Stop telling South Indians to learn Hindi. In Hyderabad, languages coexist without imposition

The Print

a day ago

Despite being well-versed in Hindi, Dakhni still rolls off my tongue when I converse with someone from the North. As South Indians, we don't need to learn Hindi at all. Urdu—once the official language of the erstwhile Hyderabad state—is as close to Hindi-speaking as we get in my city.
But in retrospect, I realise that Hindi never really served a purpose for me here. Even the Khadiboli Hindi taught as part of the state school curriculum wasn't of much use. We never spoke it, and Telugu, as expected, dominated conversations outside of Hyderabad.
Having grown up in Hyderabad, I never gave much thought to learning Hindi as a first language. Given that people here also speak in Dakhni and Urdu apart from Telugu, Hindi has never been much of an issue—because it doesn't sound alien to us.
The migrant workers who come here from Hindi-speaking belts benefit from Hyderabad being a multilingual city. That said, this linguistic diversity doesn't mean that we Hyderabadis undermine Telugu or its importance in any way.
So, I was surprised when Andhra Pradesh minister Nara Lokesh and Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan both advocated for Hindi—at a time when states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have been opposing its imposition on South Indians.
Kalyan and Lokesh are clearly in the wrong. While it is understandable that Lokesh's Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Kalyan's Jana Sena are desperate for central funds and will do whatever the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wants, this instance marks a new low. South Indian states have their own culture, language, and literary history—none of which is, in any way, secondary to Hindi.
The TDP was founded by Tollywood legend NT Rama Rao on the basis of Telugu pride. The fact that one of his family members today has advocated so passionately for Hindi is rather unfortunate.
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Why must we learn Hindi?
South Indians are always told that they should learn Hindi to be able to converse with North Indians. But will our fellow countrymen be open to learning southern languages? Given that lakhs of migrant workers and even blue-collar employees come down to cities like Hyderabad and Bengaluru, southern languages should be ideally taught in other states as well.
The only benefit of us learning Hindi in South India would be for easier conversation with migrant workers, or with office colleagues in the North, if we end up working there. Hyderabad/Telangana, in any case, isn't as homogenous as Andhra Pradesh, where not knowing Telugu would make it difficult for someone to navigate on the ground.
Learning Hindi might actually cause us to become distant from our own literary cultures. Just a few weeks ago, I spoke to a trustee of a major Telugu publication. And she told me that the quality of readership and literature in Telugu has come down in the last few decades due to the impact of social media and a decline in interest in serious literature.
If that's true, then Hindi will certainly become an additional burden on our future generations. I have nothing against the language, but people need to understand that South Indians won't learn Hindi simply because it's convenient for North Indians. What are we getting in return? Better jobs? Better access? None of it.
While I don't agree with the extreme reaction against Hindi in Karnataka and even in Maharashtra of late, I do think we should stringently focus on preserving our regional languages first. Hindi can remain an option for those who wish to learn it.
There are so many cities in South India that are multilingual. Take Karnataka's Bidar, for example. Most people I met there can speak Kannada, Marathi, and Telugu because the city borders Maharashtra and Telangana. Hindi can be easily understood there too. But do they really need to formally learn it?
There is nothing wrong with learning Hindi, but is there any use for it – especially for South Indians who don't intend to go to the North? A vast chunk of migration from Kerala, for instance, is toward West Asia. Similarly, people from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh generally look to the United States for better career opportunities.
If the government really wants to have some sort of linguistic parity, then it should also make North Indians learn southern languages, or at least offer that option. The burden of understanding and learning a new tongue cannot be ours alone. And hopefully, there will be more sense among political leaders to not dig the graves of their own languages.
Yunus Lasania is a Hyderabad-based journalist whose work primarily focuses on politics, history, and culture. He tweets @YunusLasania. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)