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Showing posts from August, 2017

Linguistic Chauvinism

Today we were made to take the "New India Pledge" as part of the 70th Independence Day celebrations. The pledge which was read out to us in Hindi, was not comprehended by more than half of the students. And hence it was a huge farce for us and the only thing that happened was that we had to raise our arms for quite a long time and repeat something that sounded to us like jargon. Why is it that we are made to take a pledge in Hindi, a language that most of us here in Kerala have difficulty in understanding, rather than in Malayalam or English? Isn't this part of the agenda to impose Hindi as a national language and thereby jeopardize the 1,526 other languages and dialects that our country boasts of?  Linguistic chauvinism should definitely be identified and fought against. For you your language, for me mine.