The Freudian Slip That Shows North Is North And South Is South

It's interesting that it's usually North Indians who have so far always angrily denied the existence of a separate Dravidian (South Indian) identity. One of the ideological mavens of the Neo-Hindu movement, Rajiv Malhotra, even characterises the Dravidian identity as one of the forces that seek to break India.

In Rajiv Malhotra's eyes, an assertive Dravidian identity is a fissiparous and dangerous one that threatens the unity and integrity of India

A large part of the Hindutva ideology's energies are devoted to denying the two-race theory in all its forms. [While the Aryan Invasion Theory may or may not be valid in its literal form, there is enough genetic evidence that North Indians and South Indians differ significantly in the proportions of the genes they inherit from two distinct genetic groups.]

It's therefore amusing to hear a North Indian admit, however inadvertently, that South Indians are a distinct racial group ("black people", in his words). BJP MP Tarun Vijay's interview to Al Jazeera, where he sought to deny the racism of Indians against Africans by using an unfortunate example of "black people" (South Indians) within India, has sent shock waves through the country.

The moment of truth, when a mask slipped before millions

Now, Tarun Vijay is not a bad guy at all. I remember that he was once pelted with stones by traditionalists for his admirable attempt to open up temples to Dalits. His inadvertent comment about South Indians being "black people" is all the more significant for that reason. He's not a conscious bigot, probably quite the opposite, since he has put his life and limb on the line more than once in the interests of eradicating social injustice. However, his unthinking remark only shows how deep-rooted the idea is within many North Indians that South Indians are a different race of people from themselves, and there is an element of condescension there too ("We live with these people. How can you call us racist?" instead of "We're the same people").

To my mind, the root of Hindi language chauvinism comes from this inherent sense of superiority. If North Indians truly respected South Indians, there would be a more sincere attempt to implement the three-language formula, in place of the current lopsided emphasis (budgetary and otherwise) on the propagation of Hindi at the expense of every other Indian language.

Hopefully, this momentary slip of the mask will make South Indians more aware of where they stand in the eyes of the country's dominant group, and make them more assertive about their linguistic and cultural identity. The common examples of Japan, Germany and Korea will not wash. Those countries have only one language of their own. India has at least 25 major ones, and hundreds of dialects. It's of course a logistical nightmare, and the solution won't be simple, but India's communication problem will not be solved by imposing one North Indian language on everyone in the country, especially not when it is done out of a sense of cultural and racial superiority.

Clearly, North is North, and South is South, but if the twain are to live amicably together in one country, mutual respect is a non-negotiable condition.

India In Danger Of Repeating Sri Lanka's Deadly Error

Pluralistic societies must beware of elevating one group above all others. The day Sri Lanka made Sinhala its state language and Buddhism its state religion was the day it sowed the seeds of its longstanding ethnic strife. The revolt of the Tamil linguistic minority has been put down at great cost. But the Sri Lankan government does not seem at all serious about pursuing genuine rapprochement or providing autonomy to the Tamils within a looser federation. Far from learning a lesson from those lost decades, elements of the country's political class and clergy now seem to have turned towards baiting the Muslim religious minority, and another round of bloodletting appears to be on the cards. As one who has visited that beautiful country and interacted with many of its smart and gentle people, I can only shake my head in sorrow. Sri Lanka's problems are needless ones of its own creation, all because of a fundamental lack of governing wisdom.

India has long escaped such a fate, thanks to the abundance of wisdom on the part of its founding fathers. The early tussle with the Muslim League on the one hand and the Hindu Mahasabha on the other must have convinced the leaders of the Congress of the desirability of establishing a secular state that treated all its religions equally. And while Nehru came perilously close to imposing a single language (Hindi) on a country where over 60% spoke another language, he wisely stepped back from the brink in the face of protests. India has enjoyed rare harmony in its public life because religion has largely remained a private matter, and its unique "three language formula" has given individuals, governments and private organisations pragmatic ways to communicate.

