Why Language Imposition leads to war?
Mother tongue is a fundamental trait we acquire unknowingly, which we can’t willingly change, and even has the potential to start a war. It is not our choice that we are born with a particular mother tongue. The recent LTTE war, disintegration of Soviet Union, many separatist movements in Slavic countries, etc trace back to the fundamental issue of language. People are willing to die for their right to speak their mother tongue. In fact, it is even more fundamental than one’s religion, that unites people and cut across many artificial man made social barriers.
There are various theories of language acquisition. Chomsky and his cohorts roots for an inbuilt language acquisition device. A child is born with mental structures that are ready to get clamped and hooked into the symbolic structure of a single language. And this process commences before the baby is even born. Once the symbolic language primitives get hooked onto the mental structures primed for language, the subsequent development of language happens rapidly. And the linguistic syntax and grammar gets written into the permanent memory. And only one language gets written into the memory generally, though there are many instances of true bilingual and trilingual mother tongues. Another opposing theory put forth by Steven Pinker and likes, suggests that the mind is purely a blank state devoid of any language acquiring hardware. It is through the complex interplay of nature and nurture, that language gets imprinted in an otherwise blank brain.
Words in many languages are inspired by many geographical features of the region where that language is spoken. As time moves on, many social, cultural and religious prospects change many word forms and the associated meaning itself. A same language spoken in various sub-regions tends to develop different dialects and sometimes it evolves into a totally different language, which is mutually unintelligible with its parent language. A language can be said as a living entity in this regard. It originates, grows, flourishes, changes forms, forks into different languages, and eventually dies.
The fundamental debate is whether any language is superior, by any standards. The general consensus among the linguists is that no language is inherently superior to any other language. Difference in the languages is fundamentally in the alphabets, words and grammar, which is a symbolic system. Two words denoting the same object from different languages appeals to the same part of the brain. It is just that the external symbolic stimulus is different. In that sense, every language is the same. It may be the case that one language may be more refined than another. This is again due to cultural, religious, social, economic and geographical influences. It does not confer the superiority status automatically. Some languages may have more words to denote slightly different aspects of the same object. Again that also does not translate into any superiority. To convey an idea, all languages are equally capable. Another question is whether the mother tongue impacts original thinking in any sense? The general consensus is no.
Once there is no specific reason to establish the superiority of any language, the language imposition drive is fundamentally futile. Just because a language is spoken by the majority, does not entail its speakers any right to impose it on others. Likewise a language once established as oldest, does not confer its speakers any special privilege. One must respect others mother tongue and by no means coerce a man to learn another person’s mother tongue. Practically speaking, it requires enormous effort for a person to learn a totally different language and to reach a native level proficiency. And this is especially true when the language learning happens lately.
Every attempt to impose Hindi must be resisted in a country like India, that thrives on the mutual respect and acceptance of different languages. For a diverse country of India’s scale to function effectively, cooperative federalism has been and is the only way forward. Acknowledging, respecting and promoting all the languages equitably is the central kingpin of cooperative federalism. Instead of subtly insinuating the idea that Hindi is the interconnecting language, an equidistant global normative and neutral language like English must be promoted for the mutual interconnection between different language speakers to get everyone a level playing field. People won’t accept an imposed language, as they consider it to be an infringement and violation to their right to live. It is rather better to die for a just cause than living with our integrity violated.
