4 Jammu Redefining
By Saloni Gupta
W
E are all aware of
the increasing popularity
of
the
English language and the
declining prestige attached
to our native languages in
recent times. Although I
found this trend discomforting even while in India, it was
only after moving abroad
that I could see it as a fundamental problem and decided
to synthesise my thoughts
on this issue. In this article, I
make an attempt to put forward some of my arguments
and plead the readers to
take this piece as a critique
of the trend in general rather
than merely relating it to their
personal behaviour.
Jammu Redefining
were also left incapable of
conversing in their 'mother
tongue', Dogri. This trend
seems even more unfortunate when in the current scenario English is fast replac-
extent we undermine our
own? Or is it something
holding on to our linguistic
roots firmly while respecting
and accommodating others?
A few years ago, I visited
year old daughter, "Beta,
bucket mein hand wash kar
lo". This was not the first
time I had heard such a sentence but as I was already
thinking about this issue, this
Jijivisha Series No. 5
popular 'lingo'. Perhaps I
experienced a silent anger
towards the linguistic hegemony of English in my country.
Quite often, we are fascinated by what is claimed to
be 'modern' without questioning the validity. We
accept things as natural
without assessing whether
they are really progressive.
Getting carried away with
the new linguistic trend of
either surrendering totally to
English or mixing Hindi with
English is an issue which
needs to be well thought
through and debated. After
all, language is one of the
most highly valued components of any culture, regional or national. Language is
something which is unique to
each region, formed and
shaped in no other place in
the world than its own, thus
leaving the responsibility of
its growth entirely to the
inhabitants of the region. I
believe, therefore, that giving our native language its
due place in formal and
informal contexts along with
respecting other languages
could be a healthy move
towards modernity.
One can well recognise
that our formal education in
towns and cities is mainly in
English and that the little
space assigned to languages like Hindi, Sanskrit
and, if any, to Dogri is on the
verge of extinction. But what
I find bewildering is the modern-day socialisation wherein English seen as a symbol
of 'modernity', 'elitism' and
'progress' is preferential to
native languages, passed
down to the next generation
in informal contexts, what to
talk of formal institutions.
When I was growing up in
J&K, I noticed that the prestige attached to the Dogri
dialects of different towns
varied. In conversation,
Dogri in its pure form popular
in remote areas held less
prestige than that which was
adulterated with Punjabi and
mainly spoken in towns. This
blending of Punjabi with
Dogri was then seen as a
sign of 'modernity'. Soon the
symbol of modernity shifted
from Punjabi to Hindi, thus
parents started putting an
effort in to making the
younger generation wellconversant
in
Hindi.
However, in the process they
| March 23-April 5, 2014
A version of Takri known as Dogra Akkhar was used to write Dogri. It was offically adopted in the
1860s, and was replaced by Devanagari in 1944.
ing both our local language
Dogri and the national language Hindi or at best reducing their usage to mere
prepositions and conjunctions. Does this shift from
pure Dogri to a mix of Dogri
and Punjabi to Hindi to a mix
of English and Hindi really
signal a trend towards
modernity? What then does
modernity actually mean- is
modernity being open to
other languages to the
one of the remote villages of
Udhampur district, a place
without even pucca roads
and where the local buses
were forced to drive very
slowly to avoid accidents.
Just a little shower of rain
would make it almost impossible for the driver to take the
bus forward. I stayed with a
family there for some days.
In such a remote setting, o