Hindu-tva to Hindi-tva, the idle pursuit

Union Home Minister Amit Shah has enough on his plate without provoking the country into outrage with his touting of Hindi as an alternative to English. On the one hand, we have a Prime Minister who flits around promoting IITs and IIMs and foreign interest in India. He talks non-stop about lifting Indian institutions to international levels and absorbing modern technology from wherever. Is he planning to do all this in Hindi? The world watches while the Prime Minister and the Home Minister speak and work at cross-purposes.

There is also this obsession with Hindutva. My knowledge of Sanskrit, not too meagre, tells me Hindutva merely refers to the state of being a Hindu – nothing more, nothing less. Fanatical efforts to make it a cult with rigid boundaries and prescriptions are totally mischievous and divisive. It sends wrong messages to the world, and I wish the Prime Minister would come out openly and declare that nothing should be said or done by his official and party colleagues to create discord in the country. His silence over the current outbursts of violence is mysterious.

As for the unwarranted claims for Hindi as a “national” language, the protagonists are doing everything they can to encourage opposition to that very language. Years ago, pre-Independence and soon after, South India was one of the strongest bases of the Hindi Prachar Sabha movement. Hindi was voluntarily chosen in many schools for the sheer joy of learning another language.

It so happens that my Hindu family gave active support to the Congress party in those distant years when Hinduism was still recognised as an all-embracing way of living. An aunt of my mother married a staunch follower of Gandhiji, Kurur Neelakantan Nambudiripad, who had given up his share in a wealthy Nambudiri family to be by Gandhiji’s side on his many yatras.

He was ex-communicated from his exalted Brahmin status in Kerala and the couple, always in khadi, sampled all the police action let loose upon them in various agitations. He was a full-time Congress worker, claiming to be an Oriental Insurance agent to ensure some family peace, and his wife was a senior official of the Education Department of the erstwhile Cochin state. Both of them spoke Hindi by personal option. Nambudiripad also had the dubious distinction of being physically attacked on the road by Leftist goons while in his 70s but, as a Gandhian, chose to condone it saying his attackers were only following their party persuasions while he was following his!

Another relation, my maternal grandfather’s direct niece, Bharati, became one of the top Hindi Prachar Sabha functionaries in the 1940s. She went to Bihar for further Hindi studies in the hottest part of Bihar, Motihari, and returned not only better qualified in Hindi but also accompanied by a Bihari husband, newly married, Devdooth Vidyarthi, another senior Hindi Prachar Sabha teacher! The two were considered to be at the top of the Sabha hierarchy. Nothing was imposed on any of the persons mentioned but what was chosen by them was to satisfy a natural South Indian urge to know more.

Politicians from the north are using language as a weapon and, in the bargain, turning the weapon against themselves and their cause. As a proud South Indian, I know that Hindi will make no inroads in this part of India. Politicians would be well-advised to focus on the far more important issues that confront our national well-being and not provoke public sentiment in South India. The Hindi pursuit will serve no purpose other than to divide public opinion, which then will be the only notable contribution of the BJP to Indian history.

The north often speaks to the south from a self-credited but false position of supremacy. Economically, intellectually and politically, the contribution of the south to the freedom struggle and the post-Independence growth of the country often tends to be under-estimated. The south, with 20% of the population of India, contributes 30% of the tax revenue. It represents 25% of the national GDP. Its literacy, child development, healthcare and industrial indices are all ahead of the north. This is only part of the scene, and much more can be said in favour of the south.

It is time that the Hindutva and Hinditva promotion on confrontational lines be stopped. I would like the Prime Minister’s oft-heard strident, persuasive oratory to focus on warning against any kind of promotion of social disharmony. The Prime Minister belongs to no party, except during elections.