongue continues to teach us, nurture us and entertain us:

From Nirbhaya to Gudiya...

On 17 December 2012, the nation woke up to the news of a most horrific gang-rape in the heart of national capital New Delhi. The outrageous incident brought thousands of protesters, cutting across social segments, to the streets of Delhi. For past few months before the incident, there had been a very noticeable increase in rape cases in national capital region. Thanks to round the clock coverage by media, an enthusiastic citizen response, a new, supposedly stricter, supposedly broader anti-rape law was enacted within 3 months(which is really extremely fast by Indian legislative standards). We thought we have done what is needed to be done.

But the shameful incidents kept ticking in at an alarming rate. From whole county in general, but more so from national capital. And finally, as if the atrocities against Nirbhaya were not enough, this week we had to hear another horrific story. Unparalleled in barbarism this was the tale of 5 year old Gudiya. Story of two days of torture of a kid, with foreign objects like candle, bottle found shoved into her takes away any faith one might have in humanity.

And this makes me ask, where have we failed - as a city, as a society, as a nation, as citizens, as government. I see this as a sort of collective failure, with each one of us having failed in some way. Lets start with executive. An oft-repeated scenario we hear is that police refuses to register a report on first instance, and sometimes the delay in filing the complaint and acting on it loses precious time during which the victim could have been saved. On of the primary reason of delay seems to be the fact that more number of registered cases reflects poorly on law and order situation and hence poorly on cops themselves. So, there seems to be a tendency of not registering the crime itself. Additionally, registering the crime creates work for the same department which registers it, and hence there seems to be tendency to push this work on station by citing conflicting jurisdiction (as per Nirbhaya's friend, Delhi cops debated on which station should take responsibility rather than helping the victims in critical state. This caused crucial 30 minutes delay for dying Nirbhaya). One can say we need to create a police force which has professional ethics of high standards. This is easier said than done. But, in short term, there is a seemingly simple solution. Can we not change the system, such that it is not the police department which is responsible for 'registering' the complaint? Such that, registering complaint is domain of a department which is not directly responsible for either maintaining law and order situation or investigating the complaint. This agency simply listens to a complaint, registers it and based on jurisdiction/workload dispatches it to appropriate police station which then investigates it. I have no experience of public administration, but this seems to be not-impossible-to-solve problem to me.

And then, there is another aspect to failure of governance. We repeatedly hear our 'condemning' these incidents. But, should we not, given the repeated failure, rather expect an apology from them? We rallied for 10 years for Modi to apologize for Gujarat riots(and good that we did that). We asked Congress for 40 years to apologize for anti-sikh riots. Then, why do we not expect the Home Minister, the chief minister to come and say sorry, this was our responsibility to protect Nirbhaya and Gudiya and we failed. There was a time when Lal Bahadur Shastri had resigned as Railway Minister on instance of single accident. As highest executive office holder for railways, he held himself responsible for any loss of lives due to negligence of his department functioning. Forget resignation, not one leader even tendered a single apology on multiple accounts of failure.

Next, lets analyze the legislative aspect. Kudos to political leadership for looking into anti-rape laws and having  a well-intentioned debate on topic. But what were the sticky points in debate? Whether or not consensual sex between teen-agers 16-18 be termed as rape! Group of ministers meeting, cabinet meeting, meeting with opposition leaders, full debate in parliament, everyone seemed to be concerned about consensual sexual activity among people in late teens. Many wanted to 'broaden' the ambit of law, as if that shall automatically protect women better. I differ. We needed(and still need) to 'focus' the law instead of broadening it. We often see that criminal cases take about five years in trial stage and if one goes through full appeals process in high court and supreme court, it takes 10-15 years. Simple reason is judiciary is over-burdened with large number of cases due to overly 'broad' definition of laws. Take for example, consensual sex outside marriage. Metropolitan courts are filled with proceedings of such cases where there is no allegation of non-consensual sex, only issue is that a partner retracted on promise of marriage. It is my opinion, that any disputes arising out of consensual act of two people (unless there is criminal force or criminal intimidation involved in obtaining such consent) should be outside the purview of criminal justice system. Any such disputes, should be settled as civil offenses and state should not be burdened with prosecuting these(all costs borne by parties involved). It is for this reason, that I fear that the quest of  'broadening' the scope has indirectly weakened our system by burdening it further by matters which did not belong to it. In new law, anyone (not even the parties involved) can complain of consensual sexual activity between teenagers and it shall be tried as case of rape. And our politicians did this amendment, going against recommendation of Justice Verma committee, and those of many progressive women's organization. Actually, if one sees the progression of our laws, it seems that arrow of time is actually reversed in India. More on that, some other day.

Last but not the least, lets analyze ourselves. Yeah we come to streets to protest, we put facebook status condemning the acts, (and yes we write blogs too). But somewhere, there seems to be a hypocrisy amongst us. It is we who left Nirbhaya and her friend helpless for half an hour on a busy street(no vehicle stopped for them). Recent Jaipur incident also comes to mind. We do not move forward to help those in distress. We prefer to be at distance. Worse, we prefer to watch the 'tamasha' from distance. After the police has arrived and victims are being helped, we all do stop, and want to see what is going on. No its not that our big cities have grown too busy. We have just grown too mean. We were a culture which prided itself in opposite. Our villages were known for selfless hospitality. We praised ourselves with traditions of  'vasudhev kutumbkam', and 'athithi devo bhaya' (Everyone is family, and guests are gods). Somewhere down the line, our cities have become model of extreme meanness. Some people tend to blame 'western influence', 'western television' for this. I do not think it is in anyway 'western' to not help people. In fact, I am quite certain of the fact that if Nirbhaya laid in critical situation in a busy street of any western city, help would have reached to her within minutes. We are losing our values, but not to west, to ourselves. The little prosperity our urban population enjoys, seems to come with huge price. An Indian origin author had recently written extensively about this growing Indian tendency of going out way to help those known to them but extreme apathy for the anonymous stranger. Unless we change ourselves, no police, no law, nothing can help us. Unfortunately though, we are changing for worse.

