Hindi Diwas (Day)

India is famous for its linguistic diversity. Some statistics suggest that it is home to 1,618 languages including some major dialects. While the accuracy of that account is dubitable it is not incorrect to say that languages in India vary invariably across the subcontinent making it the region with maximum linguistic multiplicity.

Nevertheless, Hindi is very special amongst them. On 14 September 1949, Hindi was accepted and affirmed as the official language of India by the Constituent Assembly. Thus, this day is celebrated across the country as Hindi Diwas (Day). Since I opted for Hindi SL in the Language B of the IBDP, I along with my classmates and Hindi teacher, Mrs. Vijayalaxmi (also our CAS coordinator) , planned a small program which intended to elaborate the beauty and importance of Hindi and this day.

Primary students singing.

We planned that we would work on designing the program for about 3 hours and conclude with a 2 hours show today. Since this activity was creativity based, I wanted to put in something new, so that the program leaves an everlasting impact on the audience. In addition one of our major motives was to address the critical issue of regional language depreciation in India and around the world. This is a much discussed topic of global significance since almost all the cultures today are facing the risk of their traditional languages getting contaminated and to some extent extinct. India struggling to preserve Hindi and other languages in their rich and more palatable form. The sudden introduction of new languages and internet jargon has facilitated communication; albeit it has undermined the efficiency of individual languages. Hindi is one of them. In past 4 decades, Hindi has undergone a drastic alteration making it a mixture of worldly languages which is comprehensible to the laymen, but has left it literally tasteless. In order to preserve the literature and the very beauty of Hindi – and other languages – it is vital that their importance and beauty be explicitly explained to the upcoming generations.

Me during the quiz.

With this thought in mind we sat together and came up with an outline of the program and divided tasks amongst ourselves. I took up the challenging task of comparing Prashna- manjusha (Quiz)! I say challenging because I have conducted quizzes before but none of them were in Hindi! That being said it was very difficult to decide the sort of questions I was supposed to ask! It was a language related quiz and the one intending to promote it, so it was important that it not only fulfilled this criterion but also was enjoyable for the spectators. I researched the internet and the books in my library for suitable material. Consequently, I planned a quiz with 3 rounds: first of word meanings (shabdhartha); second of proverbs (kahavatien); and third of idioms (muhavarien). Each round consisted of 2 sub-rounds: English – Hindi and vice versa. I had to collect material and edit it to fit into the limitations of the program. However with the other academic assignments it became increasingly difficult to draw time for this work. I literally found myself running haywire to get my things done. But I stood committed to the task and finally completed it last night.

Today was the show time! We started the program with a Hindi prayer and thought. Then after a brief introduction, some poetry and speech, it was my turn! I knew that my schoolmates possessed very scanty interest for Hindi, so I tried to make things casual and comical. Then I asked the team members of Ruby and Sapphire house to take their seats and commenced the game. Soon, both the teams and the audience engaged their interest in the questions and the show culminated smoothly. Almost everyone displayed some liking for some of the components of our program which was good because it implied that we were nearing our aim. It was good to see how people reacted to certain question and that their affinity towards Hindi bloomed back with a brighter shine.

Language is important, more important is keeping it rich, vivid and flavourful; that is what I learned from today and wish to propagate. Language is the tool of communication, sharper the tool the better one communicates.