While travelling through out the book fair 2013 at Pragati Maidan, in the end I finally gave a thought of visiting the singlemost Hindi books section. Me writing this piece in English favouring Hindi acts as a shame and disgrace over the viewpoint of Hindi language in its own country.
So, I thought of asking themselves about the state of language. I encountered a freelancer hindi writer who happened to be daughter of a Hindi author "Ashok Andrey". She started on a high note with full enthusiasm as her father's book was launched, hence she was quite excited and happy. But when she was asked about the state of hindi in our country, she became disheartened and told how these days all are busy in aping the western culture and prefering their language over ours. Language creates an identity and when it is unread and unheard, the moment is no far when it would be lost completely. Its actually too sad that how we are unaware of present day Hindi literature and authors but on the same time, we are too gelled with the English ones. Even she narrated an incident in which school students were refrained from visiting the hindi section saying that "Its hindi , we don't read that". It was a shocking thing that how present generation are not influenced to read hindi literature and hence they do not feel connected to the language. This is the reason that present day Hindi writers remains anonymous for most of the time until their work is included in textbooks and students are made to read it in name of syllabus. Even in cyber world, hindi is hard to find mainly in blogs where 1 in 1000 blogs is found to be hindi written. Though hindi is a popular language which is spoken around the world but when it comes to reading, people prefer english over hindi. In literature, hindi made its mark with great names like Rabindra Nath Tagore, Munshi Premchand but slowly in present generation it is loosing its impact maybe because of Globalisation and International exposure where we find ourself so open that our own language appears small to us.
Its not about an era of a language, its evergreen but we have to be habitual to it and preach it further to coming generation. A step must be taken in favour of Hindi today before telling our grandsons that "Once upon a time we used to read and enjoy hindi literature" instead we shall discuss hindi literature with them.
Language lost is identity lost. It is born from the country's soil and hence it must be taken care of and looked after.
So, I thought of asking themselves about the state of language. I encountered a freelancer hindi writer who happened to be daughter of a Hindi author "Ashok Andrey". She started on a high note with full enthusiasm as her father's book was launched, hence she was quite excited and happy. But when she was asked about the state of hindi in our country, she became disheartened and told how these days all are busy in aping the western culture and prefering their language over ours. Language creates an identity and when it is unread and unheard, the moment is no far when it would be lost completely. Its actually too sad that how we are unaware of present day Hindi literature and authors but on the same time, we are too gelled with the English ones. Even she narrated an incident in which school students were refrained from visiting the hindi section saying that "Its hindi , we don't read that". It was a shocking thing that how present generation are not influenced to read hindi literature and hence they do not feel connected to the language. This is the reason that present day Hindi writers remains anonymous for most of the time until their work is included in textbooks and students are made to read it in name of syllabus. Even in cyber world, hindi is hard to find mainly in blogs where 1 in 1000 blogs is found to be hindi written. Though hindi is a popular language which is spoken around the world but when it comes to reading, people prefer english over hindi. In literature, hindi made its mark with great names like Rabindra Nath Tagore, Munshi Premchand but slowly in present generation it is loosing its impact maybe because of Globalisation and International exposure where we find ourself so open that our own language appears small to us.Its not about an era of a language, its evergreen but we have to be habitual to it and preach it further to coming generation. A step must be taken in favour of Hindi today before telling our grandsons that "Once upon a time we used to read and enjoy hindi literature" instead we shall discuss hindi literature with them.
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