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Today, if one reads Marathi media, the argument in support of promoting Marathi would be to strengthen the social, cultural and emotional bridge (and similarly in other regional media).
The Hindi media would argue the case of national integration.
If one follows both, it becomes a polarized debate between Unity of the nation v/s Vibrancy of diversity. Nationalism strengthens the nation and regionalism empowers the emotional bonding among the locals.
However, in this debate, surprisingly no media has discussed how history has dealt with a similar issue of conflict between two languages – one representing power of ruling authority and other the soul of the masses. Interesting, it was a case of role reversal – Hindi represented the soul and Marathi – the power.
When the Maratha empire spread across a good part of central and western India, then like other contemporary empires (British, French, Spanish et al ), Maratha empire too had the option to impose upon their language on the masses under their reign. But, what did the Marath rulers do ?
While the Holkars, Scindias and Gaekwads would talk in Marathi within the royal family, they did not touch the lingua franca which remained the local language. As a result, Indore still speaks Hindi and the soul of Baroda remains Gujarati, despite Baroda not being very far from Maharashtra. Maratha kings knew that the survival of their empire lied in keeping alive the people-to-people bond. Maratha kings respected local sentiments and realized the value of keeping both the languages alive.
Languages are the vehicle for social bonding, preserving culture and generating human empathy. They build a stronger human-to-human connect. And it is this connect that has been not just its biggest strength but has been one of the key reasons for the survival of this nation despite various invasions, despite a foreign rule of over 150 years and despite the abject poverty faced by its people. The community bonding has long been our biggest strength.
Those from the other group would counter that Holkars, Scindias and Gaekwads were independent provinces and never part of one political entity. To the extent that there were also wars between Holkars and Scindias. Hence, there was no pressure or mandate to keep
the various Maratha provinces together under one empire/entity. Accordingly, there was no need to develop Marathi as a common language between Baroda and Gwalior. But in today’s geo-political environment, building the strength of the union is a mandate for GoI.
A common language would contribute towards moving closer to this goal. The other group, especially, those from Tamil nadu, would argue that why can that common language not be English – and more so since there is 100% consensus among all states on teaching English in schools. A fair argument.
And this brings us to an even bigger and the most interesting issue. While it is true that internal democracy and consensus are important but what is also critically important is global dominance of India. Today’s geopolitics requires, nations to build not just hard power but also soft power. And Hindi is slowly emerging as a soft power. And when Hindi acquires the status of a true global soft power, India can claim moral ownership of the same. Remember, it took centuries of efforts to claim ownership of the decimal system. Till sometime back it was called Arabic numerals.
Today, Hindi is the third most spoken language in the world. And the combination of Hindi & Urdu ( another language from India) is more popular than the local language in many countries including the powerful gulf nations. And this is a big opportunity that this country should not miss.
So, the need of the hour is to use Hindi to build global dominance. However, scale would serve no purpose if the soul were lost. And so, it is important that our media propagates this balancing act across the nation. Because if the language war is not stopped here, then this will lead to the next stage. The angst of native Maithili speakers is visible in their contention that Hindi is killing Maithili and the rich ancient literature of Maithili is not getting the needed attention. Early tremors are palpable among speakers of many dialects and sub-languages across India (from Kutchi to Koṭuntamiḻ and from Malwani to Maithili).
The dual agenda of Scale building and Soul enrichment can be communicated to the masses across the nation only when media realizes that core of media is mass communication and not mass polarization. The earlier, the better.
DEEPESH SALGIA
Author, Realtor, Producer
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.