Editor,
Kudos to the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council for protesting against the imposition of Hindi and Hindutva in this multilingual multi-religious secular heterogeneous land of diversities.
Rightly has the council, following outrage of the indigenous Buddhist and Muslim population, opposed the nomenclature of the union health ministry-run health and wellness centres established in the region – ‘Ayushman Arogya Mandir’.
Apart from the demand of deleting the suffix ‘mandir’, the council has proposed a new name for the centres – ‘Tsey-Ring Nadmed Tsonas’ – based on secular vintage and local Bhoti language.
Yes, the name of no government establishment/scheme should bear any semblance of religion and never can any name be Hindi-ised in this secular country of various tongues.
The who’s who of the ruling dispensation at the Centre zealously shout in favour of ‘Indian languages’ by speaking foul against the ‘colonial’ English. If they harbour such ‘immense love’ for all languages of India, then why do they emphasise/promote one and only Hindi in all sectors of central governance? Apart from Hindi-ising the names of central schemes/organisations by treating English as a ‘pariah’, many central organisations based in West Bengal do not treat indigenous Bangla to deserve a place in its signboard as well and also compel all employees to work in the language of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Oh, what ‘love’ for the ‘Indian languages’ indeed!
So it gets as clear as crystal that the ruling powers treat ‘Indian languages’ and Hindi as synonymous entities and all their diatribes against the ‘colonial’ language draw ‘inspiration’ from their sole mission of dethroning their only challenger, English, so as to Hindi-ise all sectors of this multilingual country.
It is high time the central authorities learnt to respect the heterogeneous character of the country (a federal conglomeration of various regions possessing distinct cultures of their own) and accordingly name all centralised schemes/organisations either in neutral language English (the only link which can connect Indians of all regions), or allow all provinces to rename them according to the indigenous languages of the region concerned.
‘Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan’ or ‘one nation, one language, one religion’ mindset should have no place in this diverse country of all, where no language or religion is superior or inferior to one another.
Kajal Chatterjee,
D-2/403,
Peerless Nagar, Kolkata