Lok Sabha elections 2019

[PKBasu]

There actually is enormous ferment in the Congress at the moment, with a group of 23 senior leaders (including such erstwhile family loyalists like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Prithviraj Chavan, Kapil Sibal, Shashi Tharoor, BS Hooda, Veerappa Moily and Manish Tiwari) leading the way, demanding "sweeping changes" in the party -- and effectively revolting against the idea of continued family dominance of the party. They appear to be particularly focused on removing Rahul (and Priyanka) Gandhi from the top leadership of the party. Let's see if they succeed.

[PKBasu]

I'm in Kolkata at the moment, and it seems very clear that the BJP has taken West Bengal by storm, while the Trinamool Congress is waning -- particularly on account of the rampant corruption of Mamata and especially her nephew Abhishek Banerjee. Congress is nowhere to be seen (judging by party flags festooning the streets of Calcutta), and neither is the CPI-M much of a presence. There were attempts by TMC and CPI-M to generate interest in the Bharat Bandh (called by Punjab's agitating farmers) on 8th December, but it was an abject failure.

[prasen9]

It will be good if Rahul and Priyanka are dispatched. Yes, the BJP has gained footing in Bengal significantly. I think the anti-Hindi-imposition sentiment is more strong in the South.

[jayakris]

It will be good if Rahul and Priyanka are dispatched. Yes, the BJP has gained footing in Bengal significantly. I think the anti-Hindi-imposition sentiment is more strong in the South.

I don't think so. There is really no talk of Hindi imposition in much of the south. Not in Kerala or in Karnataka, as far as I know. Everybody speaks Hindi and nobody seems to care. There may be a group of politicians in TN who still make use of it to their benefit...

What Hindi imposition are you talking about anyway? On what kind of things? There is Sanskirt imposition on naming new things, I suppose, but on what matter is BJP imposing Hindi in the south? I don't speak Hindi at all because of very poor vocabulary (though I can understand 75% of Hindi conversations and 50% of Hindi speeches), but I do not find myself ever noticing any Hindi imposition in the south (Kerala/Kar/TN) when I go there.

[prasen9]

The BJP has talked about Hindi imposition in the past even though they have not been able to impose it significantly. It is the perception that matters. The Democrats in the U.S. are no socialists.

An article

Are you denying that the BJP wants all government communication to be done in Hindi and have many politicians who have disparaged people's Indianness if they do not know Hindi, etc.? If you are genuinely not aware of these efforts, I will find these. When I went to my old department, all the signs on professors' doors at IIT were replaced with panels written in Hindi that were not there before.

The problem with choosing one language over another is that people from the states where Hindi is not the native language are at a distinct disadvantage for the government jobs. You may be exceptionally smart but you would not become the scientific advisor because you cannot speak Hindi once this is fully implemented.

Everything in politics is about power and a lot is about propaganda. The BJP's core constituency was/is the Hindi belt. They cannot institute rules that will favor their supporters but language preference is a tool to help these people get preference in government jobs while appearing to be non-discriminating.

There is some basis to people in the South being cautious with the party who wants to help the Hindi belt. Now, the BJP will possibly try to curb that if they realize that is not helping them in the South just like they are not emulating the Godhra model openly across India because they do not need it. But, let us see.

Shah has unabashedly spoken of the one country, one language policy. Now that 60% of the files in the Home Ministry are in Hindi, do you think you would be at a disadvantage Jay if you were going to apply for a job in the Home Ministry?

[jayakris]

No, I was not arguing the pros, cons, or that BJP is not imposing Hindi or anything....

I was just saying that nobody in the south seems to care. Not in Kerala and Karnataka. Everybody knows Hindi now, and it's only those like me (who never lived in a Hindi speaking part of India and left India soon after TV became popular and made Hindi universal in India) who have any issue with it. I can find almost nobody in Karnataka or Kerala that is worse at Hindi than me either. They all know Hindi, and have no issue with the files being in Hindi, or whatever. I don't see a single article in Kerala newspapers, nor any statement by any politician in Kerala, complaining about Hindi imposition. Maybe this is a political issue in West Bengal and other places, but it isn't in the south, outside of maybe TN (to the extent I can determine). That was all I was saying.

I don't like Hindi much at all, but if there is a single language that most Indians can converse in, that is probably a good thing. Looks like we are there already.

[usaindia]

Saw a YouTube video where they discussed how BJP JP nadda is doing 120 days walk for 2023 elections from now itself.If True thats great planning .
Another comment i heard is BJP P2P concept ,fight all elections from parliament to panchayat.

