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Showing posts from March, 2015

The Whole Language Debate is Redundant

I have been reading for ages about how English is killing off other languages in India, and how Hindi hegemony is being used to bully non-Hindi speakers. To me, these myths have no standing in today's India. Let me illustrate my own experiences to explain how. I essentially belong to a family that has Pahari culture. Our ancestors hail from a region called Kangra. However, Kangra has for the longest time been a part of Punjab, and so both our local Pahari dialects and Punjabi have a lot of cultural and linguistic affinity. Since the Pahari culture extends all the way up to Jammu and Bhaderwah, we can even communicate, and have familial links all the way, with Dogri and Bhaderwahi people. My father speaks Punjabi with his Dogri cousins, who respond in Dogri, and laugh at the same jokes and cry over the same sad stories. I grew up studying with English being the medium of instruction for all my schooling and English is what I say my first language of thought. I had been a long s