A Linguistic Proposal

“India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.” -Shashi Tharoor.

Past 66 years of independence and 64 years of written constitution and being the largest democratic country in the world, it still remains an underdeveloped country (developing country). I have been given this topic in my GD ‘What are the things India should change at this point of hour to become a super power?’. Of course being a commerce student, my mind worked in economic factors, but when I sat back and thought, I observed a very minute disorder in the society around me which made me think about how equality is understood in the largest democracy.

I am not here to talk about gender equality or racial equality but geographical equality. We Indians cannot be fair when it comes to the debate of south Indian vs North Indian. How many more years does India take to establish a good rapport between these two extremes?

Language is one thing which binds people together. Even if one cannot speak the same language as the other, respecting each other’s language is the whole crux of equality. The first thing which left  me feeling offended was when I was assumed a Tamilian because I hail from South India. People forget to notice the existence of different languages in different states of India which are completely different from each other. The culture of each state is different. The values, principles, beliefs and customs; all differ from state to state and intra-state differences are also found in a numerous cases. When are people going to accept these huge dissimilarities between people?

We are taught right from childhood to respect each other, but somehow this does not find a manifestation when it comes to respecting the heterogeneity of the Indian society. With respect comes unity, with unity comes strength and a sense of belonging which would help us stand united and lead us on to grow in a holistic manner.

We could learn a lot from the alphabets in a language: some are dull, some are sharp, some are pretty, while some are bright, some have weird pronunciations, but they have all learned to live in the same script.