Mumbai or Mohali? Which one is most headline-grabbing on news channels and papers on October 21?
The day when Dhoni and his men posted an emphatic Test victory over the most powerful cricketing country, the financial capital of India has been doomed to linguistic and cultural chauvinism. How can one believe that a little-known political party takes the "maximum city" to maximum ransom only hours after the arrest of their leader? Has the time come again to witness the mad rush of Hindi-speaking people from towns of Maharashtra like that earlier this year?
What will happen to my numerous friends who make a living in Mumbai? They might not be taxi drivers or coolies at stations, they might have given the chauvinist Marathis a slip to escape their wrath because they are engaged in "soft" jobs; but aren’t they afraid of their survival? The reason is simple: they can’t speak Marathi like the native of Maharashtra. For their everyday work, most of the people from other states living in the cosmopolitan city on the Arabian Sea speak Hindi, as the language has become the national language in the past six decades. People would certainly disagree on whether Hindi should be regarded as the national language, but in a multi-lingual country like India, one needs to be proficient in the principal language of communication within the country. It is still debatable whether Hindi would get similar importance if the national capital is either in Mumbai or Chennai or Calcutta, the city which lost the capital tag in 1911 to Delhi. But no one would rewrite history at this point.
What we should remember is the spirit of being Indian. That should unite us at a time of crisis, especially the present one when the sensex has crashed over 50 per cent in 10 months; particularly when the country has been shockingly expecting for another bomb to rip apart a city or a town; specifically when secessionist movement has spread its tentacles from Kashmir to Darjeeling. Didn’t we feel proud seeing a 35-year-old Marathi is congratulated by his team leader from Hindi heartland after scoring 12,000 Test runs? Why people from all parts of India are raising a toast for the victory against Australia scripted by a young leg-spinner from Haryana, another Hindi-speaking state, in his debut Test? I think the most chauvinist supporter of a Marathi leader is also in a happy state of mind on a morning when India won the Test by 320 runs — a feat not achieved till date. Does he count how many Marathi-speaking player is there in the team? Nobody counts that.
It’s a collective effort that unites India — be it on the pitch of Mohali, be it on the streets of Mumbai. We should aim that keeping our faith in humanity.
No comments:
Post a Comment