Whose Mother Tongue is Hindi (Khadi Boli) anyway? - My Linguistic Journey

I spent my early childhood in a village not too far from Maghar, where Sant Kabir breathed his last.  And thus I picked up Awadhi as my mother tongue. Later in the childhood, I moved to the city of Faizabad where I learnt another variant of Awadhi as spoken in the city. To illustrate, what was "कहां गइल रहला?" in the village turned into "कहां गवा रहेव?" in the city.  Then I met some relatives from other parts of Eastern UP itself and was surprised to find that some of their verbs and intonations were markedly different from ours, though we could converse fluently without any problem.

All this while, I was, of course, learning the Khadi Boli (KB) variety of Hindi in the school because these spoken dialects were and remain just that, spoken dialects without much written literature.  Of course, dohas from Kabir, Rahim, Soordas do form a body of literature in some of these dialects, and Ramayan is an Epic in Awadhi, but these have been adopted in the Khadi Boli Hindi where explaining the meaning of the dohas form routine examination questions.

In the middle and high school in the city some of us conversed in the local dialect, while others used the Khadi Boli.

My wife is from the Bhojpuri belt in UP that is adjacent to Bihar.  While we understand each other's dialects very well, initially we found some of the expressions and the accent in each other funny.  Then we switched to Khadi Boli.  So we started conversing in KB with each other while using Awadhi and Bhojpuri for conversing with other family members.

Because we switched over to KB, our son never got an opportunity to learn either Awadhi or Bhojpuri.  Same was the case with my cousins, and thus our next generation became the first generation which had KB as their mother tongue.  They largely understand our dialects but cannot sustain a conversation in that.

Thus I suspect that Hindi which is a synonym for KB is a mother tongue only for the city dwellers of North India, while the rural and even the semi-urban populations remain rooted in their language and reserve KB for city dwellers and people from other regions.  And while I have discussed only the languages prevalent in UP, the same applies to the entire Northern Belt including states like Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan etc.

Things have changed more drastically for our second generation, grandsons and granddaughters.  Most of them have studied in English medium schools.  While they do speak Hindi, it is more of Hinglish and what would be a normal conversation between KB speaking people with literary orientation, will not pass muster with them as normal Hindi.  Still others, those who have been raised abroad, have naturally taken to English (most NRIs prefer living in the English speaking world) as their mother tongue and can manage a conversation in Hindi only with difficulty.  Much of whatever KB the visiting grandparents are able to instill in them is partly lost by the time of the next visit.  I, personally, have given up teaching my grandsons KB and have instead started seeking their help to make my spoken English conform as much as possible to theirs.  I do feel bad when I think that they will never be able to enjoy Tulsi Ramayan sung by Mukesh and Ghalib Ghazals sung by Jagjit Singh the way I do.  Of course, they must also have similar feelings about my inability to enjoy their kind of music.  The consolation is that if they ever choose to study the Indian philosophy contained in the Upanishads and Samkhya and what have you, they will be able to do it as well as I have done, for I, too, have studied their English translations only.  Though, I am often able to figure out the meaning of a shloka in Sanskrit with some effort.

I also recall how a friend and colleague from Tamilnadu, who worked in UP for some time, was not able to pick up Hindi initially, but later, when posted in Gujarat, started speaking good enough Hindi, and, surprisingly, not Gujarati.  Then I had a Bengali friend who spoke Bengali like a native but was not able to read or write it!

Again, when I was posted in Lucknow for the first time, a Sharmaji was my next door neighbour.  He was a retired serviceman and a very fine gentleman.  We became like family to him.  Several years later, I was transferred to Gujarat and wrote a letter to him from there.  The letter was responded by his son who told me that Sharma Sr could not read or write Hindi!  He had learnt only English and Urdu as a student.  And during my years of association with him, I had not been able to make that out!

