sssssshhh!
this is something which i found really ridiculous. i was rather shabbily dressed, with my hawai chappal and a trouser and purana t-shirt, walking along the poss road of the institutional area in Delhi where i work and live, too. suddenly i happened to come across this extremely sophisticated lady. sophisticated, at least, in the the sense that, she was in her low-waist jeans and skin-tight t-shirt and was talking over a RICH mobile phone, and remarkably with a cigarrette on her other hand. she dint care for much about the encounter with me, but then i slowed down and and followed her.
please forgive me for intruding upon others private matter, but she said something during her telephonic discussion with the other person on line, which i could not help not listening to. her language of conversation was of course English, the urban language of modern Indians.
i forgot most of the other things that she said, but this one i remember: "ohho...i dont know much of hindi u know, i learnt some bit of dehati Hindi when i was ......... (somewhere)....". for heaven's sake, what is 'dehati Hindi' my dear? i have not seen, in any of the anthropological or linguistic books, this language called 'dehati Hindi'. hindi, in any form and style of speaking and writing, is hindi only. there can not be any other denomination for it. and also, being in the capital of India, which belongs to a Hindi speaking zone, why one has to learn a language called 'dehati Hindi"?
i see some serious social problems behind such mentality of modern urban Indians:
1. They are, knowingly or unknowingly, being cut off from the social roots of the Indian heritage. people are seeking a different form of Indianness, as if our age-old beliefs and customs are a shame for them. this, i see, as a colonial hang-over, the mentality that the rural Indian society is barbarous and non-progressive.
2. i dont say that one individual represent a whole society. but an individual can not develop a habit or a mindset without the influence of the surroundings. individuals are products of the society. changing ethics is a social phenomenon. such new and ornamented moral values of the urbanIndia society has affected several of our traditional institutions, for instance marriage, to a great extent. it has also had adverse affects on concepts of love, to say the least.
3. its a kind of racist feeling that is gradually killing the Indian society from within. this racism is not phenotypic, but linguistic, and equally dangerous. the petty-regionalism, and petty nationalism that is so conspicuous in several regions of India is mainly based on this linguistic classification.
problems are many, solutions are not within our capacity. when the mind is colonised, nothing can come over it, unless it is recolonised. so, is a recolonisation on cards there?
this is something which i found really ridiculous. i was rather shabbily dressed, with my hawai chappal and a trouser and purana t-shirt, walking along the poss road of the institutional area in Delhi where i work and live, too. suddenly i happened to come across this extremely sophisticated lady. sophisticated, at least, in the the sense that, she was in her low-waist jeans and skin-tight t-shirt and was talking over a RICH mobile phone, and remarkably with a cigarrette on her other hand. she dint care for much about the encounter with me, but then i slowed down and and followed her.
please forgive me for intruding upon others private matter, but she said something during her telephonic discussion with the other person on line, which i could not help not listening to. her language of conversation was of course English, the urban language of modern Indians.
i forgot most of the other things that she said, but this one i remember: "ohho...i dont know much of hindi u know, i learnt some bit of dehati Hindi when i was ......... (somewhere)....". for heaven's sake, what is 'dehati Hindi' my dear? i have not seen, in any of the anthropological or linguistic books, this language called 'dehati Hindi'. hindi, in any form and style of speaking and writing, is hindi only. there can not be any other denomination for it. and also, being in the capital of India, which belongs to a Hindi speaking zone, why one has to learn a language called 'dehati Hindi"?
i see some serious social problems behind such mentality of modern urban Indians:
1. They are, knowingly or unknowingly, being cut off from the social roots of the Indian heritage. people are seeking a different form of Indianness, as if our age-old beliefs and customs are a shame for them. this, i see, as a colonial hang-over, the mentality that the rural Indian society is barbarous and non-progressive.
2. i dont say that one individual represent a whole society. but an individual can not develop a habit or a mindset without the influence of the surroundings. individuals are products of the society. changing ethics is a social phenomenon. such new and ornamented moral values of the urbanIndia society has affected several of our traditional institutions, for instance marriage, to a great extent. it has also had adverse affects on concepts of love, to say the least.
3. its a kind of racist feeling that is gradually killing the Indian society from within. this racism is not phenotypic, but linguistic, and equally dangerous. the petty-regionalism, and petty nationalism that is so conspicuous in several regions of India is mainly based on this linguistic classification.
problems are many, solutions are not within our capacity. when the mind is colonised, nothing can come over it, unless it is recolonised. so, is a recolonisation on cards there?
