Hindi in Modern Era

by Raj Shekhar
Toronto, Canada
January 22, 2005

"Kyon Na Hindi Men Likhen?" This question reminds me of the following lines from Ghalib's Poetry:

"Kyon Na Firdous Men Dozakh Ko Mila Len Ya Rabb!
Sair Ke Liye Thodi Si Faza Aur Sahi !"

These days, this generation communicates in mixed Hindi and English or to say "Hinglish" and it is up to the individual to maintain the purity of the language. Of course, it depends on the individual's choice or comfort with the language to express his or her inner feelings and views in English or Hindi medium. Someone might find it like nothing but "Heaven" or "Hell" or somebody would wish to merge the heaven with hell in order to write Hindi in Roman, the way as one writer recently suggested. But it would be like an illusion to have fresh air in Hell, for many people who believe in keeping the Hindi language as a powerful source of medium and our Indian identity.

Incidentally, as far as our lingua franca is concerned, writing in the Roman script was first suggested by Subhash Chandra Bose in his first presidential address to the Congress in 1938 session. In his opinion, distinction between Hindi and Urdu was artificial one, separated by the script and Subhash Bose proposed mixing Hindi and Urdu as spoken by large portions of the country as common language. He was aware that people in India would strongly favour either Devnagri or Arabic/Urdu script and he was aware that there would be no provision for exclusion of any scripts. He suggested to adopt Roman script to unite the both sectors as well as to him a common script would bring India closer to the International community. Like many younger generations of Hindus and Muslims, at that time he was obviously impressed by Kemal Pasha of Turkey who, as a dictator, had forced his modern visions and policy of secularism as well as using the Roman script as he wanted his country to "elevate" to European culture in looks and behavior. It is worth mentioning that even after so many years, the European Union has not included Turkey in its family group of nations of Europe!

In my opinion any language takes its own time to develop and grow. Although, it is not possible to bring out in translation the beauty of any language, using script other than its own would not limit in expression to a certain extent. However, slowly it will open the door to corrupt or deface the language itself. The English language adopts foreign words and behaves as if it belonged to their own lingua franca, which makes it a very smooth in usage and ends up in increasing its popularity as well. Similarly, to improve Hindi for non-Hindi speaking population or expand its uses in day to day work one should work to simplify it by adopting new words if possible but not at the cost of butchering the language itself.

I am not a linguist or any professional writer in any language, but what I see in Hindi (books and print media), it has gradually adopted English style numbers/figures, punctuation marks like period/dot(.) instead of (I) as purnaviram. In the name of "modernizing Hindi", many Hindi lovers like myself feel kind of horror when we hear the adoption of the Roman script now. Probably no literature is richer than the Sanskrit. However, we know that a simpler form of language from Sanskrit emerged in successive generations like Pali, Prakrit, and many more in our history to present day Hindi language. Over five hundred years back Sant Tulisidas was ridiculed by then Sanskrit Scholars for not writing his RAMCHARITMANAS in Sanskrit. However it is known to everybody the wide acceptability his Ramayan in the minds and hearts of millions of people even today, because it is written in simple language than Sanskrit.

Who knows what future holds for modern Hindi? But any encouragement to replace the script will be eventually a fatal one as without its own script any language is not a language but just a dialect.

We are fortunate in belonging to India "a rainbow nation" where there are so many equally beautiful and rich languages beside Hindi being shared by millions to communicate expressions and feelings and all these literature vibrate with vigor and have a place in the hearts and the minds of millions.

One should take further steps, not to just keep Hindi alive but promote its beauty in younger generation so that we don't find Hindi in the history books in the future or let this be spoken like like "Bombaiya Hindi" as spoken by the actors in so called several "Hindi" movies like Munna Bhai MBBS- Bole to roman men likhenga aur apun bolenga bhi to apun ko aisa lagta hai bhaay, hindi ko Vat lag jayenga-kya bolta hai?

As they say English rulers left India but the English-ness remained in India. Another way to look at this angle would be to quote Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee as he jokingly said: "English rulers were not driven out of India, rather they fled India to save their English language from the Indians."

The length of time that English has been in India, its importance and its range both socially and geographically, its place in sociolinguistic link could not be ignored.

An estimated over 30 million people regularly use English (to be more accurate-Indian English) language in India; making India the third largest English Speaking country in the world.

It is not easy to separate the use of English in India from the general multilingual flux. In addition to the great variety of mixed and adapted usage of hybrids, many words from other languages are constantly drawn into English and today English and Hindi are the link languages in a complex multilingual society in India as well as many countries with population originating from the Indian sub-continent.

Keeping these facts in mind, it is very important that there should be no more pressure on Hindi language to drop its Devnagri script which is like a backbone of any language to hold and keep the language alive.

Return to previous Page