The great danger in our age is nationalism

One of my early memories of Hindi, from my early years deep in peninsular India, was from when mother asked the gurkha why he was coming by way early in the night to check on the property, when he should be coming much later.

As a kid, I was shocked.  Mother knew Hindi?  And, like most kids, I was impressed.  Mothers do know everything!

I never bothered to learn the language, other than during the mandatory couple of years of Hindi language in school.  The older I grew, the more I hated the very thought of learning Hindi--because, by then I had learnt a little bit about the long and rich history of Tamil, and about the politics of imposing Hindi upon us non-Hindi people.

So much was the anti-Hindi sentiment inside me that even in graduate school, if a couple of Indian students spoke in Hindi when I was also with them, I would remind them that I didn't know Hindi.  The assumption that anybody from India knows Hindi--and should know the language--has always pissed me off to no end.

Decades have gone by since those years in Neyveli.  And I have become more fanatical about this issue.  Because, understanding the world a lot more has also made me realize that forcing a new language upon people is one of the oldest successful strategies that bastards have always employed.  The stories echo all over the world--from the native peoples in the Americas who were systematically forced to learn alien European languages and, in the process, render dead their own languages, to the Russification in the old Soviet bloc, to the Uighurs, to ...

Six years ago, almost to the very date, I quoted this:

A single generation of English education suffices to break the threads of tradition and to create a nondescript and superficial being deprived of all roots

Forcing a language upon people is one of the easiest ways to erase history and tradition.

I have ranted about this issue for a long time.  Perhaps all the easier for me, not because I have been an American for a long time, but because I have always believed that "Indian" is an artificial construct.  I even go to other blogs and write about this!

Thus, I am not surprised at the intense opposition that continues to grow against the Hindu Raj's Home Minister and his push for Hindi.

Speaking at a public meeting organised by ally MDMK on the 111th birth anniversary of former Chief Minister C.N. Annadurai in Chennai, Mr Stalin said, “If we close our eyes for a second, they will impose Hindi and completely discard Tamil. We have been protesting against this since 1938. We protested in 1949, 1950, 1953, 1963 and 1965. We have once again arrived at a stage where we have to protest.”

Nationalism is a danger, especially when coming from the likes of politicians "ruling"* governing India now.  I will quote, again, Mario Vargas Llosa:

I believe that the great danger in our age is nationalism, it’s no longer fascism, nor communism. These ideologies have become completely outdated. But in contrast, nationalism is a defect that is always there under the surface and above all, at moments of crisis, can be very easily exploited by demagogues and power-hungry leaders. Nationalism is the great tradition of humankind; unfortunately it’s always present in history.
And so, I believe that it’s the great enemy of democracy. It’s the great enemy of freedom and a terrible source of racism. If one believes that being born into or forming part of a particular community is a privilege, then that is racism. I believe that one must fight nationalism energetically if one believes in democracy, in freedom, especially in this age of mixing and the building of great blocks.

If only the ill-informed and malicious Hindians will spend a few hours reading about Tamil, for instance.  If only they even half-understood that "to know Tamil" can also mean "to be a civilized human being."

* A few years ago, Vijay Nambisan wrote about how Indians continue to think of parties in power as "rulers" when they are merely elected to govern.  It is more than mere semantics.  I am not able to track down his commentary.

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