The 10th edition of the World Hindi Conference ended last week with a whimper. An aching tooth of superstar Amitabh Bachchan apparently kept him away from the closing ceremony, where he was supposed to recite his father Harivansh Rai Bachchan's poetry.
Yet another superstar of our times, the prime minister of India, had inaugurated the conference, but his pedestrian speech left even his supporters quite upset.
Bhopal was awash with billboards welcoming Narendra Modi. The Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shiv Raj Singh Chuahan compared him with another Gujarati of yore – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who had also once travelled from Gujarat to Madhya Pradesh as a messiah of Hindi.
General VK Singh, minister of state for external affairs, created a furore when he said that the government had not invited writers to the conference as they would have "defiled" the occasion by drinking alcohol and creating a ruckus.
Bhopal has a fair share of award-winning writers who were not thought fit to be invited and many of them issued statements condemning the government for its anti-literature worldview. They claimed that the issue of language could not be discussed by keeping its literature aside.
Sushama Swaraj, whose external affairs ministry has been sponsoring the event since 1975, took pains to clarify that this time the focus of the conference was on the use of Hindi in governance, market and its interface with new technologies.
The resolve to keep literature out was so great that even the opening speech by the prime minister had no mention of it.
The servers of Hindi
The details of the sessions were kept a close secret. The media was not allowed to observe the discussions and the names of the experts were not shared publicly, ostensibly because admission was restricted to participants who had previously registered for the event. However, local media reported that, fearing low participation, the state government had asked district magistrates to identify 50 "Hindi-Sevis" or servers of Hindi each in their areas and send them to Bhopal.
The organisers were very clear that since the leadership of the country believes in business and delivery, they did not want to confuse the aims of the conference by giving a purposeless, non-utilitarian activity like literature any significance.
Many felt, however, that the organisers did not want to take a risk by inviting literary people, most of whom have been openly opposed to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Not that there were no names from literature at all. Those considered to be "non-political" were invited.
The Indian Express reported the disappointment and anger of Tomio Mizokami, the septuagenarian scholar from Japan, at the mismanagement. He was not allowed to make his presentation. “I have had enough,” he said, vowing not to attend the next conference. Another European scholar, who went to Bhopal on her own even after her dejection at the way an earlier conference was planned in Surinam, came back shaking her head. She said it was an interesting experience as it told a foreigner like her a lot about the relationship between politics and Hindi. But academically speaking, she said, the time spent in Bhopal were a “sheer waste”.
"Hindi-sevi" is the key to understanding what is wrong with the Vishva Hindi Sammelans – it is a strange species, carrying an air of sacrifice, not to be found in any other language. In other languages, you find journalists, writers, translators and other professionals, but in Hindi, you have sevis or servers – they don't merely do their work as professionals but work in the service of the language.
Hindi hegemony
The Vishwa Hindu Sammelan is now a 40-year-old institution. First held in 1975 in Nagpur, it has travelled to many countries. Organised by the Ministry of External Affairs, it is largely dominated by central government officials and a clutch of organisations dedicated to the task of promoting and propagating Hindi in India and abroad.
These conferences have never been taken seriously by academics. Who sets the agenda of these meets remains unclear. The proceedings of the previous conferences are never published as the sessions are organised casually and the only theme-song played repeatedly is to make Hindi an "official language of the United Nations".
Why should jamborees such as these Hindi Sammelans be supported by the Indian state? The aim of this conference is to propagate Hindi in other countries. But why only Hindi? Should the government spend tax-payers’ money to propagate only one language, leaving others aside?
It is this preferential treatment to Hindi at the expense of other languages in a multi-lingual country like India that has created an animosity towards it in non-Hindi areas. The claim that Hindi is the only legitimate candidate for the position of the national language of the country is what led to anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu.
The rise of modern Hindi coincides with the anti-colonial struggle. In those days it was adopted by South, East, North and West of the country with love and passion. I remember BV Karanth, a Kannadiga himself, but one of the leading lights of Hindi theatre, telling me that the glamour around Hindi was such that Hindi-pracharaks or those who propagated Hindi were quite the people to elope with.
Organisations such as the Hindi Pracharini Sabha and Hindi Sahitya Sammelan worked with missionary zeal and took Hindi to all corners of India. But one cannot also forget the fact the story of the rise of Hindi in Devanagari script is entwined with story of the decline of Urdu. Hindi in Devanagari bears the memory of a bitter anti-Urdu battle, which very often turned anti-Muslim.
Post-Independence, the question of official and national language also came to the forefront and the makers of the Indian Constitution very wisely avoided according the status of national language to Hindi. The fact of it being the language of the majority of Indians, spoken and understood in varying degrees across states, made its claim of becoming the official language strong. But the politics of linguistic nationalism has not allowed the issue to be settled. Hindiwallas see this as a treacherous and anti-national act by the non-Hindi speaking people.