Over time, a remarkable sense of Indian nationhood has begun to develop (even if it has frayed slightly around the edges thanks to vote-bank politics). Free of heavy-handed imposition, Hindi has spread even to traditionally non-Hindi regions, often thanks to the subtle charms of Bollywood. At the same time, English has spread among the relative elite, forming a link language for the educated class. All wholesome developments, one would think.

The party, however, seems to have come to a rude and abrupt end with the election of Narendra Modi's BJP in May 2014. At first, the focus of the government seemed to be on economic development, and in that endeavour, the prime minister won quick support, including from many erstwhile critics. A potential sour note was religion. The BJP has always been known as a Hindu party, and most public attention has been on the likely relationship between a BJP government and its non-Hindu citizens. While Modi has been careful to project an inclusive image, there have been some disturbing incidents of violence carried out by radical fringe groups with a more hard-line Hindu agenda. The old fault-line of religion has therefore come under renewed strain.

Disturbingly, another old fault-line has been needlessly opened up.  Initially, Modi's preference for Hindi over English in his official communications was ascribed to his relative lack of fluency in English and his understandable preference for a language in which he was more at home. But continuing reports of the government's edicts in favour of Hindi over English have begun to raise eyebrows. The home minister, Rajnath Singh, who was noted for his past statements that the English language has destroyed India's culture, has begun to crack the whip to ensure that the sole language in which his ministry does business is Hindi.

It's clear where the Hindu right is coming from. They are aware that opposition to their Hindutva ideology comes primarily from two broad groups of people - religious minorities and the English-speaking urban middle class. Nothing less than a culture war is now on to undercut the power of these groups. In terms of religion, language and class, the Hindu right wing has identified its foes and begun its offensive.

The world has its eyes on India's old religious schisms, so the government will probably tread carefully there. But the other war (the linguistic/class war) is equally dangerous, and here the government has fewer checks on its actions. 

There are at least four problems with the Modi government's lurch to a majoritarian agenda:

1. The mandate that the BJP received in the recent election was for its plank of economic development. Starting a culture war when there are pressing economic problems to be solved is not just a betrayal of that mandate but a luxury the country cannot afford.

2. The purpose of language is communication. The existing three language formula has served India well, allowing people and organisations to negotiate a suitable common language to communicate in without coercion. There is no reason to ram a language down people's throats unless the motive is to disenfranchise a group of cultural enemies. In addition, insistence on an "official" Hindi, quite different in flavour from the everyday Hindi favoured by most speakers, is counter-productive. Official Hindi is often unintelligible even to Hindi speakers, and is an impediment rather than an aid to communication.

3. Then there is the whole hypocrisy angle. Politicians who rail against the English language, such as Rajnath Singh and Mulayam Yadav, see no contradiction between their public stand and giving their own offspring an English language education and sending them abroad to study. They obviously know which side of their bread is buttered (or if they so prefer, which side of their roti is makkhandaar), but will not acknowledge that English is an aspirational language for millions of their countrymen and could help to improve the career prospects and living standards of the next generation. It's one rule for them and another rule for the masses.

4. Finally, although English is in many ways a "foreign" language to India, its very foreignness makes it neutral. It does not belong more naturally to one group of Indians than to another. If English is to be replaced by Hindi, all Indians who speak a different Indian language automatically become second class citizens, because their own languages are relegated to secondary status behind Hindi. When one Indian is forced to speak to another in a language that is not their own but is native to the other, it creates a power asymmetry that will be deeply resented. It is no way to build a nation.

Those who point to countries like Japan, Korea and Germany to argue that India should have its own national language are missing an important distinction. All of these countries have a single language of their own, so it is natural for that language to be the national language. India has 22 official languages, all of them equally Indian. How can any one of them be termed the "national" language without making the others seem less national? In the same vein, wouldn't anointing India a "Hindu" country alienate citizens of other religions who are every bit as patriotic? It is for this reason that majoritarian politics is dangerous in pluralistic societies, and it is highly inadvisable for a country to create second-class citizens out of its religious and linguistic minorities. Sri Lanka is a warning to the world, but it appears that India cannot see what is, in a geographically literal sense, right beneath its nose.

