BJP’s Linguistic Agenda Is Antithetical to Progress and Education

A few days ago, I become giving lectures across Silicon Valley in California. The IT hub of the sector, Silicon Valley is the web site of several pioneering endeavors in the latest past – Apple, Google and so forth – and diverse innovations inside the subject of electronics that spurred the internet revolution.

South Indians working in distinctive fields ranging from IT to digital engineering within the Silicon Valley outnumber north Indians. Representation of Indians from the Hindi-cow belt in anybody of the principal IT and electronic agencies is meager. The pinnacle executives the biggest IT organizations inside the US – Satya Nadendla and Sundar Pichai – are from south India. Why? Not due to Hindi, however English.

South Indians, other than studying their local language – Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu or Kannada – learned English with greater emphasis. The motion to analyze only two languages at the extent of school training through completely warding off Hindi turned into led through Tamil Nadu because of E.V. Ramaswamy Naickers’ anti-Hindi Dravida Khazagam Movement.

Kerala evolved its personal version of advancing English medium schooling with the aid of negating Hindi because of the presence of a large quantity of Christian English medium faculties. Telugu states and Karnataka were additionally influenced via the fashions of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The first Dalit president of India, K.R.Narayanan, and the first Dalit Chief Justice of India, K.G. Balakrishnan, got here from Kerala. These men have been not surely handpicked but had constructed a call for themselves earlier than achieving high positions. Why? Not because of Hindi, however English.

Now the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has taken a brand new step to introduce English medium teaching in all government schools with one obligatory Telugu problem, which no North Indian leader minister might dare to do. Gujarat has very poor ranges of English schooling. The instructional improvement patterns in South India are far higher than the ones of any north Indian State’s and greater so than within the Hindi-Cow belt.

Additionally, the teenagers from the northeastern states have secured entry into some of the satisfactory educational institutions due to their English medium training and, inside the next few decades, are in all likelihood to guide in lots of fields if English continues to be their number one medium. The RSS and the BJP view this development unfavorably and any try and impose Hindi within the northeast might be unwelcome.

Amit Shah and the BJP however, have plans to turn the clock back and impose Hindi on south India and the north-east and remove English, thereby bringing the complete united states of America right down to the instructional level and trendy of the Hindi-cow belt. Only then will the BJP have executed their purpose of setting up a Hindu-Hindi Rashtra.
I am skeptical in their denial concerning the imposition of Hindi – which has been an extended-standing agenda of the BJP and the RSS – in spite of the truth that Prime Minister Narendra Modi attempted to appease fears in Houston on September 22 approximately Amit Shah’s current comments. For more impact, the prime minister may want to have clarified this issue while he becomes in India as a substitute for selecting to cope with it overseas.
The BJP’s long term goal of establishing Hindu-Hindi-Hindustan nationhood and slowly featuring an alternate in the call of the nation from India – the Bharat because it exists in the preamble of the constitution – to Hindustan is widely recognized.
In this complete scheme, Pakistan is the version and competition with the theocratic and backward Muslim nations is the path. The competition is not with China or South Africa who have made good sized headway with a spirit of worldwide opposition with Europe and America. Their consciousness of studying English is like ours in south India.

Language is a key link in modernization and also within the put up-modernization phase. Former French colonies in Africa are not insisting on promoting training in their native languages and are slowly moving from even French to English. Their monetary growth is faster now due to their international integration with English language communique and techno-financial system development.
The BJP and RSS leaders do no longer have any serious expertise in the global direction of linguistic and cultural spheres. Even in Israel, which the BJP and RSS venerate, pushing for English training, other than Hebrew, is a commonplace cultural shift.
In India, the entire industrial magnificence that budget the BJP and the RSS infrequently cares for Hindi. The linguistic and cultural class distinction in north India is some distance more than it’s miles in south India. In the south, all sections have realized the need for gaining knowledge of English in conjunction with their nearby languages. Hence the linguistic and cultural gap is narrowing while in north India it stays wide and the poverty of monetary and cultural assets is stark.
Can Amit Shah or the RSS pressure all the top industries which are going for walks global standard English medium faculties for the youngsters of the wealthy to shift to Hindi medium in north India? Can Amit Shah coerce his party leaders into sending their children in the north and south to Hindi medium faculties? Whom precisely does Shah need to impose the studying of Hindi on in south India and the northeast? Clearly, this proposal is only applicable to negative kids in villages who take a look at government schools.
Dalits, OBCs and even the top Shudras should be very careful regarding the sentimental language discourse being propounded by the Hindutva forces. Their youngsters are only now catching up with modern civilizational and globalized cultures. If they allow themselves to get over-excited with Hindutva fantasies of one state, one language, and one tradition, they risk slipping again into medieval poverty, lack of know-how and inequality.