Bhopal has a large population of PSU employees - State Bank, ONGC, BHEL and Reserve Bank are just four that pop to my mind right now. They keep getting transfered, all in a Nehruvian spirit of national integration (how dividing states along linguistic lines is in favor of national integration is something that my communal mind refuses to understand). Growing up in Bhopal, I remember we had many students at school whose native language was not Hindi but other languages, such as Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi and Marathi. To my ears, their Hindi sounded funny, but it never really mattered beyond that initial strangeness.
It was much later that I realized Hindi is not our national language, and that language politics has been dividing our nation since forever. It reared its ugly head once again today.
A student from Manipur was bashed up badly in Bangalore by a group of three men for not being able to speak in Kannada - 'This is not China - if you eat Karanataka's food, you must speak Kannada'. The man survived, but the incident left a bitter taste in my mouth, and not just because I also live in Bangalore without knowing the smallest amount of the language.
I wonder why natives feel everyone must learn and appreciate their language - having lived across seven cities in five distinct language groups (Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and now Kannada), I would be the first person to concede that though all these languages might be beautiful, I just do not have the time and energy to learn them after putting in more than twelve hours a day at work, and especially if I am not even certain how long I will live in that state. Does that mean I disrespect that language or that culture? Not at all - why is that hard to understand?
Having said that, I must state the obvious -
1. We condemn this incident of linguistic chauvinism and xenophobia
2. These three men do not represent the entire state - I am sure many Kannadigas don't feel the same way
3. Each language has its own beauty and charm
4. We must not force others to learn any language
5. Being a citizen of India, all of us have the right to work and live anywhere in the nation (yes, J&K and North East are an exception) without having to know the language of that state
6. Wherever we live, it makes our lives easier to learn the native language
7. The North East also witnesses terrible racism against mainlanders - it just does not get reported as widely.
1. We condemn this incident of linguistic chauvinism and xenophobia
2. These three men do not represent the entire state - I am sure many Kannadigas don't feel the same way
3. Each language has its own beauty and charm
4. We must not force others to learn any language
5. Being a citizen of India, all of us have the right to work and live anywhere in the nation (yes, J&K and North East are an exception) without having to know the language of that state
6. Wherever we live, it makes our lives easier to learn the native language
7. The North East also witnesses terrible racism against mainlanders - it just does not get reported as widely.
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