Raj Thackeray : 1. Why Hindi?

Note: Since the national "Hindian" media is far too biased, Raj Thackerays' message has been wrongly communicated to meaning "Spreading Hatred" and "Anti-North Indian". That's not true. This series of blogs is meant to counter the mindless attack that's been unleashed by criminal politicians, rogue television channels (Sahara, India Today group and the countless Hindi channels). More importantly this is meant to clarify the underlying simmer thats' meeting with disgust from the online community.

Raj Thackeray started his campaign against "Cultural Violence" that has been unleashed by North Indians, by questioning the stature of "Hindi" and its' imposition upon Maharashtrians.

To start off, here are some parallel voices from India & Beyond (In reverse order to ensure continuity):

8. Hindi Imperialism: Article in Time Magazine

7. UNESCO: UNIVERSAL DECLARATION ON LINGUISTIC RIGHTS: A must read for all the experts appearing on CNN-IBN, Times Now etc, heres' what the UN has to say about preservation of a regions linguistic rights.

6. Did you know, the constitution of India is committed towards eradicating the use of English, and replacing the same with Hindi? [Indian Constitution Articles 343 - 351] Whether you speak Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil or Marathi, you would never sound better than anything that speaks Hindi as his/her mother-toungue, and therein lies a natural disadvantage to get jobs, especially government ones!

5. "Making a language (Hindi) that is the mother tongue of a region of India the official language for all the people of India is tyranny. We believe that it will give benefits and superiority to one region (the Hindi-speaking region).... Danger to the people of Tamil Nadu because of Hindi becoming the official language of India is great" - C. N. Annadurai, Chief Minister of TN. [Complete Story & Mouthpiece for Tamil Sentiments about Hindi] [Recent Headlines from TN]

4. The 1940s, 1950s and the first half of the 1960s witnessed many anti-Hindi pro-tests in the form of public meetings, marches, hunger strikes and demonstrations before schools and Central government offices; black flag demonstrations greeted Central government ministers. Most of these were organized either by the DK or the DMK and the general public supported them fully. There were hundreds of such protests from Tamil Nadu and thousands were jailed. Several hundreds were injured when police used lathi-charge to disperse the peaceful protesters. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then PM, even though supportive of the pro-Hindi group, came up with a set of compromises that denied Hindi the "sole national language" status, realising the seriousness of the issue. [Complete Blog]

3. The Hindi language has been projected as the language of Hindus and the language of the nation by both secular and Hindu nationalists. This paper examines challenges mounted against Hindi by the Dalit resistance movement during the past few decades. We argue that this challenge is part of the construction of Dalit identity which is defined in resistance and opposition to Brahmanism. In Dalit discourse, Hindi is viewed as a symbol of Brahmanism and thus a reminder of Brahmanic oppression. The Dalitist challenges to the dominance of Hindi appear in various forms; one such challenge is calling into question the numerical legitimacy on which the claim of Hindi as the official language of India is based. Rao (2001), commenting on a news report on the demand for creating a separate state of Mithilinachal for the speakers of Maithili, argues, ‘"Hindi" is not one language…. Rajasthani, Bhojpuri, Braj Bhasa, Avadhi and Mithili [sic] are deliberately misrepresented as `dialects of Hindi" when these are in fact independant [sic] languages with different scripts and grammars, and many pre-dating the Brahmins" Hindi’. - [Complete Paper @ NYU Linguistics Dept]

2. "The Hindi movement of nineteenth century intertwined with the cow-protection movement culminated in the naked manipulations of the constituent assembly debates and won the state-language status. But it was the tragic end of 'Godan', forecasted very early by Premchand!" [Complete Post]

Hindi, mis-represented as above is as mythical as many beliefs held by Hindus, and as the reality sinks in with the advent of knowledge and atheism, do we still deserve to be herded in this fashion?

1. Similiar Voice from Karnataka. "What's astonishing about the migrants is that instead of respecting the culture and language of the state which saves them from hunger, they misbehave and impose their language and culture on the local population - a behavior entirely unacceptable anywhere in the world. In advancing the "they are Indians too" argument in support of Hindi speakers when they are clearly culprits of linguistic and cultural crime, the media and the central government give the impression that Hindi speakers "are more Indian" than Marathis, Kannadigas and every other linguistic people in India". [Read blog]

"In 2005-06, seven of the nine states with PCNSDP higher than the national average, viz, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tamil Nadu, are non-Hindi states (Table, col 3). Similarly, of the nine states whose economies grew at a rate higher than the national average over the period 1980-81 to 2006-07, five states – Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu – are non-Hindi states. Two of the remaining four states, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand, were created only in the year 2000 and in terms of economic performance their parent states – Bihar and Uttar Pradesh – are placed near the bottom, with ranks of 16 and 18 respectively"