[prasen9]

A single language to converse in is great but imposing a language on the country that gives a certain part of the country an advantage in a large number of government jobs (and there are proposals for exams only in Hindi) is going too far and is essentially discriminating a part of the country and favoring one set of people versus another for these jobs. If you make it such that nobody is not at a disadvantage, then you are basically reverting to the pre-BJP position. The BJP wants all official business to be done in Hindi. They say and think that that will unite the country. I do not think picking winners for government jobs from one part of the country unites anything and there will be more harm than good if it is forced. Whereas most Bengalis understand Hindi, we are not really capable of doing business in Hindi. I do not know how Malayalis and Kannadas really can write official documents in Hindi that easily but if you say so, that is fine.

[SaniaFan]

I don't like Hindi much at all

Why? I mean I understand if you say I don't specifically like hindi, but why would you not like it. Did you score less marks or something .
BTW 2 years ago there were agitations in bangalore about imposition of hindi where they smeared the all the hindi names of shops, metro stations, etc. And in some cases they were asking people if they could speak kannada. This is in bangalore where there are lots of hindi speaking people.I am not sure hindi is that prevalent in other parts of Karnataka.

[PKBasu]

I think India should have picked Sanskrit as the national language. It would have been equally difficult for everyone, and has links to every one of India's languages (even Tamil, despite desperate "Dravidian movement" attempts to remove those influences). But such logical thinking was very difficult in the Nehruvian Congress. Now that Hindi has been picked -- and is in the constitution as the official language of India -- it is just a matter of time before it becomes widely accepted and used. French was the official language of England (also Scotland) for 300 years after the Norman invasion, and Farsi was the official language in most of India (except in the deep South and far east -- Assam, Manipur) for several centuries. (Tipu Sultan enforced it in what is now Karnataka).

This is what I wrote on Facebook on September 16th, two days after "Hindi Day" this year:

"Two days ago, India (or at least a significant plurality of Indians) celebrated "Hindi Day" -- the day Hindi (in the Devanagari script) was accepted by the Constituent Assembly as the official language of India 71 years ago. (If you look at Wikipedia, it claims that the constitution says Hindi was accepted as "an" official language; WRONG! Article 343 says with absolute clarity that "THE official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script").
Yet, the ONLY language in which the Supreme Court and the various High Courts of India operate is English. So, here we have the main institution that decides on the constitutionality of various laws trampling upon one vital clause of the Constitution -- and instead frequently asserting that no language can be used in the higher courts other than English! (Clause 2 of Art.343 does allow English to be used alongside Hindi until 1965 -- but says nothing about the subsequent 55 years!!).
The tyranny of the minority runs rampant in many spheres in India, and this is just another example. Speakers of Tamil, Bengali, Urdu, Assamese, Odiya, and some speakers of Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu objected to Hindi in 1949, but lost out to the majority. As 1965 approached, the Tamil speakers in particular vehemently opposed the "imposition" of Hindi (and many of the other linguistic groups, including speakers of India's second-most widely spoken language, Bengali, joined the clamour, as did a few of those from the third-most-frequently-spoken language, Telugu). And so, Article 343 has never been implemented, and remains in abeyance: we as a nation are in breach of the Constitution, but who will bell the cat?
In England, following the Norman invasion in 1066, the language of the courts was FRENCH for more than 3 centuries -- so it isn't so unusual for a former conqueror/colonizer's language to persist for long periods. The Mughals used Farsi (Persian) as their court language -- as it was the language of refinement in the Turkic homelands (today's Uzbekistan) from which they emerged. Afghanistan's court language was Dari (a dialect of Farsi) right until the Soviet invasion. Raja Rammohun Roy's first 3 books were written in Farsi, as that was still the elite language of India during his school years (although the Mughals had lost control of most of India a century earlier -- by 1718, mainly to the Marathas, who didn't have time to force their language on the nation; the Mughals of course followed 3 centuries of Turkic rule over northern India). English was really introduced into a few schools in Calcutta and elsewhere only after the 1840s.
India is a notoriously "soft" state. PM Lal Bahadur Shastri's attempts to implement a constitutional provision in 1965 failed, and he chose not to make too fine a point of it. Language wasn't something a democratic India was going to impose on anyone, but the result was the persistence of English -- a minority language that was spoken fluently by less than 1% of Indians in 1947, just 2% of Indians in 1977, and perhaps at most 10% of Indians today. So 90% of Indians cannot access basic justice, because they have to overcome a near-insurmountable language hurdle in order to get justice from the higher courts.
Ever so slowly, though, Hindi is indeed seeping into the pores of every part of India. I would have preferred Sanskrit to be the national language -- the natural link among all India's languages since ancient times, and now equally difficult for almost all Indians to learn (since only about 2000 people are supposedly fluent in it today). To replace Hindi with Sanskrit, however, would require a constitutional amendment (almost impossible to accomplish). So the existing constitutional provision will surely be implemented, but perhaps only a century after it was originally passed!
__________
Here is what Article 343 of the Indian Constitution says in the clearest possible words (in clause 1; there are weasel words in clauses 2 and 3, but none of them negate clause 1, implying that the constitution is being transgressed regularly!):
(1) The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. The form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals.
(2) Notwithstanding anything in clause (1), for a period of fifteen years from the commencement of this Constitution, the English language shall continue to be used for all the official purposes of the Union for which it was being used immediately before such commencement: Provided that the President may, during the said period, by order authorise the use of the Hindi language in addition to the English language and of the Devanagari form of numerals in addition to the international form of Indian numerals for any of the official purposes of the Union.
(3) Notwithstanding anything in this article, Parliament may by law provide for the use, after the said period of fifteen years, of: (a) the English language, or (b) the Devanagari form of numerals, for such purposes as may be specified in the law. "

