#Bombayphile : Concern For Hindi In English

 

This week, the celebration of "Hindi Diwas" will be in full swing, with schools, colleges, government institutions, banks and language advocacy organizations all getting into the spirit. They'll be hosting seminars and discussions to highlight the growing significance of Hindi on the global stage. However, there will also be some traditionalists expressing concerns about the infiltration of English words into written and spoken Hindi. As someone whose mother tongue is Hindi and who has been a Hindi journalist for nearly three decades, I find myself at odds with this group.


I believe it's these die-hard Hindi enthusiasts who compelled airlines to issue warnings to passengers about smoke detectors in airplane toilets using phrases like "Shauchalayon me dhoomra anusandhaan yantra lagei hain" (Smoke detection devices are installed in the toilets). It sounds as if some equipment for scientific research has been installed in the lavatories. Why can't they simply say "Shauchalayon me dhuaan pakadne waali machine lagi hai"? I also find it rather amusing when the railways refer to overhead electrical wires as "oopri upaskar" (upper equipment).


What we commonly use as everyday Hindi is, in reality, Hindustani—a fusion of Sanskritized Hindi and Urdu. This is the language predominantly used by the Hindi film industry, Bollywood. In Bollywood, we often encounter words like "Jurm" (crime) instead of "Apraadh," "khoon" instead of "hatya" (murder), "adalat" (court) in place of "nyayala," "kitaab" (book) instead of "pustak," "school" instead of "Vidyalaya," "gaadi" (car) instead of "vaahan," "Chaand" (moon) instead of "Chandrama," "Suraj" (sun) instead of "Surya," and so on.
The charm and strength of Hindi lie in its adaptability and flexibility. Language enthusiasts know that Hindi has evolved by incorporating words from various languages, much like English has adopted words like "Guru," "Pandit," and "Roti" into the Oxford English Dictionary. In metropolitan areas like Mumbai and Delhi, Hindi serves as the language that unites people from different parts of India who have migrated there. "Mumbaiya Hindi" has evolved by assimilating words from Urdu, Marathi, Gujarati, and other regional languages. Another variation of Hindi is "Hyderabadi Hindi." Even when traveling abroad, I often observe individuals from different non-Hindi speaking states of India conversing in Hindi, if not in English, on the streets of Rome, New York, Tokyo, or Bangkok.


There's no need to make strenuous efforts for the growth of Hindi. The language, by its nature, is prolific, with the only condition being that it shouldn't be made overly complex or imposed on populations whose mother tongue isn't English. Recent overt and covert attempts by some members of the union government to promote Hindi as "the national language" have faced resistance, particularly in the southern Indian states. Allegations of "Hindi supremacy" have arisen, which do more harm than good for Hindi. In my view, there's no need for extra efforts to promote Hindi; its inherent nature and strength will naturally endear it to non-Hindi speakers.


I'd also like to mention another extreme that poses a threat to Hindi. In the pursuit of making Hindi more "appealing," "youthful," and "modern," some rather unusual experiments have been conducted with the language. One such example is the Navbharat Times. Although I received my education in an English-medium school, it was this newspaper that cultivated my interest in Hindi and Hindi journalism. However, I've heard that some "brand manager" has diluted its language, and now Navbharat Times reads like an English newspaper in the Devanagari script.


(Bombayphile is published weekly, where Jitendra Dixit delves into the past and present of Mumbai.)