SUBHASH CHANDRA AGRAWAL
Guinness Record Holder & RTI Activist
Formality of celebrating Hindi-Day on 14th September is fulfilled by giving big newspaper-advertisements of public-sector companies, But it would have been better if these companies would have adopted Hindi name for them like Doordarshan was rightly adopted for country’s official electronic media. Even dual naming like ‘All India Radio’ and ‘Akashvani’ should be done away by retaining only Hindi names like ‘Akashvani’ also because popular nouns are never translated. Despite New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) making it clear that ‘Sansad Marg’ should be written in Roman script also as ‘Sansad Marg’ (see attachment), yet many government-departments/ministries and private companies use translated version as ‘Parliament street’. Union government should instead advertise on 14th September for making all concerned ones for using ‘Sansad Marg’ even in Roman script.
Presently even some prominent Hindi newspapers like capital’s most widely circulated Navbharat Times are polluting Hindi by imposition of English words not only in Devnagri script but even in Roman script. Perhaps such may be the only example in the world where newspapers may be polluting their very own language of publication in name of ‘commonly used’ words. Many a times such newspapers give place to even such English words which are not so common as compared to their Hindi equivalents! Even unpopular Hindi words can be effectively popularised if used by media and government. Example is the word Doordarshan which became a household name for commoners once it was used by the national electronic media! Unfortunately we have Bharat called India and Dehli spelled as Delhi while most other countries changed names and spellings of their names and of their capitals as per actual pronunciation in their native languages!
Even the then UN General Secretary Ban ki Moon appreciated Hindi at recently held World Hindi Conference at New York. The then US president George Bush had accepted Hindi to be amongst popular world-languages being considered to be taught in US in an effort to make his country stay ahead in the fast changing-world. Reversely in India, government and media are busy in upgrading English at the cost of Hindi by creating an impression that domination of English can only make the country progress. Fact remains that such policy restricts all fruits of development to a select category of urbanites knowing English. All developed countries including China, Russia, France, Germany and Japan proudly use their own languages at all international levels without feeling shy of not communicating in English.
