The constant din of the roof top revelers of cosmopolitanism against parochialism revolves around the language issue. These flag-bearers of cosmopolitanism claim that Mumbai’s cosmopolitan image is hurt by putting Marathi sign-boards or otherwise insisting on the usage of Marathi language.
Pardon me for being a mutt, but may be these cosmo’s can explain what any language has to do with a city being cosmopolitan? Is Paris any less cosmopolitan for expressing itself in French? What about Tokyo, Shanghai or Seoul? How are these clones, who somehow seem to think it is beneath them to speak the local language, any different from this boy who believes that he is a re-incarnation of some american professor?
Nobody is asking you to play Marathi songs in discotheques; at least not yet. (I do hope that my Marathi music-composer friends are reading this.) But if Bambaiyaa Hindi can be the linguistic Kamikaze on the chaste Hindi of the cow belt, won’t you return us the favor?
But, there is more to this debate than just what the cosmo’s feel about a language. Even bigger than the aspirations of these urbanites is the need to make available the fruits of a democracy to all its people. Take for instance the access to state governmental health care programs. How can a doctor address the needs of his or her patients if he/she can’t communicate with them? Should we wait for a crash course from MNS to impart crash courses to our doctors? This is true for Indian Railways as well. The vast majority of the people who tend to use the Indian Railways are not affluent English speaking, but the poor and illiterate kind, who only tend to speak in their native languages. If people from only a handful of states dominate Railway jobs, how does it benefit these passengers in making effective use of services that are meant for them? Are their rights not being infringed by the malfeasance of the Railway authorities?
Which brings me to the oft quoted counter argument of the pro-migrant lobby that ‘All Indians have a right to move to any part of India.’ Do these people realise how fragile their argument becomes if they have to fall back upon the constitution to defend their positions? Besides, what about my right to feel at home in my home state? Are only those rights that are enshrined in the constitution worth protecting?
