I happened to stumble on Nita’s blog which titled a post ‘South India is better developed than North India says CNN IBN‘. Being a South Indian and the natural inquisitive human nature curiosity demanded me to read it; was engrossed with the post and the discussions for hours together. Mind boggling discussion I should say which unfolds a treasure of knowledge about India; I was taken back by surprise when i learnt ‘Hindi is not the national language of India but one of the official languages’.
The Official Languages Act, 1963 illustrates the usage of languages for the official purposes and Compilation of orders regarding the use of Hindi/NiyamPustakeng details the constitutional provisions regarding official languages; officially published in http://www.rajbhasha.nic.in/ the website of Department of Official Language – Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. of India.
How ignorant had I been assuming Hindi to be the National Language or should i say my teachers/my environment ignorant and propagating the myth? By the way am not against Hindi and i personally love speaking and hearing it for its own style or any other language which grabs my interest.
My motive of highlighting this information (1) Let other fellow Indians know this fact, who ‘re ignorant like me (2) Hindi is one of the official languages of India; which means all the other Indian languages hold due respect and importance 3) Especially to those people living on the upper part of India speaking Hindi as their mother tongue try to bring down the arrogance and learn to respect other language speaking Indians; without denying the fact that Hindi is being spoken by a majority of Indians statistically.
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November 13, 2007 at 6:04 pm
miteshashar
Check out:
http://india.targetgenx.com/2007/10/14/you-think-you-know-what-indias-national-language-is/
In this article I and Rishabh have written about the following:
November 14, 2007 at 10:09 am
privj
Thanks for the link Mitesh!
May 25, 2008 at 5:24 pm
chandrusekar
Thanxs a lot…
Everybody should know these details….
It clearly shows how ignorant and innocent are we in knowing our country….
It is though obvious that a country with many languages from its land cannot have a single national language for its own,it is the politicians and innocent people think that hindi is the national language..
I read in a history writing that it was Nehru who started to mention about implementing hindi as a national language in 1930s…
He got a major setback at that time because hindi was not mother tounge of majority of people,it was bengali which was said to the major language….
So Hindi was first opposed by Bengalis to be the national language…
The plan was droped immediately…
Then in 1947 when they seperated India and Pakistan more than 60% Bengalis went to East Bengal( Present Bangladesh).So there was a substantial reduction in the number of Bengali speakers.It made a good support for hindi to be the major language of the country.
From then on all the politicians tried to implement Hindi on all the states making Hindi to be a single country’s language(By supressing other language).But it was quite substantially blocked by many states which found it early.
They knew that their language is also the language from this country,it also has old and rich in literature,it also has substantial number speakers.
June 14, 2008 at 4:26 pm
privj
Thanks Chandru for your inputs on the 1930 Indian History!
Even i was unaware that Bengali was the major language at that time.