Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Ignorance is NOT Bliss!

Ever since coming to the US, I have had these North Indians (anybody north of Madras) asking me to talk in Hindi because its our national language. Do not mistake me here - I do not hate Hindi - I know the language to an extent to understand somebody talking to me and all that. But I'm pissed when people tell me that for me to be patriotic (which I'm not) I need to know Hindi. Thanks to the recent controversy, I came to know that

India does not have the concept of a single "national language". The Indian Constitution does not recognize Hindi as the national language of India. Instead, "official languages" are recognized for individual states. Article 343 of the Indian Constitution recognises Hindi in Devanāgarī script as the official language of the Union Government. The states have their own official languages, depending on their linguistic demographics.
Bloody! From here on any seth kabodhi forcing me to talk in Hindi is gonna get his ass kicked. Like R. Peters says, "Someone gonna get hurt reaaal baaaad!"

1 comment:

Kaushik said...

That's there, but an even more valid and shocking aspect is how ignorant most of the people in the North are. Unbelievably ignorant of all things south. It's like TN, Ker, Kar and AP are one single entity. Rombave aaditten. Can't actually blame them, my roomie is one, dunno whether to blame our history text books or the press. And this was another thing that pissed me off major - http://www.arrahman.com/interviews/interviews-19.html - everything is Bollywood there! What happened to journalistic accuracy?