The communication problem
By: K S S Pillai
It is well-known that the mother tongue is a unifying force among the people. In a country like India, many people migrate to other parts for suitable employment. They learn the language of their host states and interact with the local people in their language. Even their children and spouses are fluent in the local language, and many of their friends belong to the local community.
These migrants are emotionally bound by their mother tongue. They form associations where they are settled, celebrate the festivals of their home state, and help one another when they face problems.
At the time of independence, our country was divided into many large states where the people had different mother tongues. Later, linguistic states were created where the people had a common mother tongue.
The language problem is not new. It is said that when people became too powerful because there was only one language in the beginning, God scattered them into different parts of the world, and spoke languages not understood by one another, ending their unity.
When I began my teaching career in Gujarat as a college teacher in the late 1960s, I knew that most students had a poor knowledge of English. Many of them came from village schools where the teachers often taught English in the local language.
A sweet consequence was that the father of a fresh student, who attended my class secretly, gifted me different varieties of mangoes from his orchard during the season until the boy became a graduate.
The problem persisted when my wife arrived from Kerala to join me in the staff quarters. Her knowledge of Gujarati was nil, and that of Hindi was limited to the textbooks she had studied.
Our maid, a tribal girl, spoke a different dialect of Gujarati that even the other local people did not understand. She had picked up some words from the Hindi movies screened in the local cinema houses. She would use them while talking to us, murmuring in amusement at our ignorance.
My wife was in the good books of the women in our neighbourhood as she often gave them South Indian dishes like idlis and dosas with sambar or coconut chutney. They belonged to different parts of the state and taught her to prepare dishes popular in their areas.
They also took pains to give lessons in Gujarati to my wife. As a result, she spoke Gujarati better than I did after a few years.
I had a taste of the language problem since my childhood in Kerala. There were many migrants from Tamil Nadu, who were metal artisans, around us. They spoke Tamil at home and to one another outside. When their children fought, they abused one another in Tamil.
Being their neighbour, I had picked up many Tamil words. The trend has been weakened by the passage of time. When I visited my village recently, I was sorry to find that the new generation used Malayalam and had scant knowledge of Tamil.
Language is an easy tool to become popular among the common people. Some politicians in Maharashtra, whose performance at hasting was pathetic, tried to become popular recently by beating those from other parts of the country who were not fluent in the language or did not display name boards in Marathi.
After some criminal cases were filed against them, the leaders asked them to avoid publicity but continue their violent campaign. They seem not to care about their people who go to other parts of the country for jobs.
Whenever someone from the Central government speaks about introducing the three-language formula in schools, asking states to teach Hindi and English along with the mother tongue, the politicians protest the ‘imposition’ of Hindi.
They agitate and obliterate the Hindi nameplates at railway stations and other places till they are assured that Hindi won’t be made compulsory.
There has been a steady deterioration in the condition of the English language. Those who loved the language would be aghast at its present condition. Being the global language and the language of modern technology, everyone uses it like a telegraphic language without observing the rules.
(The author is a retired professor of English. A regular contributor to ‘The Kashmir Vision’, his articles and short stories have appeared in several national and international publications)