[prasen9]

If you care about basic justice, then all you need to do is to replace English by the dominant language of the states. I doubt people in Bengal, say, can understand official documents written in Hindi any better that we do English even though I (and many others) understand spoken Hindi as spoken in the movies, etc. and can speak enough broken Hindi to get by. There is no reason for a court in Rajasthan to have to use the same language as one in Tamil Nadu. And, if you really care about the masses go with the local language. But, of course, if it is not about the issue of the masses but about doing favors to the Hindi belt, who are the major vote bank of the ruling party now, then of course, you would have to pay lip-service and introduce nationalism, populism, etc.

If my culture and language is going to be subjugated, how do I care if it is by the English or the Hindi speaking people? France is possibly closer to England than Uttar Pradesh is to Bengal.

My preference is maximum freedom. Maximum freedom is obtained by a federation instead of one where the minority is steam-rolled by the majority like the Chinese are doing in Tibbet, Xinjiang, etc. In India, there is no tyranny of the minority. No minority language has been forced on the majority. What has been forced is the use of English because the elite wanted to keep power and maybe the generation then venerated English.

The Canadians operate in both English and French seamlessly. Even if Hindi was chosen to be a language, there is no reason, given our manpower, we cannot produce documents in two languages if the readers do not understand one language or another. The efficient, pragmatic, and utilitarian solution is to produce a document in the language of the majority of its readers. So, if the court's primary decision is to resolve a dispute among Bengalis, it should be produced in Bengali. Etc. If it is between Bengalis and Tamils, then just write the document in one and translate it to the other. If you want a uniform copy, someone can translate it to Hindi for research purposes.

Admittedly, the Sanskrit solution would perhaps been the best to avoid choosing winners and losers. And getting back to a beautiful language to celebrate our common heritage. I have no relationship to Hindi. It is practically a foreign language to me as is English although, Hindi has many near-cognates to Bangla. But, Sanskrit, I possibly have ancestral connection.

If we want to build a nation, let us build a nation together. It is not built by one set of people being disadvantaged and giving up and the other reaping the benefits. What India's experience has shown is that it is very difficult to choose one language over another. The framers of the Constitution were naiive to think that in 15 years, they could get the country to just accept Hindi. And, the politicians perhaps took the pragmatic decision of not trying to impose Hindi and save the union. How did Jinnah's decision on imposing Urdu on Bengal turn out? They even tried to change the script of Bengali to Arabic as they did with Hindustani/Urdu. India would have gone the Pakistan way if we tried to impose Hindi 15 years after independence. Ignoring that article was a pragmatic and wise decision, imho.

Israel did this the right way by resurrecting a dead language Hebrew resulting in the demise of Yiddish, etc. But, that has unified the country. Unifying the country will not happen by the majority (may actually not be a majority but simply a plurality) imposing itself on the rest. The U.S. perhaps got away not having to print things in German over and above English in the 1700s but then only about 10% of the population was perhaps German speaking.

If the E.U. were to try the Hindi experiment, it will be the end of the E.U. For established peoples and cultures, it is very difficult to impose a language and not be subject to opposition.

In the near future, automated translators will become very accurate and of reasonably high quality. In principle, when you have cheap and efficient translators, you can write it in any language and translate it in others almost instantaneously. It will be fun to see whether the tyrant plurality will try to impose Hindi even then.

