Wednesday, August 06, 2008

The language circus

Every politician from Tamilnadu must be seen championing the cause of Tamil and be ever vigilant against any sneaky attempt to impose Hindi. The Hindi zealots keep pointing out that theirs is a language spoken by the vast majority and feel that every patriotic Indian must accept it as the lingua franca of the whole country.

Meanwhile, Hindi is having a rough time in Nepal. Nepali is the language spoken by the majority and is the sole language followed by courts and the Govt. Naturally, the Nepalese would not tolerate a language spoken by a minority to rear its head and insist that the language of the majority must rule supreme. (Though, Nepali is one of the recognized, official languages of India.)

Meanwhile, Nepali (or Nepalese) language is having a rough time in Bhutan. The minority Nepalese community has protested against the denial of the right of ethnic or linguistic minorities to enjoy their own culture and use their own language. Naturally, the Bhutanese insist that their language, Dzongkha is the only one officially allowed.

To come full circle, I would like to see protests from a handful of Bhutanese settled in Tamilnadu to make Dzongka one of the official languages in the state.

2 comments:

Dilip Muralidaran said...

I speak a language called "Batak Toba", its already recognized by the liberal Orkut.com but then im the only one who speaks that in tamilnadu, of course along with a few handlful majority of SS music VJ's and sun tv hostess who speak this slanguage.

We demand we make this official language of india too so that our minority status is improved and we can seek reservations in all schools, colleges and employment opportunities everywhere upto 919% to start with...

Arjun Singh, are you listening? Please........

Anonymous said...

Time to go back to Hieroglyphyics (did i spell that right?)! If not the mummies are going to stand in line and protest!