Same to you settuponnu. happy pongal.

i’ve read that bangla presses are the only ones making a good profit.

Well.. From the National Readership survey 2006

http://www.hindu.com/nic/nrs.htm

There are two Tamil newspapers (daily thanthi/ dinakaran ) read by around 10 million, compared with the top rank for Hindi dailes read by around 20 million people. And Eenadu is a Telugu paper which gets 13 million readers. I see two Tamil magazines, Kumudam and Kungumam in the top 7 all over India.

Are you sure that on the whole regional presses are not profitable ?. And we have not talked about satellite channels, where the regional ones make a hell lot of money.

If you want cultural revival, go visit Chennai or other major cities in Tamilnadu this week. There are free shows demo’ing folk arts / music and sports in public parks.

http://www.chennaisangamam.com/

You started this line of thought by saying that language chauvinism is the only reason the south and specifically Tamil Nadu did not want Hindi as a national language. I was stating otherwise. Have you abandoned that chain of thought?

I also addressed the choice argument by stating that “Giving people their choice of language to learn, as you two propose, is unrealistic. The number of Indian languages makes that a nightmare exercise in finding teachers.”. To which you have not responded.

And finally from the CBSE website, one of the two main objectives of the board at its inception were and I quote, “to be responsive to the educational needs of those students whose parents were employed in the Central Government and had frequently transferable jobs.”. It’s in the “About Us” section. So yes CBSE policy has everything to do with Cent govt. employees.

no, you have to study the local language still in many locations for some specified number of years. maybe not in kendriya vidyalayas, for obvious reasons. central govt. kids are such a small %age of the country’s population, i don’t see why policy would be made to accommodate them beyond the kv’s. also, i’m not sure you’re reading my comments. i don’t see how any of what i said amounts to forcing hindi upon farmers, but there is a consistent mis-attribution of opinions going on here. i merely talked about having hindi(and other languages; typically many private schools have foreign languages for grades 6-8) available for children in school for those who want it, besides the local language and english which should be mandatory imo. the cbse for instance has a third language requirement.

For what it’s worth, I totally support linguistic states. It’s the only chance that smaller and less economically viable languages have to survive

amitabh, again i see your points, but this has not been empirically true. a flourishing local literary culture and economically profitable presses have been bengali and marathi (primarily, i believe various southern languages have had readership increases from time to time). i’ve read that bangla presses are the only ones making a good profit. i suspect this is because these cultures have had a proud literary culture; they have money to spend on books and plays; and little to do, imo, with linguistic states. the indian govt, and the sahitya kala akadami have been pretty unsuccessful in promoting local languages or revitalizing demand for literature. incidentally, i was quite pleasantly surprised to see the national school of drama (it is federally funded ) include a lot of regional plays (even foreign ones) in its annual festival this year. haven’t been in delhi for a while, and never seen this get much attention online. and yes, theoretically, linguistic states could have promoted vibrant cultural revivals, it just hasn’t happened. what it has done, has created incentives for regional politicians to ask for ever newer linguistic states to create new votebanks and created strong lobbies in central adminsitration. and it has made it culturally permissible for people to express display strong linguistic discrimination in public. again, all this could have been prevented, but it hasn’t been. also, i agree with you, in principle that linguistic states have advantages, but in the case of indian states the benefits have not been realized. several in india (and on sm) will disagree with me, but i suspect there are some who won’t. history by counterfactual (what if there were no linguistic states?) is merely a thought experiment, after all.

and, pongal vazhthukkal, ponniyin selvan!i decided to wish you even though i promised i won’t reply to your comments. but this is different

again, i think no such thing. you will notice that i mentioned purshottamdas tandon as an example of a hindi language chauvinist. it is telling that you consider hindi a ‘foreign’ language (as opposed to a non-local one). i don’t consider tamil a foreign language.

One of your early posts had this: “btw, language chauvinism has a long tradition in tamilnadu.” followed by the anti-handi riots and other things in support. I concluded that such chauvinism was somehow a distinctly tamil thing in your mind.

Just so you get the context. I speak Hindi fluently as opposed to my Tamil which, while being my mother tongue, I mostly learned during engg. school. Hindi may not be a foreign language in terms of “all things Indian” but to some farmer in say the east or the south it very truly is in terms of comprehension. You figure it is fair to ask that farmer to fill govt. forms in Hindi and his kids to have to write entrance exams in Hindi? I think not. Local languages + English (for inter-state commn. and country wide exams) satisfy the requirements

I’m not sure what the CBSE argument is but for what it’s worth I only had to study compulsory Hindi till 10th(Sanskrit till 8th). There was actually a brief period where you had to learn Hindi + local language(in place if sanskrit) and so ended up learning Urdu instead of Sanskrit. That particular move might have actually been to address such concerns as expressed in this thread. Giving people their choice of language to learn, as you two propose, is unrealistic. The number of Indian languages makes that a nightmare exercise in finding teachers. As for the “local language” idea it died a natural death given how often and how far central Govt. kids have to move.

I also don’t agree with this idea of Hindi being unimportant to people in the South. It always seemed to me that my cousins who studied there seem to have an obsession with studying the “Rashtra Bhasha” that I never truly understood.

Agreeement:

1. Languages should be learnt by choice. Local language + English is good.

Disagreement:

1. Linguistic states are BS and results in other evils.

Clearly, as the facts say, linguistic states are an historical necessity and actually suggested by Gandhi / Congress in 1920s (and not because of some regional leders) and actually helped India rather than disintegrate it. I gave the examples of Pakistan and Afghanistan for disintegration and civil strife if there is no clear cut delimitations of power due to the language. (You could add Sri lanka too ). What you gave as examples were cases of nepotism where an official used his powers to appoint persons probably overriding the law. He could have done the same thing with regards to his relatives/ caste / religion / region within his state. That has nothing to do with linguistic states. So it’s actually a huge stretch to relate those two.

Anywyas, I typically don’t claim this is my last post if I don’t stick to it.

examples of nepotism and corruption

obv. you’re incapable of following and of recognizing facts contradicting you. but ok i’ll “ignore it” i’m not sure you know how central adminsitration in delhi works, but i’ll “ignore it” i don’t see how choice =”should be learnt” but i’ll “ignore it”

how does my

so local language + english means at least two languages are necessary for students in desh.

differ from your:

The best option is for folks to learn the local language plus one link language, English serves as the link between different states and different countries.

We should also desigate a “national washing machine” .

i like videocon because it is indegenously produced. maybe its manufactured in north india? does that make it “foreign?” can you please lobby for excusing import duties in TN? thanks muchly

PS: did you finally read the CBSE syllabus to see if the southern states had been really been sidelined as you claimed they had? your general revisionism/complete misreading of my comments is starting to get amusing at this point. feel free to have the last word. i don’t want to be typecast as the “north indian” out to oppress a tamil individual one more time.