Language according to me is a commodity given to us by our ancestors so that we can communicate with each other. So that we can know the feelings of others because the early men used to converse with the help of drawings as we see in Bhim bethka.
Few days back I saw a news that a writer staged a protest in front of a shop because the shop owner didn’t know her language which was also the local language of that area. According to the writer because the shop owner was earning and having buisness in that Area so he should know the local language. That was the reason she staged the protest.
I commented on the news what i understood that learning a new language is good but forcing someone to learn a language is not good.
I commented and then I logged out when I logged in again there was a fight going on in my comment’s response section
One person was adament that people from hindi belt go to other regions where they force others to learn hindi and never try to learn the local language.This was his main complain.
Now there were others also who were arguing that if you hate hindi then why do you watch bollywood movies and tv serials that are in hindi
Now what I observed from that discussion among people I am putting it here.
On my comment there were 11 likes and i checked who were they and what i found was actually very beautiful. Out of those 11 people one was from gujrat one was from assam one was from maharashtra and one was from tamilnadu rest were from the hindi speaking belt of our country. I was moved as how in news channels we always see people fighting over language, religion and we only see that side because its loud its catchy it gives TRP to the news channels but we never see that there are sensible people also who actually think from their mind and understand the situation.
Now coming on the comment section the person arguing that hindi speaking people dont want to learn other language was not completely wrong in saying that because it could have been his personal experience .the thing which was wrong with this argument was he was generalising it.
He was being adament that the have to learn local language.
We have to understand there is a big difference between have to and should.
Knowledge in any form can not be forced. Nobody can make anyone learn something if the person doesn’t want to learn.
Language is a way of communication thats it. It does not define you. Your deeds do.
I also observed that all the people fighting there were writing in English. Why??
Because it was convenient. They all knew English and it was easy to type.
For a moment it gave me a smirk to think how they all were fighting over 2 languages in a third language.
I was just thinking how scientific invention in history has been done by people having different mother tongue. We never say that we will not learn because newton was not speaking our language.
In this particular seen if the shop owner didn’t know the local language. It was non beneficial for his own shop. Local language always helps but learning that must always be his own choice and no protest and pressure should be put on him.
As for the writer if the shop owner was rude and was refusing to sell then police could have been contacted. Staging a protest and creating a fuss about him not knowing the local language was unnecessary.
And I really want to know whether the person staging the protest was really awriter.
As far as my knowledge goes every book gets translated to other languages if the writer is renowned because ofcourse people from different language areas know the writer and want to read the book.
So whats the point of the protest then.