Non-Hindi speakers in India always accuse that Hindi is imposed on them. As language is an essential component of an individual's and group's identity particularly in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Hindi is largely seen as Aryan's language spoken by north Indians. Tensions between Hindi and non-Hindi language have roots in the British India. There were demands for linguistic states in colonial years that accelerated in post-independent India. Although an idea to create states based on language were not accepted by early Indian leadership, they were gradually created. This paper attempts to critically examine the politics of language-based identity and related tensions.
In: Tulasimala, B. K. and Archana, M. (2017) Regional disparities in promotion of hindi in non-hindi speaking states of India. International Journal of Social and Economic Research, 7 (4). pp. 21-25. ISSN International Journal of Social and Economic Research
In India, Hindi is the official language and central government takes the responsibility of promoting it. Accordingly, the central government promotes Hindi by taking various initiatives with different means and measures particularly in non-Hindi speaking states. The Union government has taken up initiatives in different states through voluntary organizations and has released funds to those organizations for the promotion of Hindi. For the promotion of languages the Central government has been introduced many programmes and schemes and made expenditures for the same. In the present paper an attempt has been made to analyze the pattern and trends in the expenditure made by union government in five southern states. It has found from the study that expenditure made by the central government has been increased in all the states. Accordingly, the central government has given high priority to promote Hindi as a national language. At the same time, it has found from the study that expenditure for promotion of Hindi is significantly high in the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Therefore, central government has given high priority to promote Hindi in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Accordingly, there are regional disparities in promotion of Hindi in non-Hindi speaking states of India
Science journalism in Hindi originated in the late nineteenth century. Hindi literary periodicals provided the first platform for science to be discussed along with literature. The onset of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable advance in Hindi literary writing, and science writing also flourished with this advance. A remarkable overlap and a complementary relationship between the development of Hindi literature and Hindi commentaries on sciences is evident. Equally important in this context was the backdrop provided by a politically contentious process of evolution of a 'modern', 'standard' Hindi, and by the anti-colonial freedom movement, yoked to the idea of cultural and economic nationalism. The article surveys certain popular periodicals that regularly published essays and commentaries on science and scientific subjects. These periodicals were instrumental in shaping the popular discourses on science. The article also underlines an overwhelming effort by the intelligentsia to seek a philosophical commensurability between modern science and 'traditional' schools of thought. It concludes that the predominance of these characteristics in Hindi science journalism was a reflection of the agenda of the Hindi intelligentsia, shaped by linguistic nationalism framed alongside or in conjunction with a revivalist perspective.
This book provides a fresh perspective on the importance of the Hindi media in India's political, social and economic transformation with evidence from the countryside and the cities. Accessed by more than forty percent of the public, it continues to play an important role in building political awareness and mobilising public opinion. Instead of viewing the media as a singular entity, this book highlights its diversity and complexity to understand the changing dynamics of political communication that is shaped by the interactions between the news media, political parties and the public, and how various media forms are being used in a rapidly transforming environment. The book offers insights into how print, television, and digital media work together with, rather than in isolation from, each another to grasp the complexities of the emerging hybrid media environment and the future of mobilisation.
English Heart, Hindi Heartland examines Delhi's postcolonial literary world—its institutions, prizes, publishers, writers, and translators, and the cultural geographies of key neighborhoods—in light of colonial histories and the globalization of English. Rashmi Sadana places internationally recognized authors such as Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Vikram Seth, and Aravind Adiga in the context of debates within India about the politics of language and alongside other writers, including K. Satchidanandan, Shashi Deshpande, and Geetanjali Shree. Sadana undertakes an ethnographic study of literary culture that probes the connections between place, language, and text in order to show what language comes to stand for in people's lives. In so doing, she unmasks a social discourse rife with questions of authenticity and cultural politics of inclusion and exclusion. English Heart, Hindi Heartland illustrates how the notion of what is considered to be culturally and linguistically authentic not only obscures larger questions relating to caste, religious, and gender identities, but that the authenticity discourse itself is continually in flux. In order to mediate and extract cultural capital from India's complex linguistic hierarchies, literary practitioners strategically deploy a fluid set of cultural and political distinctions that Sadana calls "literary nationality." Sadana argues that English, and the way it is positioned among the other Indian languages, does not represent a fixed pole, but rather serves to change political and literary alliances among classes and castes, often in surprising ways.