Hindi Diaries / 1. Why do we love to hate Hindi?

 

This is a question that has bogged me since ancient times. Since as long as I can remember. Since the time I was a student at Carmel Convent School, Bhopal, where the insane emphasis on speaking English is the reason that almost all its graduates waltz through this department like the early morning breeze over tender, green ears of wheat in a field.

I have had discussions on this question at home umpteen times, especially since a certain variety of language Nazis became part of our large, extended family through marriage and started measuring familial relationships on the weighing scale of languages deliberately not known. Confused about what that means? Well, you will discover gradually as you read along.

Going back to Carmel, one of the best things that I remember about my school is its equally insane emphasis on Hindi. Teachers and newly-minted parents of this age would be shocked to know that it was not just English, but Hindi and Sanskrit too which were taught with the zeal of a missionary by, well, the Christian missionaries who ran the school (pun, intended!).

One of my earliest favourite teachers was a Christian nun whose mother tongue was Malayalam, and who taught Hindi when I was in Class V, right up till Class VIII, if I remember correctly. She was born and brought up in Kerala but had acquired excellent command over Hindi — and professional expertise too — after shifting to Madhya Pradesh. Within a few years, she had gained command over the most arduous of Hindi muhavaras and lokoktees (idioms and proverbs). The most endearing part of her speech was the slight, barely-noticeable Malayali inflection at the end of her Hindi sentences, that made it totally charming.

I regret I cannot recall this dear teacher's name just yet though I remember her face distinctly, standing at the head of the class with a book in one hand, and the fingers of the other gently pressing the words in air, as if playing an imaginary tune.

She is the one I remembered when I sat down to prepare questions for Daisy Rockwell (#Daisy Rockwell) , the most famous speaker of Hindi at this moment, for an interview. Those who don't follow books and authors wouldn't know who she is but is well worth knowing about. Rockwell is the American translator of the Hindi novel, Ret Samadhi by Geetanjali Shree (#Geetanjali Shree), which in its English avatar, the Tomb of Sand, won the International Booker Prize 2022 on 26 May in London. (I had spoken to Geetanjali Shree when the book had appeared in the longlist in March, and to Daisy Rockwell when it eventually won the prize in May (These stories / interview can be read here, here and here). 

It may sound cheesy to say so, but one often gets reviled for calling spade a spade. The truth is that Hindi is suddenly feeling a current of positivity thanks to that uniquely Indian aspiration — a validation from the West. For the language, this validation has come as a double whammy in the form of the International Booker and Daisy Rockwell.

"Two angrez entities rooting for it??!! There must be something in it!!" I could almost hear a lot of pseudo-angrezs of India say this (if at all they would have head of this news in the first place, that is...)

And so, the occasion became ripe enough for me to finally seek an answer to the question that has troubled me for centuries. Why do you have to hate Hindi to know/ speak/ write good English?

I have made a living out of writing in English for more than two decades now and feel vainglorious in admitting that I happen to know it well enough to have survived this tough industry (though not as well as some of my peers). Yet, I didn't have to hate Hindi and Sanskrit to be good at English. My Hindi and Sanskrit were equally good in school, and mercifully, Hindi continues to be as good as English. Ever since leaving school, when I stopped studying Hindi academically, I have remained in very active touch with the language as organically as possible, without making any extra effort at all, and am proud of the Hindi books in my collection as I'm of the English books.

How does one, then, make an extra effort to not know a language, when it is being thrown about your ears all day long? How can you not pick up Hindi if living in Delhi, or not pick up Bangla in Calcutta, Telugu in Hyderabad, or Kannada in Bangalore? You really have to be living in an insulated, gated community (again, pun intended!) to be sheathed against a language in such a way.

As far as common scientific knowledge goes, language as an individual's attribute is controlled by a specific part of the brain, which sadly for the pseudos, doesn't discriminate between  languages. If that part of your brain is highly active, you will be good at languages, no matter which language you choose. If not, you would not be so proficient in languages.

Many areas of the brain such as Broca's area, Wernicke's area, Angular gyrus, and perhaps a few others, work in tandem to decide a person's ability to process a language. That is what I have known.

I wonder what part of brain helps obliterate Hindi altogether while helping one absorb English? I think this must be a sui generis component of the brain because English has not worked in such conflicted ways with any other language in the world.

So, a big chunk of Gen Now in my big circle of family, friends and acquaintances is growing up shutting its ears to the local language of the Indian city they are being raised in. They only English, unfortunately, and only as a shallow multi-media import from the US. How can one gloat on one's limited knowledge when one's proficiency in multiple languages is an asset any day?

I remember a joke that was shared by an American acquaintance whom I used to know a decade ago. He was Bruno Blumenfeld who had chaperoned the IVLP (International Visitors Leadership Program) group of four of which I was a part, on our month-long tour of the US in 2012, courtesy the Department of State. The five of us — Anita Naidu, Bruno, Renu Oberoi, Sukhesh Arora, and I — were talking about languages as Bruno believed (and rightly so) that Indians were a multi-lingual people and every Indian he had met knew at least 2-3 languages, if not more.

He asked us: "What do you call a person who can speak many languages?"

