Sunday, December 6, 2009 5 comments

Cultural Languages!! Identity Or Ignorance


Last night I was going through few of those best lectures/speeches delivered by famous and most importantly successful personalities of India. It was an amazing experience to read them but one thing disappointed me was the language similarities. All articles were in English only and original delivered in the same language.

A year back there was a head line in all local and national news paper: - “APJ Abdul Kalam has visited different branches of Delhi Public School of different states and shared his knowledge with the students.” For the first look it was seriously exiting news for me, but a word “central board students” was disturbing me at that time. I was wondering why Respected KALAM sir has visited only central board schools in Gujarat. Why he did not go to local municipality schools where; from every successful sunrise to the every expected sunset students are facing four hectic phases of life. Why he didn’t talk with the student whose clothes are dirtier than the fan on the ceiling. Why he did not attend a lecture somewhere in a school of a small village or a small unknown town. What was the reason? Only because they are unable to speak in English? Only because they are unable to understand some heavily defined words from science and technology.

If these were the reasons than I think this is the height of partiality the students from such minorities are facing these days. Is effectiveness of knowledge depends on some foreign languages or BOARDS we have created? I have no objections with KALAM sir, either I am not doubting on his respect towards students but what making me disturbed is the ignorance we INDIANS are showing towards regional languages or most importantly national language.

Several times we watch live meetings held at head offices of UNO or World Bank, UNESCO or UNISEF. I have strongly observed one thing, representatives of many non ASIAN countries and some of the powerful ASIAN countries (except India) use their National-Local languages and they keep a translator with them. Some of thinkers say:-“they are showing attitude, they are partial” I am saying they are showing respect towards their own native languages. Such kind of organizations where freedom is the basic motto, they are free enough to speak in whatever language they want to, but still they are using their own native languages.

In parliament, in any political functions before or after elections, our politicians proudly speak in English in front of the people, civilians who all are hardly aware with the language ENGLISH.BOLLY WOOD functions, we all love the most to watch, handled in English also, for what, To impress Non-Asians? Or we all are having a habit to show off that we know some languages though we are INDIANS? In MALESIYA, SINGAPORE film festivals; our BOLLYWOOD celebrities proudly greet local public in their languages, I really don’t understand why? A general survey says: - “In India there are 80 % schools are English medium schools amongst total schools. And in last 2-3 years 30 % non- English schools have converted in English medium, where students are instructed to speak in English only, pray in English only.

I am not against all these foreign languages and use of them but you can’t just ignore local languages and accept those languages for your routine. Can’t we respect our culture and basics? Progress is not reliable on the language you speak, it’s widely depends on the knowledge you have and knowledge you share. Even I have used English to write this article; as many of you could have objections if you would receive this article in any other “regional language”. I don’t have any hard feelings with the language but you should have priorities, you should respect the language you are learning from the day you born. You should respect the language which is having a wide and a golden history time. You should respect the languages which are there in all your mythological books.

When you are sharing knowledge, It’s not important how effective your knowledge is or how effective your speech was, It’s always about the amount of knowledge you have actually conveyed to the listeners. Try to give a speech in Gujarati, Marathi, and Bengali in front of students belonging to English medium school, Kalam Sir “generally” prefers to visit. And collect their reactions, I am sure they would face the same situation municipality school students would face in that speech in English.


“Sometimes I wonder, I haven’t seen any mythological book from our culture, our past originally written in English, is GOD really able to understand all those prayers students are delivering in English in schools and other functions. Why we are using foreign languages more and more in our daily life? Are we scared of global identification? Are we scared of global ignorance? If yes then remember one thing: - “If you are ignoring your own cultural, regional and national languages; mind well you are the biggest fool if you are expecting respect for those languages from world. If our society wants to use foreign languages then they do not have right to feel proud of having 18 national languages including HINDI as prior language and 347 other regional languages. They have no rights to feel proud for the ocean of grammar every single local language is having.

What I strongly believe is, when you are learning how to write, you should learn to write your own name first; as if you are unable to write simply your own name, there no use of describe your world with no identity. So better learn your own cultural language first as foreign language will give you ways to destinations but local languages, regional languages will appear as keys for the door to success.



 
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