If you head north from, say, Lucknow or Patna or Kolkota even, I can assure you, eventually you will pass into a country, believe it or not, which is not India.
A country which is the land of Lord Buddha’s birth , never mind what some Hindi cinema stars and politicians sometimes say.
Yes, Nepal.
Now Nepal, as you may know, is a rather small country with a lot of mother tongues.
Not one of them controversial . . .
Well, yeah, ONE of them is controversial.
After the interim constitution some years back, the one that led to the new constitution which allows for all mother tongues to be national languages, then elect Vice President Parmanand Jha decided to take the oath of office in . . . Hindi.
And there was bedlam! Protests high and low… How could he!? A travesty! Treason!! (And yes, a few of “What do you expect; he’s a [insert favourite derogative here] Madheshi!”)
In the end, he gave in . . . well, part way. And he retook the oath in his actual mother tongue (Maithili), and to make sure it was 100% legal, in Nepali as well.
But, why did he want to take it in Hindi in the first place? And when he did, why was there all the fuss?
Well, the answer to both is . . . politics.
From his side, politics is all about numbers, and his numbers are collected from a broad swath of land in the Madhes, Nepal’s south, where Maithili and Bhojpuri and Awadhi and Bajjika and Angika and Tharu and a few others as well are mother tongues of voters (the lucky ones who managed to secure citizenship papers). And for some odd reason, whereas choosing one of those “Madhesi” languages over the others to use in swearing in might have been seen as divisive (even when it is his actual mother tongue), using Hindi was not a problem. It was an acceptable compromise: a language of the Madhes (albeit mostly a second-language or lingua franca), and a language NOT Nepali (the language of the Centre which is seen as the oppressor since . . . well, since forever).
On the other side, well, the opposition to his use of Hindi was because, never mind whether or not Hindi is an actual mother tongue of actual Nepali citizens, and never mind which party they vote for (or against), and never mind even how many votes they control, Hindi is the unofficially official language of Big Brother to the south whom every true Nepali loves . . . and hates, in equal portions . . . love when the relationship is bhai-bhai, hate when it becomes bhai-bhaiya (and I’m talking ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ variety bhaiyya, not your local greengrocer variety bhaiyya!)
Anyway . . .
So, is Hindi REALLY a mother tongue in Nepal? I am guessing it is, somewhere along the south. But, at least in the eastern half of the south, the parts I am more or less familiar with, and at home in, the other languages, Maithili and Bhojpuri and Awadhi and so on are still alive and well. And Urdu of course, in communities of Muslims (though mostly at home they too speak one of those other languages—well, again, the Muslims I am familiar with). But Hindi? Well, maybe, some Maithili-speaking papa and some Bhojpuri-speaking momma might just be speaking Hindi to their mother-tongue-yet-decided baby.
But, beyond that, it seems to me that we also have an uncounted abundance of mother-tongue Hindi speakers in Nepal – not in the south, but in the middle-class neighbourhoods of Kathmandu and Pokhara, and indeed wherever there is electricity and televisions.
Though of course I am using “mother tongue” loosely. For, does one necessarily get one’s “mother” tongue from ones mother? Are motherless orphans who grow up with their father only thereby deprived of having a mother tongue? No, of course not. One can get one’s mother tongue from ones mother, or father, or cousin brother, or even next-door auntie, isn’t it?
And perhaps, I would argue, one can also get it (maybe not your first mother tongue, but a second one) from the TV.
Because, and I can speak from experience, anyone who has been around any 4 or 5 or 6 year old in Kathmandu, far from the Hindi Belt, if the family has cable television, I can guarantee that kid speaks fluent Hindi. Cartoon Channel Hindi. ドラえもん (Doraemon) and Scooby-Doo and a host of other friends speak quite excellent Hindi it turns out!
Lesson to be learned from this on Mother-Tongue Day:
My advise to anyone trying to revitalise a mother tongue community having trouble finding ways to pass on that mother tongue to anyone under the age of 10:
Get Cartoon Channel dubbed into your mother tongue, asap!
ekushé 