Dravidians Vs Devanagri

Is Tamil Nadu against Hindi? This is a very old debate, older than me in fact, so I was a tad bit surprised when it resurfaced among contemporary people. I am no advocate of insularity or `cultural preservation'. But I do think that insularity is a rather unfair charge being laid on Chennai today; it may have been true some thirty years ago.

The English always claim that the French are insular in protecting their language and indeed I have faced immigration officials or airline people insisting on speaking in French, which made me feel rather indignant. Even in admittedly insular France, I have come across friendly people who spoke English (This might have been a reaction to my French, but nevertheless...) But I don't think that is what Chennai is. I haven't seen people insisting that others speak in Tamil; if they don't speak in English or Hindi, it is because of a lack in education rather than any insularity.

So we come back to the point that if only Hindi was taught in schools in Tamil Nadu, this situation wouldn't arise. Well, in reality all private schools across the state offer Hindi, Sanskrit,French or Tamil as a second language . Most students prefer Sanskrit or French where it is easy to score marks, in fact Tamil is the least preferred language. When it comes to Government schools, however, Tamil is the only second language. But is that very different from say Gujarat or Karnataka? It is only the city schools which teach Hindi in Karnataka. I do know that Gujarat Government schools have Gujarati as the primary language with Hindi as the second language, whereas TN and Karnataka opt for English as the second language. If TN were to opt for Tamil and Hindi as the two languages of learning, there would be a huge hue and cry about its global insularity in excluding English!!!

Similarly as far as communication goes, one needs to learn the native tongue of a place be it Chennai or Ahmedabad, if one were to live there for a significant length of time. Besides being useful to communicate with people such as vendors, maids, milkmen etc, the local language is also a part of the culture of the place. If a UP-ite were to live in the US, would he/she baulk against learning English or would they not learn German living in Germany. So why is it so objectionable to learn Tamil living in Tamil Nadu? And vice-versa, Tamilians living in the North or West do not insist on speaking in English or Tamil, they do learn Hindi.

In practical terms, I have seen more Hindi being spoken in offices in Chennai (non-government ones) than in Mumbai. In fact, it is cool to know Hindi in Chennai, but not so in Ahmedabad or Bangalore or Mumbai. The government offices on the other hand, still have this age-old practice of learning one Hindi word a day and one can see this right from banks to registrar offices to railway stations. So where is Hindi being excluded?

Just because auto drivers and maids do not respond to Hindi, to brand Chennai as insular is rather unfair. Chennai is as insular as London or Frankfurt or Colombo and less insular than Paris. The crib about Dravidians being against Devanagri is outdated. So people, please realise that when you crib that Chennai-ites do not speak Hindi, it is you who are being insular and not the other way around.