Idiotic stand of making Hindi compulsory : Disservice to National language
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: September 23 2017 -

Compulsory Hindi test. Is Delhi University under the notion that making Hindi test compulsory in colleges under it will promote the language ?

An idiotic question this is, but this idiotic question has been necessitated by the more moronic decision of some colleges in DU to make Hindi test compulsory for all the students.

This is not the first time that DU has toyed around with such an absurd approach and remember 2013 when a similar approach was adopted.

Will the marks obtained in the Hindi test be taken into consideration when working out the percentage secured by the students in the three year degree course or is it just a qualifying test ?

Either way it sucks for remember even in making such a test a mere qualification test, it will affect the concentration of the students who come from non-Hindi speaking States.

Is this an aim to put students coming from non-Hindi speaking region at a disadvantage from those coming from a Hindi speaking State or region ?

This idiotic decision has to go and immediately so.

For students who have never learnt Hindi or learnt it just till the primary level it would mean putting them at a huge disadvantage and most of the students from the North East region will fall into this category.

For those pundits at Delhi University, maybe it is time to tell them that Hindi is not the lingua franca in the North East and there are many students from this region who do not know how to speak a sentence of coherent Hindi.

The situation will not be much different for students coming from South India.

So is this a design to handicap the students from these regions or is it toeing the line of one language, one university ? Nothing can be more absurd than this.

It is here that all should back the stand taken up by North East Forum for International Solidarity (NEFIS) to oppose the stand of the university.

It was also NEFIS which took up the matter back in 2013 and DU had to roll back its decision of making Hindi compulsory.

If other universities were to toe the line of DU then the situation can only be imagined.

Just imagine how the situation would look like if Manipur University makes passing a test in Manipuri compulsory for all the students.

How will this impact on the students whose mother tongue is not Manipuri ?

What if Calcutta University also makes Bengali compulsory for the students or Mumbai University makes Marathi compulsory ?

That such a move has come at a time when all communities are trying to promote their own language is stupefying.

Language like religion cannot be imposed.

If knowing a language becomes important, then all will automatically pick it up or try to pick it up.

By making Hindi compulsory, DU is doing a great disservice to the language which is the official language of India.

If at all Hindi is to be made compulsory then make it so for students who come from the Hindi speaking belt or else making a student, say from Manipur, take it up would amount to subjecting him or her to immense hardship and giving others an advantage that will not come anywhere near fair assessment of the students.