The Modi government and its ideological fountainhead (the RSS) appear to have overreached themselves. They have turned the country's colourful diversity into ugly difference. And with their roughshod tactics, they have brought their government's honeymoon to an abrupt end.

Should Australians Learn Hindi?

The Gillard government's recently released white paper on "Australia in the Asian Century" is making lots of news. Weighing in at 320 pages, it can be quite a cure for insomnia (like all good white papers). But some of its policy implications have jolted people awake.

Let's look at just the impact on education policy. Some experts have estimated the cost of these policy changes to run into billions of dollars. Let me focus on one particular aspect of the education policy, under which "every schoolchild will be able to learn one of four "priority" languages: Chinese (Mandarin), Hindi, Japanese and Indonesian".

Knowing a second language is always useful in a myriad of ways, especially learning a language that is very different in nature to English. The benefits include staving off Alzheimer's, and so no one can argue with the proposal in concept. Engaging with emerging Asian countries where the locals speak no other language but their own obviously requires proficiency in those languages. China, Japan, Korea, Thailand - one cannot survive in these countries without knowing the local language. But India?

It's symptomatic of superficial thinking that Hindi has been clubbed together with Mandarin, Japanese and Indonesian. I call it superficial because of India's unique linguistic make-up. The penetration and role of Hindi in India are very different from those of these three other languages in their respective countries.

First, who is the target population in India with whom the next generation of Australians is meant to engage? If, as is most likely, these are going to be educated Indians from urban areas, for purposes of commerce or scientific collaboration, then English is already more than adequate. The lingua franca of the professionally-educated middle and upper classes in India is English. These people usually speak in English even to each other, and an Australian is unlikely to gain any special advantage through a knowledge of Hindi when dealing with these people.

Second, if the objective is to build rapport with common people rather than to communicate with just the elite, then wouldn't it be much more effective to communicate with people in their mothertongue? Only 40% of Indians have Hindi as their mothertongue, although about 70% can speak it. Quite apart from major cities like Chennai and Bangalore where Hindi is not widely spoken, one would be better served speaking Bengali in Kolkata, Marathi in Pune and Gujarati in Ahmedabad, even though Hindi is well-understood in all of these cities. But it would be asking too much to teach Indian regional languages in Australian schools. The benefits would be even more narrow and unjustified.

The most economically vibrant and growing regions of India are the West and the South, not the Hindi heartland, so the relative importance of Hindi may not even be as high as the demographics suggest

Third, from a purely practical standpoint, the kind of Hindi that is most likely to be useful in India is the mongrel variant popularly spoken in Mumbai and Hyderabad, and not the chaste, literary form that the Delhi elite tend to favour. For non-native speakers, it's far more important to be able to get the meaning across, grammar be damned. But it seems depressingly certain which version will be taught in Australian schools, especially since any Australian Hindi language curriculum will be determined in collaboration with New Delhi's officialdom. [It would indeed be ironic if Australians turned out to be incomprehensible to Indians because their Hindi sounded like the news on the government-owned TV channel!]

Rangebank Primary School in Melbourne is the only school in Australia that teaches Hindi to all its students. But will Hindi be useful or just nice to know?

For all these reasons, I believe Australia's Hindi policy is probably utopian and will not serve its intended purpose. Indeed, I don't believe Australian policymakers have thought deeply about the intended purpose of teaching Australian schoolchildren Hindi in the first place. Australia's approach to India should be arrived at by a body of people who have a sufficiently high number of flying hours under their belt (i.e., people who have travelled and lived extensively in India), not by armchair strategists who just see colour-coded countries on a world map.

It's important to engage and to understand another nationality, but language is not always part of this (It's even less true of India than of monolingual countries that have very little English). It's cultural understanding that is required, and I'm not sure if that is being addressed by the policy. For a start, Australians could learn to pronounce Asian names, including Indian ones (Rajeev is not pronounced Razheev, any more than John is pronounced Zhohn.)