Language is, by definition, a shared attribute of a community.  The basis of the community may be geography, religion, profession and business amongst others.  Insistence on use of regional language shows that geography overshadows other bases.  And thus, if we want a true link language for our people the other bases must get precedence over geography.  That happens when people move from agriculture into professions and businesses that require mobility and necessitate interaction with diverse people and thus underscore the need for a link language.  However, the current 'son of the soil' policies followed or announced by several states decidedly go against this.  If the government truly wants to have a link language, it can help it evolve by facilitating movement of people between regions and not by discouraging it.  A fiat will certainly not do it.

While a link language may confer an advantage to native speakers, but it also places a great responsibility on it to assimilate as much as possible of the languages spoken by its diverse users.  A language that tries to remain rooted and chaste cannot take on the role of a link language.  Look to how English keeps adding words from languages all over the world each year.  It has helped it to become informally the link language of the European Union as borne out by their language policy.  Here is an extract from it:

"All content is published in at least English, because research has shown that with English we can reach around 90% of visitors to our sites in either their preferred foreign language or their native language."

And finally as I said in the beginning, KB is the mother tongue of only a miniscule population of city dwellers in the north.  This was beautifully illustrated decades ago when a niece from a village spent some time with my family.  When his father came to escort her back, she confided to him, "You know, Anupam (my son) talks to his parents in Angrezi!"  KB was Angrezi to her, a North Indian!!

A piece of India in San Francisco

Last month I got an opportunity to visit the Indian Consulate in San Francisco.  I was accompanying my son who had to get some document apostilled (Read here more about apostil.)   It is a tall building in a not-so-posh area of San Francisco.  The Tricolour flying high on its rooftop made a pretty sight.  The only parking available to the visitors is alongside the road.  Fortunately, we found an empty slot.

We were ushered in by the security guard, took a token from a dispensing machine and waited in the customer area.  We could see a split AC on the other side of the counters, i.e., in the office area but none in the customer lounge.  That was not a problem given the normally chilly weather in San Francisco.

The lady at the counter for accepting documents was having a break.  She soon returned and and a little later our token number was called out.  The lady didn't sound too friendly and said that we needed to get a photocopy of the document to be apostilled.  My son's objection that this requirement was not listed on the Consulate's website was curtly brushed aside.  His enquiry whether the photocopy could be done in the office on payment of charges met with a vigorous no.  We were told that there was a shop nearby and given general directions.  It seems that this confusion was a routine one and later we discovered a notice in the customer lounge stating the requirement of photocopies.

It was close to the closing time (the window opens only from 9 am to 12 noon.)  I accompanied my son as he nearly ran to the Office Supply shop down and across the road.  Some other harassed looking visitors, some of whom we had seen in the consulate earlier, were also there hurriedly making photocopies on self-service machines.  My son made copies and we ran back to the consulate where we were asked to get a fresh token.  We were able to deposit the documents in time and moved to the payment window.

The payment window was manned by a very courteous woman.  A notice was prominently displayed saying that Cash / Debit & Credit Cards / Personal cheques were NOT allowed and that all payments had to be made only through a Bankers' Cheques.  She first pointed out that the Bankers' Cheque (more about it later) was for two USD more than what was required.  The prospect of having to get it cancelled and another BC issued made us very uncomfortable, but the lady said that if it was okay with us the extra $2 could go to Indian Community Welfare Fund.  We readily agreed with a sigh of relief.

While the requirement of having an apostilled document countersigned by the consulate itself is superfluous as pointed out in my earlier post for which a link appears in the first para, there are a few questions as follows:

1. Why are debit and credit cards not accepted?
2. In a country where even a barber who doesn't know you is willing to accept a personal cheque, why is the consulate averse to doing so?  Their insistence on a Bankers' Cheque for petty amounts is a harassment to customers who are forced to visit their Bank.
3. Why does the consulate want a photocopy of the document for its records?  They can very well scan the original and store the digital copy or ask the customer to upload scanned image  online.
4. If they must have a photocopy why can't they do it on their office machine and add the charges to the fee payable?

The questions point towards towards import of bureaucratic practices from India even though these do not fit into the milieu abroad.  The consulate needs to look into these practices.