Ajay Devgn wrote a tweet at fellow actor Kiccha Sudeep, and declared that Hindi is the national language. Kiccha Sudeep had recently commented on the box office success of the Kannada film KGF: Chapter 2, and said that the Hindi film industry is struggling. Kiccha Sudeep said when addressing KGF 2’s success “You said that a pan India film was made in Kannada. I’d like to make a small correction. Hindi is no more a national language. They (Bollywood) are doing pan-India films today. They are struggling (to find success) by dubbing in Telugu and Tamil, but it’s not happening. Today, we are making films that are going everywhere.” To this Ajay who has a movie to promote, tweeted in Hindi, “My brother, if according to you Hindi is not our national language then why do you release your movies in your mother tongue by dubbing them in Hindi? Hindi was, is and always will be our mother tongue and national language. Jan Gan Man.”
Sudeep replied that his words had been misconstrued, and cheekily asked, “And sir, I did understand the text you sent in Hindi. That’s only because we all have respected, loved and learnt Hindi. No offense sir, but I was wondering what the situation would be if my response was typed in Kannada!! Don’t we too belong to India, sir.” All very dramatic no doubt but it does raise the question is Ajay justified in saying that Hindi should be the language across India or one language cannot be imposed across this vast subcontinent.
People when asked were reluctant to speak perhaps due to the perceived controversial nature of the subject. However there were a few who were willing to come on record. Subodh Kerkar was of the opinion that the issue of Hindi as a national language was more political than about the language. He said “India has such diversity in everything. You can’t make dosa the national dish in the same way you can’t make Hindi the national language. It may be ok in Europe but we have a whole Europe here. This is not the first time such discussions have been held. History shows us that such moves have never paid off. I know people in the BJP who are against it. This is a plural country and no one has a problem with the English language. Linguistic diversity has to be respected. This move for Hindi is motivated by the fact there is a certain percentage of votes in Hindi speaking states and they want to push this.”
A young executive Agnes Pinto said such a move should be avoided because as she put it, if there was unity in diversity and love was the universal language it was important to put it into practice and not leave it on paper.
Conal Lobo an entrepreneur now based in Goa felt that imposing a language would negate the diversity of the country. He said each and every language had its appeal and history and played a role in the larger picture of the country. One language could never be imposed and he said it was important to look at history which would show that such attempts had failed in the past.
Another respondent who did not want to be named said this was an attempt to bring back an emotive topic when everything else seemed to have failed.
This is a subject it seems which has a life all its own and which will be resurrected at regular intervals.