On a personal note, I remember my stint at IIT Kanpur in India's Hindi heartland, where a fellow South Indian and I overheard a conversation on the hostel lawns. A card-carrying member of the RSS (the Hindu right-wing organisation that also believes Hindi is the unifying language for the country) was trying to convince a couple of South Indians of the benefits of learning Hindi.

"If you know Hindi, you can speak to 70% of all Indians", he argued, "you can speak to Punjabi[s], you can speak to Gujarati[s], you can speak to Bengali[s]..."

As we left the place, my fellow-South Indian friend said in contemptuous disgust, "If you know English, you can speak to 100% of the Indians who matter".

A snobbish opinion to be sure, but painfully true.

As the white paper makes clear, Australia definitely needs to understand Asia better.

Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi

It was very sad to hear of Benazir Bhutto's assassination last week. Like many other Indians, I have had mixed feelings towards Benazir. On the one hand, she was smart, articulate, Westernised (and I mean that as a compliment) and came to power both times through democratic elections. But on the other, she was not particularly friendly to India when she was prime minister of Pakistan. I don't know what peculiar property the seat of power in Pakistan has, but anyone sitting there tends to become anti-India. It's a bit like the mythical throne of Vikramaditya which conferred wisdom on anyone who sat on it, just in reverse. The memory of Benazir Bhutto to Indians is predominantly one of the hopes for peace belied.

I just want to record two thoughts here. I feel really bad for her young children. It must be absolutely terrible for them to lose their mother in this way. And now, with the nomination of her young son Bilawal (19) as leader of the party, there is fresh danger too. I hope and pray that they stay safe.

My second thought is about the many similarities between Benazir Bhutto and India's former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, some uncanny, some funny.

Both belonged to political dynasties and were the offspring of former prime ministers (Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi, respectively). Both were assassinated when they were in opposition, while they were campaigning before an election. Both their parents were assassinated too (I consider the judicial hanging of Z.A. Bhutto by Gen. Zia-ul-Haq an act of political vendetta and therefore an assassination). Both had siblings who died violent and unnatural deaths (Murtaza Bhutto shot dead in unexplained circumstances, Shahnawaz Bhutto found dead in a hotel room, Sanjay Gandhi killed in an air crash). Both had their sons enter politics as well (Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Rahul Gandhi).

The two did meet when they were prime ministers of their respective countries, at least once that I remember. Rajiv Gandhi made a personal reference to the Simla accord signed by Z.A. Bhutto and Indira Gandhi in his speech when he said, "Your father and my mother..." This personal touch was later criticised by political commentators when the India-Pakistan relationship deteriorated again. It was sarcastically referred to as the your-father-and-my-mother diplomacy.

I think Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi were both more comfortable in English than in their respective languages. Left to themselves, they would have been part of the elite of their countries who can easily survive without speaking any local language. But fortunately or unfortunately, politics in countries with large populations that don't speak English forces leaders to speak the local language - with hilarious results.

I remember watching parts of Rajiv Gandhi's speech in Assam after an accord was signed with the agitating Assam Gana Parishad. He said in Hindi, "Hum accord ko implement karenge, letter mein aur spirit mein" (We will implement the accord in letter and in spirit).

Likewise, I saw a short clip of Benazir Bhutto making a speech in Urdu to the Pakistani parliament, "Main is assembly ki floor par declare karti hoon..." (I declare on the floor of this assembly...)

I remember laughing out loud and exclaiming, "This woman is Rajiv Gandhi's sister!"

Neither could speak Urdu/Hindi without resorting to English on every alternate word.

Well, there ends another era. I wish the Bhutto children strength and courage in the days ahead. And I hope Pakistan comes out of its current turmoil and becomes stable, peaceful and democratic once more, if not for its own sake, then at least for India's. While India has always lived with the threat of a hostile and militarily strong Pakistan, a stable enemy country is far preferable to one where law and order have completely broken down and unpredictable violence can spill over the border at any time.