The imposition syndrome

I learnt Hindi back in 1996 for three years. At school. It was my third language, like that distant cousin who you might be polite to at a wedding party once in a while but cannot really stand in regular WA groups.

In my traumatized 3-year relationship with Hindi, which was kind of the mandatory third, because the only other option was Sanskrit (the Latinest of the Latins in my world), I am happy to inform you that I aced the subject. If you don’t know me, you wouldn’t know that I am undoubtedly the biggest mugger upper alive. Context or no context, science or no science, logic or no logic, I can actually ace anything (I learnt Mandarin three years back and topped that too, only difference being I really liked learning it and wanted to learn it Xie Xie).

Anyway, coming back to Hindi, very good help those three years of Hindi imposition did, because I turned up in Bombay in 2008, and asked the auto wallah what Sau meant, can he please say that in English. As an aside, in Chennai, we call them autos, not rickshaws.

It took me years and constant reminders to colleagues and friends at lunch and dinner tables to explain what that Hindi statement they made just then was, and after being (still am) the butt of many a joke, I have mastered the difference between pone bara and sava bara. But, I am informed that I don’t really know Hindi because I think cucumber is kakadi and potato is batata. Well, well, when you learn the pure Hindi of Bombay, it does morph into Marathi eventually.

Point being, Hindi imposition doesn’t really help. It makes us, the ones who didn’t make the choice to learn the language, very defensive. We learn the other languages better than the one being imposed on us. Also, we learn to survive with the languages we know. We learn to navigate the societies we live in, picking up local languages on the way.

So, if someone is selling this trope that learning Hindi is useful for the Southest of the South Indian, the Tamil, to survive in the Northest of the North Indias (which is all of it beyond the Vindhyas as far as we are concerned), sorry not required. We will fall and rise and fall and rise.

To sum up, TR style:

Say no to Hindi imposition

While doing Tamil composition.

Our right to the constitution

Cannot have any substitution.