Modi becoming PM candidate?

BJP recently announced its central Parliamentary board, and most notable in inclusion in this committee is Narendra Modi. I see BJP sending at least two clear signals with this announcement.

The first very obvious signal is somewhat official recognition to the fact that Modi is de facto PM candidate for coming Lok Sabha election next year. Unless, a different  is candidate is actually announced, it might be safe to assume that Modi shall be calling shots. BJP may still fall short of actually announcing his candidature, so as to not look too embarrassed if post-poll alliance arithmetic and (not very) closed room negotiations with alliance partners force it to change its choice. I am no fan of Modi, but as a political observer I think the strategy does sense for two reasons. One, I would be uncomfortable as chief-ministership becoming a 'direct' stepping stone to Prime Minister candidature. India is a very diverse country, and problems of one state and solutions thereby may not actually apply to the Union as a whole. Almost all our PMs, with the exception of Devegowda, never delved into state level politics. Also, a bit too much is read in electoral success of Modi in Gujarat state elections. BJP as a party has always been very successful in Gujarat, and before Modi KeshuBhai Patel (and Shankar Singh Vaghela) have both got absolute majorities in the state. Nor is pro-incumbency a unique feature, Jyoti Basu had previously repeated absolute majority in Bengal for three decades. I do not mean it is not important to gain experience at level of governance of state, or to excel in it, but dealing with and having experience with issues in Union Parliament is far more important. Hence, being in Parliamentary board of most important opposition party, means more than being a CM, while considering PM candidature.

During all the years, while (at least on internet), there has been much talk of Modi being PM candidate, we have hardly heard him speak on issues which rocked the parliament. We don't know what Modi personally stands for in debates for Lokpal, Reservation in promotions, anti-rape law - to count few of the hotly debated legislations in past couple of years. In fact, from his skirmish with Governor of Gujarat over appointment of Lokayukta, his views on Lokpal seem different from what we heard Sushma Swaraj speaking as leader of opposition in Parliament. Again, if his voice is indeed stronger within the party(as it seems now), we should have rather heard him speak the position of party on the issue. If you follow him in twitter, it would seem that only person he knows from outside Gujarat is Swami Vivekananda(I must say though one thing he did write on was union budget).  For these reasons, I believe, now being in central Parliamentary committee we'll see his decision making on broader issues. In fact, I would say the transition is coming a little too late. Why, for example, he was not seen anywhere in UP state elections? We saw an utter confusion within BJP ranks with Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj from centre and Vinay Katiyar, Uma Bharti as local leaders scrambling all over the state with no strategy resulting in a disaster for BJP. One must ask, why Modi, supposedly numero uno of BJP, was not given the reins of party at such a crucial time. Second opportunity came just months back when Gadkari was unceremoniously stripped of position of party president. Would it be out of the world to elect Modi to party president and give reins of Gujarat to his trusted aide Amit Shah?May be Modi himself likes governing Gujarat a bit too much and prefers to stay in charge of state as long as he can. Anyhow, better late than never. One might hope to listen/read more of him on issues not local to Gujarat now.

The second signal, also too clear, is return of the party to image it held on nearly two decades ago, one that of Hindutva party, a party which is strong believer in cultural(and even religious) nationalism.  It was not until the party had the bitter experience of having to sit in opposition despite being single largest party(in 1998), and despite given first invitation to form government(the shortest lived government in history of India - 13 days), that party had very consciously shifted itself away from hardline Hindutva leaders. Uma Bharti was nowhere to be seen. Murli Manohar Joshi was reduced to lowly HRD ministry. More important functions were held by Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh. Most of all, BJP parted with Ministry of Defense, entrusting it to George Fernandes, not only from outside BJP but also from minority. This was a phenomenal shift for the party, and party got immediate gains out of it. Vajpayee won the elections third-time(after 13 day and then a 13 month government), became the first non-congress PM to complete the term . This period saw BJP having some real taste of power, and it became more than a perennial opposition. But after loss in two elections, BJP seems to be going in its old gear, pushing through Hindutva mandate full speed. And it is this aspect, which actually baffles me. From its own experiments, it is clear that Hindutva is a force that can make it a principal opposition party, but it is simply not enough to bring it to treasury seats. And while astute sociologists have drawn out theories of Indian character of secularism (and what not) from this, to me this is simply a statistical reality - the distribution of voting population and their loyalties with local leaders happen to be this way that a party perceived as hardline is deemed to fall short of majority.  Hindutva as a central political ideology has also lost much steam since Ram Mandir issue in Ayodhya died out during the turn of century. Why then, do we see elevation of Varun Gandhi, Uma Bharti and Amit Shah? We shall have to wait to see how BJP strategy unfolds over next few months, and hopefully it is a well thought out plan(unlike UP elections last year)!