[jayakris]

I don't like Hindi much at all

Why? I mean I understand if you say I don't specifically like hindi, but why would you not like it. Did you score less marks or something .

I don't know why. I actually did very well in the written part of it - like in school Hindi exams. At the top of the class... But that didn't help. I know Malayalam and English very fluently, and Tamizh, Korean and Hindi less fluently. I can understand Sanskrit better than most Indians too. I never felt uncomfortable with the other 5 languages, but I always did, with Hindi. It was always that one language that I felt I would never get right. I never figured out a clear reason why.

Maybe it is the grammatical structure and the concept of "genders" for everything - which is not there in the other 5 languages. That idea never made logical sense to me and it never got internalized. Where did that come from? I always felt uncomfortable with the "ka, ke, ki" business in Hindi -- to put it in simple terms. An alien concept to me. It made me shy away from even trying to get better at speaking Hindi.

Many words felt "un-Indian" to me too. I don't feel that when I hear Telugu, Bengali, Assamese, Marathi or Oriya. I don't even know why! Maybe if I had been told that most of the words I thought were from Arabic or Persian or something were actually from Sanskrit, I would have had a nicer view of Hindi? Not sure...

I learned English and Korean as foreign languages, looking at them as such. But whenever I looked at Hindi, it felt neither here nor there. Not a foreign language, but it felt like one. Strange.

Having said all that, at a conscious level, I blame myself for not getting better at Hindi. It is the nation's language and I should know it better. But I could never develop a deep personal liking for it and it always showed.

BTW 2 years ago there were agitations in bangalore about imposition of hindi where they smeared the all the hindi names of shops, metro stations, etc. And in some cases they were asking people if they could speak kannada. This is in bangalore where there are lots of hindi speaking people.I am not sure hindi is that prevalent in other parts of Karnataka.

But that still died out fairly soon, right? It will peripdically resurface. Actually the Karnataka response is really not against Hindi as much as the opposition to all the non-Kannadigas coming to the state, especially Bangalore, causing the fear that it would kill the "Kannada culture". Hindi was used just a symbol of it, that's all. If the politicians try to kick up ruckus saying the "local language/culture is dying", it can work in many places in the south (and elsewhere in India too). But I think the politicians have figured out that, in general, "Hindi imposition" is no longer a good enough vote-getter in the south.

[Sin Hombre]

I don't think there is any Hindi vs non-Hindi fight anymore to Jay's point.

Agree that Rahul and Priyanka getting removed would be good for Indian politics.

As would the terribly corrupt and inept Mamata Banerjee.

[PKBasu]

Jay, your feeling that Hindi is somehow a foreign language is actually rather accurate. Hindi as spoken in north India has heavy accretions of Farsi (Persian), Arabic and a bit of Turkish. Other Indian languages have much fewer words from those languages (the southern languages almost none at all, thanks to the Vijayanagar and Maratha empires). I am married to a Hindi speaker, and I tease her constantly about the non-Indian words (she responds robustly of course with some Bong-bashing). In Malay (Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia) there is an interesting tension between the Sanskrit and Islamic influences: the word for book used to be "pustaka", but is gradually being replaced by "kitaab". Similarly, in Malaysia, the Tamil influence is greater, so the word for shop is "kedai". In Indonesia an indigenous word is used instead.

And yes, Hindi's use of genders for inanimate objects is impossible for non-native speakers to master. I haven't mastered it in 37 years of trying (since I went to college in Delhi). Before that, I did very well in third-language Hindi without my lack of knowledge of the inanimate-lingas penalising me!

[PKBasu]

It's interesting how everybody ignored one key point I was making. The "liberals" in India make a big deal of their fidelity to the Constitution. But nobody says a thing about the fact that our Supreme Court is transgressing Article 343 of the Constitution for the past 55 years. That Article says in the clearest possible terms: "The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script". What should have happened in the Supreme Court is that Hindi and English should have been used together after 1965. And in the High Courts, the local language (primarily) and Hindi (as alternative) should have been allowable. Persisting with English in the High Courts is especially unjust.

Frankly, Sanskrit would have solved 90% of the problem had it been adopted instead of Hindi. Actually, Bengali was the most widely-spoken language in pre-Partition India. Had Bengali been adopted as the national language, East Pakistan would never have been created. But the Bengalis would have had to be more liberal about the use of a Hindi-fied Bengali (which is how Tagore's and Sarat Chattopadhyay's novels are read) in north India and local variations in the south.

Sanskrit would really have been the most widely acceptable -- but wasn't really considered, because it was thought of as a "Brahmin" and "Hindu-holy" language, and was rejected as too elitist.