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Obama administration teaches
India a lesson, in Haryanvi
WSN Network
WASHINGTON: At a timw when
the world over, the linguists have been crying hoarse that there is
no such thing as a dialect and all languages need to be protected,
and when India has failed to conduct a countrywide lingusitic survey
in decades, the US Administration has shamed our language policies
by even recognising those Indian languages which New Delhi has so
far failed to. Bhojpuri and Haryanvi have failed to make it to
India’s Constitution, but they are included in an application form
for selection to political positions in the US government. About 20
Indian languages have found mention in the form brought out by the
Barack Obama administration. These are among 101 languages listed in
the form’s ‘international experience’ section, where applicants have
been asked to select the ones they know. The Indian languages
mentioned in the form include six — Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Chhattisgarhi,
Haryanvi, Magahi and Marwari — that are not among the 22 languages
of India listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.
India’s
experiments with multilingualism have been a story of failure,
irrespective of the oft-repeated claims of diversity, and there is
little effort to recognize that different languages configurate in a
diglossic relationship that encourages stable maintenance of their
compartmentalized roles. Noncompeting nature of these roles sustains
the non-conflicting and socially stable pattern of multilingualism.
With the right
wing Hindutva agenda pusher Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) propagating
a monolithic culture, the traditional features of multiplicities are
proceeding towards fragmentation of a multilingual, poly-cultural
and regionally diversified country. Experts say the right wing
elements in India should learn a lesson from Obama administration’s
step and understand that languages by themselves are not divisive.
Language is an identity marker; it is an insignia, a badge and a
symbol, which indicates the community that a person belongs to.
18 February 2009
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