Saturday, June 21, 2014

Indian officials ordered to ditch English for Hindi...

Since Lord Macaulay set out to turn India’s native elite into “a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” in 1835, English has been the country’s language of government.

But according to a leaked memo, Indian officials must now use Hindi in all official posts on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Ministers have also ordered officials, many of whom do not speak fluent Hindi, to use the language in presentations.

The disclosure provoked an angry response from state leaders across the country yesterday, who resent the imposition of Hindi.

 India is a linguistically diverse country, and Tamil, Kashmiri, Bengali and Marathi are spoken with pride in different regions. Hindi is mainly spoken in the north and in Bihar, but not fully understood in other places. Only 40 per cent of Indians speak Hindi as their mother tongue, and previous attempts to impose it as the official national language have met with violent protests. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Social media in India has suddenly become a decidedly dangerous place for...
  2. Enabling extremism, monetizing dissent and India's Modi...
  3. Is English about to replace Hindi as India's major language?
  4. Low-caste Dalits in India build a temple ... to the English language!!!
  5. Kids in Chennai, India being coached to speak with American and British accents...

No comments:

Post a Comment