"aap kitne saal se ho B'lore mein? Kannada mein baat karo phir" I understood there is a problem, its a genuine question and I should answer this. Then i chatted with the Auto driver at leangth explaining him that why its a problem for me to speak his language although i follow it. I am a extremely tiny creature to talk about India, i just thought to share some of my views about the recent "outsider" problem.
In the centre for contemporary studies at IISc, Dr. Ramchandra Guha gave a fascinating lecture on how there is a country called India. Initially i was bit skeptic about the topic. It never struck to me that "unity of diversity" is maintained through some institutional processes such as constitution, Judicial system, Indian railways and not through an emotion called patritiotism. I proudly say to everyone that except Delhi i have roamed all the bigcities in India and got an opportunity to mix with common people more than others. I sensed in everyplace that "outsiders" are nowhere welcomed easily, and the other part which was kept silence is that "outsiders" too dont mix with the people where they reside. This problem exists in every city, north indians aren't welcomed warmly in south and vis a vis. Someplaces both are not welcomed. Again i am mentioning Dr. Guha's comment, he said, Hindi wasn't accepted at all in the non-hindi speaking states when it was pushed in as a national language, but hindi movies became popular all over the country and people from those places speaks hindi because of hindi movies, the main reason is that language wasn't pushed here. Couple of years back i was travelling to Lucknow for a conference, in lucknow me and one of my friend from Mangalore went together in a shop to buy some stuffs, my friend tried to communicate in english, there was a barge of comments came on him and they wern't soothing at all, similarthing i experienced in Chennai, a city where outsiders aren't welcomed well. If one thinks that east india is free from it then read this one , Kolkata is also not free, last month i was in Kolkata and i witnessed how non-bengali speaking people hates bengalis. Does this migration creates problem? I did bit of research on this and found 8% of Maharashtra population consists of people migrated from other states Gujarat has 5%, Delhi has the max, more than 30% (there are reasons for that) where as WB and Kerala has 3% . India as a whole has 4% of the population which was migrated, I collected this data from census site. It is understable that before IT boom, western states were the employment hub hence the people migrated there because they had a certain skills, now comes the big question, don't they have no rights to migrate? answer is probably hidden somewhere here, Many people compared Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi with Newyork, saying that Newyork has more migrants than any of them and they stay peacefully. Its very much true but then they all speak English! here we speak 256 different language and eventually peace takes the back seat. A migrant speaking alien language becomes an alien and some goons thought that they have every right to kick the other. India is different from any other democracy all over the world and the best way to handle is that as one of my IAS freind put it after his country tour got over said, you can criticise or discuss other's culture but please dont hate them. Communication is really the key here, my friends from Kerala likes Saurav Ganguly more than me as the mode of communication is different, previous case its cricket morecommunicable for them than language. The solution is not lying with bashing and forcing people out from some place but its in making people to learn the language and culture, not with stick and guns but with proper socializing. In india all of us have different skills depending pearts we hail from and i think each one of us is indispansible someway or the other for everyone. So its sensible to show patroitism by helping the migrant to adapt to the new system and not to repel them. Mumbai will have more space then....
In the centre for contemporary studies at IISc, Dr. Ramchandra Guha gave a fascinating lecture on how there is a country called India. Initially i was bit skeptic about the topic. It never struck to me that "unity of diversity" is maintained through some institutional processes such as constitution, Judicial system, Indian railways and not through an emotion called patritiotism. I proudly say to everyone that except Delhi i have roamed all the bigcities in India and got an opportunity to mix with common people more than others. I sensed in everyplace that "outsiders" are nowhere welcomed easily, and the other part which was kept silence is that "outsiders" too dont mix with the people where they reside. This problem exists in every city, north indians aren't welcomed warmly in south and vis a vis. Someplaces both are not welcomed. Again i am mentioning Dr. Guha's comment, he said, Hindi wasn't accepted at all in the non-hindi speaking states when it was pushed in as a national language, but hindi movies became popular all over the country and people from those places speaks hindi because of hindi movies, the main reason is that language wasn't pushed here. Couple of years back i was travelling to Lucknow for a conference, in lucknow me and one of my friend from Mangalore went together in a shop to buy some stuffs, my friend tried to communicate in english, there was a barge of comments came on him and they wern't soothing at all, similarthing i experienced in Chennai, a city where outsiders aren't welcomed well. If one thinks that east india is free from it then read this one , Kolkata is also not free, last month i was in Kolkata and i witnessed how non-bengali speaking people hates bengalis. Does this migration creates problem? I did bit of research on this and found 8% of Maharashtra population consists of people migrated from other states Gujarat has 5%, Delhi has the max, more than 30% (there are reasons for that) where as WB and Kerala has 3% . India as a whole has 4% of the population which was migrated, I collected this data from census site. It is understable that before IT boom, western states were the employment hub hence the people migrated there because they had a certain skills, now comes the big question, don't they have no rights to migrate? answer is probably hidden somewhere here, Many people compared Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi with Newyork, saying that Newyork has more migrants than any of them and they stay peacefully. Its very much true but then they all speak English! here we speak 256 different language and eventually peace takes the back seat. A migrant speaking alien language becomes an alien and some goons thought that they have every right to kick the other. India is different from any other democracy all over the world and the best way to handle is that as one of my IAS freind put it after his country tour got over said, you can criticise or discuss other's culture but please dont hate them. Communication is really the key here, my friends from Kerala likes Saurav Ganguly more than me as the mode of communication is different, previous case its cricket morecommunicable for them than language. The solution is not lying with bashing and forcing people out from some place but its in making people to learn the language and culture, not with stick and guns but with proper socializing. In india all of us have different skills depending pearts we hail from and i think each one of us is indispansible someway or the other for everyone. So its sensible to show patroitism by helping the migrant to adapt to the new system and not to repel them. Mumbai will have more space then....
2 comments:
yeah, most of the place you will find ppl behaving like you are like alien there. But I want to share something what I felt while I was in vadodara last year, it just opposite to kind of response you get in Delhi(dil walon ka sehar). I was with my colleague there for plant visit and during the travel he fell sick, after landing up there I was searching for a particular clinic for getting the pathological test done for him. It was a late in evening around 9 and in fact the city being quite old and the streets were confusing we were not able to spot the place. I saw a bunch of guys there chatting and I approached them and asked about the place, I was surprised by the kind of response I got there. They were so polite and the way the guy was explaining me the way. It was really good. Let me add one more thing here I have been to a lot of cities and in fact it's about 11 years I'm away from my home town.
Well there are a lot of factors involved in this, one of the major being the employment. In every big city people from outside(here outside being from different city) come up to make there living. After sometime the local people realize that even having the job opportunities they are left with nothing. And it seems every other thing which they can have is being shared by others.And there are other reasons also, and it adds up to all those bullshit stuff, which we saw few days back in Maharastra.
Any ways it was a nice article by you, keep writing I hope atleast this much I can read.
j
Thats a well-written post... Really love the title. We just need to be more accomodating of each others - and (on an optimistic note) may be try to admire each other's virtues.
Its people like us who have travelled and stayed at different places in India who can understand the beauty of diversity more deeply. In a way its our responsibility to share our good experiences...
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