Is Hindi our National Language?

First of all, apologies to all those who would have expected this article to be in Hindi. This one aims to reach those who can't read Hindi, so I am forced to choose English as the medium.

Nevertheless, while I was in school (which was a government run English medium school), I had read in my Civics class that the national flower of India is lotus and the national bird is peacock. Also that the national animal is Tiger and the national language is Hindi. I was amazed at how has someone made that choice. And when I read about how tigers are so rapidly getting extinct and how peacock is mostly found in the plains of the Ganga, I started finding a similarity between everything that was called National. Pardon me for making a sweeping statement, but this is maximum what a school kid could think. All our National so&so are not readily available. Tigers are something that are endangered species. Lotus is something I have never seen because it does not grow in gardens (where all flowers are found) but in ponds, and Peacock is again something that I never saw (till I landed up in the lush green campus of IIT Kanpur which is full of peacocks).

The fate looked different for Hindi, may be because I lived in Bihar (now my city is part of Jharkhand) whose official language is Hindi. But my parents didn't talk to each other in Hindi. They talked in Angika (which is a supposedly a variant of Maithili) and is spoken in the Gangetic plains of Bihar. When I ever went to our native villages in Bhagalpur, I was mocked for not being able to talk in Angika and was termed an "Angrez" for speaking in Hindi. Gosh !!! they didn't even know that Angrez are english speaking people and not Hindi speaking. Anyways, I cursed the villagers for not being able to speak our National Language and took pride in being acquainted with the solitary symbol of India within my reach.

When I reached class tenth, the year which is marked as a very important year in the academic career of an Indian, we were supposed to choose our second language for the Board Exams. The first language (and the compulsory one) obviously remained English !!!. The options available were Sanskrit and Hindi. And despite the near-demise status of the language, 90% of the class chose Sanskrit, because the papers were fairly simpler and easier to score. I wanted to show some obligation to the national language, but was too uncertain about playing with the first important step of my career. I chose Sanskrit, and took Hindi as my extra subject. I kept attending the Hindi classes and not the Sanskrit ones (they were both held at the same time, in different rooms), but still the board results couldn't be changed. While I scored a comfortable 96 out of 100 in Sanskrit, I scored only 76 in Hindi. I was broke. I felt I was good in Hindi, but not anymore.

I chose to study science and the only compulsory language left to be studied was English. Hindi was past now, never to be seen again. I kept trying to come back to Hindi through speech competions and the school magazine but the bond never became strong. And then life brought me to IIT Kanpur. In the first year, when talents of 'bachchas' are identified for the future competitions of the campus, I participated in both the English debates as well as the Hindi ones. I won both. But I was assigned to the Hindi team because, there were way too many people in the English team and it could have managed with the 2nd and 3rd rankers, while the Hindi team was higly impoverished and needed a strong contender. I had no choice. I chose Hindi. Thereafter, I could never return to English. i became the editor of the campus magazine, but only for the Hindi part and that meant publishing a few poems, a few stories and a couple of jokes (which were not at all humourous). The magazine remained an English one, with some tribute-like pages dedicated to Hindi. I tried to change things. Managed to get one of the two cover stories in Hindi and also some other major coverage in Hindi. I don't know how much did it help.

Soon after, I was appointed the Coordinator of the Hindi Literary Society, formed in line with the much popular English Literary Society. By this time, I had found some strong supporters of Hindi, but barring a few most of them could not think of Hindi beyond poems. The first thing I did after taking charge of the society was to change its name to Hindi Sahitya Sabha. Again, i don't know if it mattered. But it did give us some satisfaction. I also tried learning Hindi typing on computer and trained a few more. Finally we were able to launch the first Hindi web-page of IIT Kanpur called Pratidhvani - a subset of the campus magazine. I don't know if it's alive or already dead by now.

IIT days passed soon. And I got destined to travel the country, from one end to the other. I travelled in Punjab, in Bangalore (Karnataka), in Nasik (Maharashtra) and in Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) and everywhere, it was English that came more handy than Hindi (except for the exception of Punjab, where Hindi was understood more than English). In this travel, I tried learning other Indian Languages. Got basic literacy in Marathi and a bit better hold on Punjabi. Tamil remained out of reach and couldn't go any further than counting from One to Ten. But one question kept intriguing me. Is Hindi our National Language?

If yes, then how come, more than half of the country does not speak it. Why is it that I have to use English when I converse in the southern part of the country, or for that matter, even in the far eastern part of the country. Hindi is the official language of only 9 states out of 28 states, which is a little less than one-third. If we consider the population of Hindi speaking people, I don't know what the figure will be because even remote areas of Hindi speaking states like Rajasthan, Himachal and Jharkhand can still not speak Hindi. I don't know why did we choose Hindi as the national language. May be because it still remains the most widely spoken Indian languages. So it is not the language of every Indian, but might be the language of most Indians.

Whatever, be the logic, today, I can't see Hindi growing but diminishing. Probably it fits the reasoning of national symbols I developed in schooldays - near extinction. I haven't heard of great literature in Hindi in recent times (exceptions are there) and the people who are most responsible for whatever little progress Hindi has made, are the bollywood people. Though English remains the common language of all our actors and actresses when it comes to giving an interview, thankfully the Bollywood industry still believes in making films in Hindi. I just hope that they keep doing that.

If I think of why Hindi has nit still reached the desired state of a National Language, there are primarily two reasons I can think of. First is the de-linkage of Hindi with economics. If you have to earn, you need English. Knowing Hindi does not give you any advantage in the competition market and hence you really don't care if you can't speak it till English is able to get you salaries. Secondly, it is the proponents of Hindi who have made it more and more an elite language. The writers have focused so much on the purity of the language that they rejected anything from outside. Urdu, Awadhi, Rajasthani, Punjabi-Hindi (the delhi language), Marathi-Hindi (or the mumbaiya hindi) and the Anglo-Hindi (the common language of the college-goer today) do not get any recognition as Hindi and the only recognized form is the one spoken On Doordarshn. That form will always remain limited in its reach and its popularity.

Anyways, I hope that people who are in love with the language will keep writing, reading and speaking in it, even if that means watching silly news channels just for the sake of listening to Hindi and watching baseless romantics of bollywood. I just hope that like the lotus, the peacock and the tiger, Hindi also manages to live despite the odds...