We answereed: "Polyglot!"

Bruno: "And a person who knows two languages?"

Us: "Bilingual"

Bruno: "A person who knows one language?"

We looked at each other.

Bruno: "American!"

A generation of Indian parents so badly wants to live the American dream without having managed to go to the US (that's another aspirational story, by the way), that they have shuttered out every other language from the universe of their children. The consequences of this misplaced elitism, good or bad, will become evident only in the years to come, but what's the harm in knowing a language for which one doesn't have to make any effort, or investment, or clear an exam, except for keeping their ears open?

I know of people who have forbidden family members from speaking in Hindi at all with their growing children. It's ridiculous how it has become the community's responsibility to prevent the young ones from being exposed to Hindi, not even by mistake. 

I'm not even going into the debate of Hindi being imposed on the rest of the country as the national language. I think promoters of Hindi must first deal with the apathy towards the language by its own native speakers. What's the point of forcing it down the throat of non-Hindi speakers when those born in the milieu of the language are shunning it like an infection?

Frankly, in my personal range of acquaintances, all those who have eschewed Hindi to be able to speak better English (or any English at all) are none the wiser for it. At best, their English remains sketchy, colloquial and a sham that betrays not only their farcical love for America but also a studied indifference towards their own reality. They speak SEO English — they know the catch / key words and phrases well enough to retch out glib sentences with confidence, however shallow the entire content may be. It's almost like the din of nondescript narration one hears while travelling in Delhi Metro. [Sshh! They watch Bollywood movies and fully understand too.]

Why do native speakers of Hindi love to hate it so much? Why don't Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Marathi and other language speakers not fight shy of their mother tongue even when they are brilliant in English?

There are several other issues that plague Hindi's relation with its own native speakers, some of which get addressed every once in a while, by creative individuals through their writings, songs, films, etc. But that's another story, or stories, perhaps.

The biggest crisis of Hindi is not that the non-Hindi India abhors it. It's the hostility and loathing it elicits from those born in it that is most disheartening. Geetanjali Shree deserves another monumental prize for restoring at least some dignity to this highly misunderstood language. 

Reading Dalpat Chauhan

I think of Preetha (#Preetha) when I sit down to write this as I haven't come across a more receptive interlocutor when it comes to discussing books in my entire life. How I miss the days at Mail Today when we would spend hours discussing books beyond what was officially covered by the newspaper for its books pages. And how often, I would goad dearest Priyanka (#Priyanka) to join us, whenever she would manage to take some time out of her busy editing/ writing schedule.

So, this is for you, Preetha and Priyanka, and how I wish we could actually sit down and discuss this in person some day.

For various reasons, I had not read a book fresh-off-the-press in a long while. I guess you read freshly produced stuff regularly only when 'covering' books for a newspaper/ magazine. So, while I continued to read as is one's wont, I was actually reading what I wanted to. Only recently did I lay my hands on a freshly-published book, Vultures by veteran Gujarati writer, Dalpat Chauhan. It's the English translation of his 1991 Gujarati book, Gidh, done lovingly by Hemang Ashwinkumar.

After reading the book, I spoke to the author. I had only one question in mind though we ended up talking for nearly two hours. The only question I wanted to ask him was: Why is he identified and promoted as a Dalit writer? Doesn't it defeat the very purpose of democraticising life, when even literature is getting classified as such? 

His honest answer was not only disarming but also a chilling reminder that securing and safeguarding rights in the country's Constitution only goes that far. He said: "Yes, it defeats the purpose. But who will write about us, if we don't? Our stories, our lives, our struggles, when told by one among us, have a ring of authenticity. An outsider can never translate that authenticity without experiencing it. I have lived what I write. Therefore the need to be identified as a Dalit writer."

Chauhan, 82 and based in Ahmedabad, began writing after he retired from a job with the Gujarat government, and has written about 25 books so far — novels, short stories and plays, all throwing light on the lives of Dalits. 

Vultures or Gidh is based on a real story of the murder of a Dalit boy by Rajput landlords in Kodaram village in Gujarat in 1964, for his involvement with an upper caste girl — a familiar tale that could be placed anywhere in India. Chauhan recreates this story through Iso, a young boy from the community of tanners, who, as the book jacket says, 'faces the brutal sword of caste patriarchy.'

It's a touching tale, told with great emotion by Chauhan, that I would recommend all my like-minded friends to pick up if looking for a thought-provoking read.

As I shut the back flap of the book on its last page, I felt very heavy in heart. The events described in the book had taken place in 1964, a time so long ago from our current reality, yet seemingly so close today especially when there is tremendous polarisation in our daily lives. We are removing the dirt from old fissures that had remained so neatly buried all these years... how can we expect new realisation to dawn on us at such times? 

I would rather use the words of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar to sum up my sentiment, from his speech that appears at the opening of the book: 

'As experience proves, rights are protected not by law but by the social and moral conscience of society. If social conscience is such that it is prepared to recognize the rights which law chooses to enact, laws will be safe and secure. But if the fundamental rights are opposed by the community, now Law, no Parliament, no Judiciary can guarantee them in the real sense of the word.'

As a community, we are yet to grow up to be worthy of our own Constitution.