Isn't it Time We Give All Languages the Due Respect They Deserve?

The tendency to constantly argue about whose language is better is actually quite juvenile.

(This story was originally published on 11 July 2022. The Quint is republishing this piece from its archives on the occasion of Hindi Divas.)

In the last few years intolerance has hit a new high in the country. For instance, there was the recent heated debate around whether Hindi should be the ‘National Language’.

I, too, was looked upon with skepticism whenever I spoke Hindi in Bangalore, a city I visited frequently in the 80s. As the years passed, Hindi almost came to be regarded as a natural second language there. I realised that Bangalore being India’s IT capital, it attracted a lot of people from North India, so a number of locals (including house helps and cab drivers) considered learning Hindi a necessity to get jobs.