The Hindi establishment
The organisations that had taken Hindi to other areas turned into a huge Hindi establishment after Independence. Citing their past, like freedom fighters, they sought and got state patronage. While they conducted and offered various types of courses in Hindi, their power to distribute certificates led to gradual corruption in these bodies.
After the demise of the leadership of the pre-Independence era, these organisations were captured by self-serving people, who like later Gandhians, became the owners of the huge properties donated by well-meaning people in the early days of the freedom movement. They have now become the fiefdoms of the Hindi-mafia, which has nothing to do with Hindi as a language or an area of knowledge.
The second layer of the Hindi establishment was created by the Indian government, which took upon itself the responsibility of developing "appropriate" Hindi to represent the syncretic culture of India. Various types of Hindi directorates lorded over by the bureaucracy were established which were supposed to create scientific, technological vocabulary in Hindi. Hindi was deemed inadequate and the state intervention was endorsed by the Constitution itself. The Hindi produced in these bodies, however, was spurned by the practitioners of Hindi.
There is great divide between this sarkars Hindi and the Hindi used by writers like Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, Munshi Premchand, Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala', Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan "Agyeya", Nirmal Verma, Bhisham Sahni, Krishna Sobti, Phanishwar Nath "Renu".
The market has become the third force and with it came the crop of management gurus who themselves were brought up in English-medium schools but had their own notion of Hindi, which has to be easily accessible to the consumers. NavBharat Times , the largest selling Hindi daily, unveiled a new Hindi with liberal use of English words. Two extremes of Hindi: the sarkari Hindi and the bazaar Hindi have somehow reconciled. The speech Narendra Modi delivered was laced with English words. His claim that Hindi would soon become the third-most important language after English and Chinese was the sort of braggadocio Hindiwallahs have become used to.
The challenges Hindi faces are numerous and demand serious attention. Hindi has been confined to two areas: literature and the market. It is largely absent in other areas of knowledge. Here, it shares its plight with other Indian languages. To compensate for this lack, the only activity suggested is that of translation. There is no serious research in universities in Hindi, neither in the humanities nor in social or natural sciences. But the many editions of World Hindi Conference have never sought to address these questions. Now they have started taking solace in the market’s acceptance of Hindi.
It is high time we started asking difficult but real questions about the productivity of such conferences, which are meaningless rituals. A serious discussion on why Indian languages are lacking behind in academics has to start. Or will Hindi be reduced to an instrument to sell products and brands, be it a washing powder or a prime minister.
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Yet another superstar of our times, the prime minister of India, had inaugurated the conference, but his pedestrian speech left even his supporters quite upset.
Bhopal was awash with billboards welcoming Narendra Modi. The Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shiv Raj Singh Chuahan compared him with another Gujarati of yore – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who had also once travelled from Gujarat to Madhya Pradesh as a messiah of Hindi.
General VK Singh, minister of state for external affairs, created a furore when he said that the government had not invited writers to the conference as they would have "defiled" the occasion by drinking alcohol and creating a ruckus.
Bhopal has a fair share of award-winning writers who were not thought fit to be invited and many of them issued statements condemning the government for its anti-literature worldview. They claimed that the issue of language could not be discussed by keeping its literature aside.
Sushama Swaraj, whose external affairs ministry has been sponsoring the event since 1975, took pains to clarify that this time the focus of the conference was on the use of Hindi in governance, market and its interface with new technologies.
The resolve to keep literature out was so great that even the opening speech by the prime minister had no mention of it.
The servers of Hindi
The details of the sessions were kept a close secret. The media was not allowed to observe the discussions and the names of the experts were not shared publicly, ostensibly because admission was restricted to participants who had previously registered for the event. However, local media reported that, fearing low participation, the state government had asked district magistrates to identify 50 "Hindi-Sevis" or servers of Hindi each in their areas and send them to Bhopal.
The organisers were very clear that since the leadership of the country believes in business and delivery, they did not want to confuse the aims of the conference by giving a purposeless, non-utilitarian activity like literature any significance.
Many felt, however, that the organisers did not want to take a risk by inviting literary people, most of whom have been openly opposed to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Not that there were no names from literature at all. Those considered to be "non-political" were invited.
The Indian Express reported the disappointment and anger of Tomio Mizokami, the septuagenarian scholar from Japan, at the mismanagement. He was not allowed to make his presentation. “I have had enough,” he said, vowing not to attend the next conference. Another European scholar, who went to Bhopal on her own even after her dejection at the way an earlier conference was planned in Surinam, came back shaking her head. She said it was an interesting experience as it told a foreigner like her a lot about the relationship between politics and Hindi. But academically speaking, she said, the time spent in Bhopal were a “sheer waste”.
