One of the oldest languages of India (for that matter, of the world), One of the very few languages that have a very large treasure of literature, one of the most venerated cultures of the world, one of the fewest places to live in definite peace in India, albeit having all these laurels do the elite language of Tamil and the state of Tamilnadu carry the same image across our compatriots and other nation people? Sadly, I would say no. The reason is our inability to communicate in a language in which they are comfortable. (For the proponents of the language, who have already started raising voices against this statement: I am one among you, please do read on)
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For the past three years, I have been living in Bangalore, perhaps one the most diverse cultured city of the world. I have at least talked to one person from all the states of the India. But none of them have shown willingness to visit Tamilnadu. The most disheartening aspect is that people are nearly scared to pay a visit there. I am sick of explaining them all what is Tamil and Tamilnadu all about. I had to, for a moment, take off my defending cap and wear my thinking cap to arrive at a conclusion on what goes wrong to end up in such a piteous scenario.
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The umpteenth passion that Tamilians show towards our language, has made us reluctant to learn other languages be it Hindi or even English. By virtue of that people from other state find it very inconvenient to be close with us. I swear, the so called passion-towards-mother-tongue in Tamilnadu is mere an illusion than reality. I have friends who do not even know to write a paragraph in Tamil, but jump between earth and sky to show off that they are ardent language lovers and they want to salvage the language from extinction. The perception that the language will become obsolete in case we allow our people to learn other languages is nothing but insane. Evidently, the language is impregnable to all such threats.
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I fear, we are unknowingly rendering a great humiliation to a race that presented hospitality as the most significant traits of humanity. While finding it tough even to talk to them, How would we elucidate a Bihari about the great “Thirukkural”, How would we lecture a Punjabi as what Specialty does the “silappathikaaram” hold, How would we explain our countrymen that we treat our friends’ friends as our friends, How would we tell our other state politician counterparts that we had politicians who respected opposite party men also. In English? Bull shit. We know we don’t take English seriously either.
Are our culture, heritage, rituals, in total our civilization, going to be confined to a mediocre 6 crore people? Are we going to end up as own trumpet blowers amongst ourselves? Are we not interested in making friends from Assam, Kashmir, and Rajasthan? Unless we realize, in blood, that a neutral language is all important to make this paradigm shift, we are going to be smelt bad by others.
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Hereby I am not telling having passion towards mother tongue is a sin. That would be silly from my end too. But the emphasis is on showing intent towards learning other language to lay a better path of communication. A kannadiga never gives up his language, A Bengali loves his language than anybody else in this world, and A Marati is so obsessed with his language than anything under the sky, besides all that they learn other languages, rather, they allow other languages. That makes their job simple. Let us ignite a transition here. We have been kept inside an enchanted ring for years; it is high time we break the shackles.
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When Vivekananda addressed the crowd in Chicago as brothers and sisters, the whole world stunned. We keep applauding that. Ironically, we have forgotten that we cannot address a crowd in New Delhi the same. The next time we should address them “Bhaio aur Beheno”. Change should happen, not necessarily to start loving the other languages, but to get rid of the aversion towards them. At least we should not be the obstacles for the next generation to proceed in that front.
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Let us open new doors for our kith and kin to come to us. Let us be familiar to chapatti and Dal Makhani, Let us taste Phav bhajji and Rosogulla some times. Let us celebrate “The colourful Holi”. Bharat matha has been waiting for ages to see this happen. Let us make her dream come alive!
Good one Prakash!!