The blog is the result of a video making rounds of FB walls these days. "Ye haal hai humare MPAs ka. Kya ye mulk chala sakte hain??" says the title of the video. A young 20 something chap is trying to ask a simple question to the politicians, "what is prosperity?". But, he has one constraint. They have to answer in English. I dont think the replies are important because the title of the video says it all. "Laughs".. That's our leaders.. "Our leaders".
It reminded me of another instance which was a very regular affair in the 90's. It was when Sachin Tendulkar was still a rising star and had to speak on receiving the MOM award, he was proudly making us indians ashamed by his lame english. Thats exactly what my Gen X/Y felt atleast. And same we said about Bhajji or any one who was actually making us more ashamed on the world podium by their stupid english than making us proud by their star acts.
"S&%le to English bhi bolni nahi aati", was a common expression we all used. I have a question. Were we justified in doing so? Were they really making us ashamed by their paralysed english or making us proud by making it to the national team and then playing like a star at the age of "just" 16?
If we talk about our very own Politicians, well I don't generally support them but talking about Lalu I can definitely say one thing, what he did to the Indian railways, an English speaking Nitish Kumar or Mamta Banerjee cannot ever do that. He reformed the IR from a loss making organization, intimidated to be landed into the private hands to the most profitable Indian organization during his reign. And our English speaking lady from Bengal hasn't paid Taxes to the government saying IR doesn't have enough funds and the profit ain't much. Lalu even though not knowing English has been one of the few politicians to make to the IIMs which even our oxford educated PM haven't had the privilege of.
We are ashamed if we don't know English while we are proud of not knowing our own Hindi, the national language. If I ask all those literate people of my country or better said my "Gen" who were ashamed because Sachin didn't knew English, I can bet, not even 10% would know how to write their own name in hindi let alone the numbers or kaa, khaa, gaa, ghaa. I wonder who should be ashamed. Sachin or Us?
We want to make the firangs know that we know their language and we are equal to them. And the fact stands that they have just been successful enough to make us feel that learning their language is a necessity for us. I wonder how wonderful it would have been if they would have found it more important to know our language. Isn't it? But why would someone find it important when we ourselves are ashamed of our own language.
Its high time that we feel proud of ourselves.. Of what we are.. Of what we have.. Of what is ours.. and of what we do... We may be driving a Ferrari, but still we are no one if we loose our own identity. Language is one of our such identities which makes us, Us. It took 5000 years for Hindi to evolve, and its not worth giving up something for 200 years of slavery. The sooner we understand, the better it is for us.
P.S. Well, actually the blog is a result of no work in office. :P :P