"Hindi-sevi" is the key to understanding what is wrong with the Vishva Hindi Sammelans – it is a strange species, carrying an air of sacrifice, not to be found in any other language. In other languages, you find journalists, writers, translators and other professionals, but in Hindi, you have sevis or servers – they don't merely do their work as professionals but work in the service of the language.
Hindi hegemony
The Vishwa Hindu Sammelan is now a 40-year-old institution. First held in 1975 in Nagpur, it has travelled to many countries. Organised by the Ministry of External Affairs, it is largely dominated by central government officials and a clutch of organisations dedicated to the task of promoting and propagating Hindi in India and abroad.
These conferences have never been taken seriously by academics. Who sets the agenda of these meets remains unclear. The proceedings of the previous conferences are never published as the sessions are organised casually and the only theme-song played repeatedly is to make Hindi an "official language of the United Nations".
Why should jamborees such as these Hindi Sammelans be supported by the Indian state? The aim of this conference is to propagate Hindi in other countries. But why only Hindi? Should the government spend tax-payers’ money to propagate only one language, leaving others aside?
It is this preferential treatment to Hindi at the expense of other languages in a multi-lingual country like India that has created an animosity towards it in non-Hindi areas. The claim that Hindi is the only legitimate candidate for the position of the national language of the country is what led to anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu.
The rise of modern Hindi coincides with the anti-colonial struggle. In those days it was adopted by South, East, North and West of the country with love and passion. I remember BV Karanth, a Kannadiga himself, but one of the leading lights of Hindi theatre, telling me that the glamour around Hindi was such that Hindi-pracharaks or those who propagated Hindi were quite the people to elope with.
Organisations such as the Hindi Pracharini Sabha and Hindi Sahitya Sammelan worked with missionary zeal and took Hindi to all corners of India. But one cannot also forget the fact the story of the rise of Hindi in Devanagari script is entwined with story of the decline of Urdu. Hindi in Devanagari bears the memory of a bitter anti-Urdu battle, which very often turned anti-Muslim.
Post-Independence, the question of official and national language also came to the forefront and the makers of the Indian Constitution very wisely avoided according the status of national language to Hindi. The fact of it being the language of the majority of Indians, spoken and understood in varying degrees across states, made its claim of becoming the official language strong. But the politics of linguistic nationalism has not allowed the issue to be settled. Hindiwallas see this as a treacherous and anti-national act by the non-Hindi speaking people.
The Hindi establishment
The organisations that had taken Hindi to other areas turned into a huge Hindi establishment after Independence. Citing their past, like freedom fighters, they sought and got state patronage. While they conducted and offered various types of courses in Hindi, their power to distribute certificates led to gradual corruption in these bodies.
After the demise of the leadership of the pre-Independence era, these organisations were captured by self-serving people, who like later Gandhians, became the owners of the huge properties donated by well-meaning people in the early days of the freedom movement. They have now become the fiefdoms of the Hindi-mafia, which has nothing to do with Hindi as a language or an area of knowledge.
The second layer of the Hindi establishment was created by the Indian government, which took upon itself the responsibility of developing "appropriate" Hindi to represent the syncretic culture of India. Various types of Hindi directorates lorded over by the bureaucracy were established which were supposed to create scientific, technological vocabulary in Hindi. Hindi was deemed inadequate and the state intervention was endorsed by the Constitution itself. The Hindi produced in these bodies, however, was spurned by the practitioners of Hindi.
There is great divide between this sarkars Hindi and the Hindi used by writers like Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, Munshi Premchand, Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala', Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan "Agyeya", Nirmal Verma, Bhisham Sahni, Krishna Sobti, Phanishwar Nath "Renu".
The market has become the third force and with it came the crop of management gurus who themselves were brought up in English-medium schools but had their own notion of Hindi, which has to be easily accessible to the consumers. NavBharat Times , the largest selling Hindi daily, unveiled a new Hindi with liberal use of English words. Two extremes of Hindi: the sarkari Hindi and the bazaar Hindi have somehow reconciled. The speech Narendra Modi delivered was laced with English words. His claim that Hindi would soon become the third-most important language after English and Chinese was the sort of braggadocio Hindiwallahs have become used to.
The challenges Hindi faces are numerous and demand serious attention. Hindi has been confined to two areas: literature and the market. It is largely absent in other areas of knowledge. Here, it shares its plight with other Indian languages. To compensate for this lack, the only activity suggested is that of translation. There is no serious research in universities in Hindi, neither in the humanities nor in social or natural sciences. But the many editions of World Hindi Conference have never sought to address these questions. Now they have started taking solace in the market’s acceptance of Hindi.
It is high time we started asking difficult but real questions about the productivity of such conferences, which are meaningless rituals. A serious discussion on why Indian languages are lacking behind in academics has to start. Or will Hindi be reduced to an instrument to sell products and brands, be it a washing powder or a prime minister.