Veteran Gujarati humorist and columnist Shahbudding Rathod states in one of his cassettes that amongst all the ethnic groups in India, Gujaratis have the least respect towards their mother tongue. I have come across numerous such incidents where I have seen this being true time and again. I decided to go into the problem and find out the causes. Here is how I see this problem and my suggestion to improve the situation. Please leave your comments if you happen to agree/disagree :)
Agreed that we live in a free society where everyone has a right to choose - choose what we learn as well. And if someone chose not to learn Gujarati even after it being his mother tongue that decision should be respected. But you just cannot allow people to take pride in saying that they don't know their mother-tongue (read Gujarati); that they are not good in it; that their children cannot speak in it. There must be a sense of missing something precious if you happen to not know your mother tongue. Which sense is totally missing in utterances of such statements. Which is a real pity.
So why we Gujaratis are such careless bunch of people? There is no denying that English is must in today's "Flat World". But can it take the place of mother tongue? Will it help save our priceless heritage? Many Indian languages (including southern languages, Marathi, Bengali) are doing good even in today's heavy English influence. But the abysmal situation that Gujarati is in right now only spells doom's day for our mother tongue.
I want to end this by quoting one of my favourite dialogues from the movie Troy. When Romans attack Troy, The prince of Troy addresses his army in a decisive tone.
"All my life I have lived by a code. And the code is simple. Respect the Gods. Love your woman and protect your motherland. Troy is mother to our soul. Protect her..."
Lets pray that god give us wisdom to protect our mother tongue. In our endevour to serve this beautiful language, we have started an all Gujarati blog. I invite you to visit it here. And if you think you can contribute, leave us a comment there.
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9 comments:
I dont think that necessarily stands true... everyone who lives in gujarat knows gujarati and even those whose mother tongue isnt gujarati sometimes speak it more fluently at the cost of their mother tongue, similarly there might be gujaratis living elsewhere whose children are more comfortable with the local language then gujarati. It happens I dont think its an affront to the culture as such.
Why do so many good Gujarati blogs focus almost exclusively on poetry or ghazals? Would you know of any good Gujarati blogs that are more - shall we say prose-aic? :)
Adit, its not about knowing gujarati.. . its about respecting it. the kind of people i am highlighting here are those who take pride in saying they do not know gujarati ... which is totally wrong attitude according to me.
Samir, nice idea mate... why dont you get on board and show us the way.. afterall charity begins at home...:)
My excuse: I'm waiting for Gujarati transliteration support in Blogger. What's yours? :)
LOL do I notice a wordwar here? ;)
Samir, I think the reason for more poetry blogs is because they are easier to write. Most of the time, you can copy paste it. You don't have to create your own unique work where as in prose you have to do the writing yourself. More work for the brain so people prefer the simpler way.
I really do wish that Google folks will let us write in Gujarati in blogger directly the way we write in Hindi right now.
Bhavesh, you are right. I have noticed those people also. They say it with pride that they don't know Gujarati. For them it is some negligible or insignificant aspect of their life. But in reality it is not. These are the people who don't value their culture and background and eventually will lose their self-respect as well.
And as for who is going to start a blog about non-poetry/prose items, I say this:
jaagya tyaar thi savaar. (too bad, can't transliterate this :P but you know what I mean)
Peace! :)
Samir, no excuses for me. check out this link .
A will will find a way..:) seems for you the first "will" is missing ;) haha JK. Why dont you get on board. we wont mind if you type gujarati in english... why wait for google? huh?
I would like to add a point here, why is it that all of us, wherever v live are too keen to save our land, our religion, our language. Respect for all of the above is fine, but end of day we are citizens of this earth.. so if english takes predominance as a web to connect ppl of different lands with different languages and cultures, whats wrong? why are we diffidend if english takes dominance.. though equally true is we shouldnt forget the language that we are born with , due respects should be paid and it shouldnt be looked down upon as like what english mem's and shahebs of urban land do..
Yes Chinmai. Second you. Its not about shielding gujarati from english but its about respecting your culture through your mother-tongue.
Thanks for writing this.
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