The government's new educational policy proposed to make Hindi compulsory in the South Indian states, which have historically been hostile to what they see as linguistic chauvinism and as an imposition. The proposal was rolled back, but not before Twitter had its say about it all. Some of the tweets recalled historical events whereas others created hilarious parallels between this and some Hindi movies made over time.
The hashtag #StopHindiImposition was trending with people furiously tweeting against the proposed policy. This tweet pointed out how Hindi is merely the language of the majority and not a national language or a link language.
Earlier as well, when Hindi was attempted to be introduced into the curriculum in Tamil Nadu, there had been fierce and widespread protests.
Speakers of various regional languages are very proud of their own language. Hence, the introduction of Hindi is seen not only as linguistic chauvinism but also a form of majoritarianism. Previous governments who have tried such impositions have suffered politically.
The script in the image is as indecipherable to Hindi speakers as Devnagri is to Tamil speakers. Some of the tweeple asked the legitimate question, why should the imposition only be a one-way street?
Twitter user Arun Vishwanathan listed various movies where the linguistic divide was relevant or where South Indians were unnecessarily targeted. The depiction of South Indians has often been unflattering in Hindi movies; the men shown to be dark, puny and undesirable as in the case of Ranjhana and its story of unrequited love.
The language barrier between the North and South has been depicted in various Hindi movies over time, such as the tragic love story from the 1980s, Ek Duje ke Liye. As this hilarious tweet points out, learning Hindi didn’t earn the poor South Indian hero too many brownie points (he was killed off in the end).
Roja is another film that examined the North-South linguistic divide. A young South Indian woman gets married and travels to the North with her new husband, where no one understands what she says.
The thread went on to list other movies such as Baasha, Bombay and more, to hilariously drive home his point.
Vishwanathan also made a subtle comment about the imposition of majoritarian politics, not just a language, upon the people of the South.
The Twitter user also points out that learning languages is good; that it can even raise an individual's IQ; and that the rejection of the draft policy is shortsighted.
In the end, this disclaimer was also put up – it is a testament to the times we live in. Today, people are so overly sensitive that even sarcasm and satire can be misunderstood and it is telling that such a disclaimer was deemed necessary.
Perhaps it was these very tweets with worldwide trending hashtags such as #StopHindiImposition and #TNAgainstHindiImposition and protests on other platforms that resulted in the government rolling back its proposal. Of course, we aren’t sure whether it was political prudence or the dawning realisation of a flawed policy that made the government do this.
Do you have something interesting you would like to share? Write to us at [email protected]
