Just yesterday I was reading this article in Indian Express on how one of the Islamic religious group in India considers Vande Mataram "unislamic" and how our poor dear home minister has taken it with a pinch of salt and how our opposition party in the Lok Sabha has condemned the same!
We Indians love the fact that we are a multicultural country and project ourselves a very tolerant country. It hurts me at times when I see a small island country like Sri Lanka taking a tough stand on their internal issues and giving it a full stop, but in India, we wont take a single such stand because thats not what India is about!! We would rather have few people being killed by the violence each day than many people losing their lives for that one last battle for lasting peace! Anyways....
Given the cultural diversity in our land, it is amazing how our constitution makers could come to conclusion on our national anthem ,national song and of course the national language - Hindi. My father was in the defense services and so I have travelled a lot mostly in the northern side of the Vindhyas. That is probably the reason why I discovered many languages and have come to respect the national language. I knew that down south, specially Tamil Nadu has never come to accept Hindi as our national language, for reasons that are best known to them. It was only after I settled down in Chennai, that it dawned onto me that the national language has no significance in this part of the country. One incident that shines in my mind almost instantly is the time when our former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee addressed the UN on global terrorism (at a point of time when India and Pakistan were not in any peace making mood and 9/11 had changed the face of terrorism internationally). The speech was great (he is a good orator anyways),but none of the fellow tamilians around me appreciated the speech... reason it was in Hindi.. that too a little "Shudh Hindi" which were bouncers for them! The discussion between us started with how no one will understand the speech to how effective the speech would be as a result of the language... to personal comments like how I do not know thirukkural being a tamilian! Well.... This discussion made me realise that I am talking to a generation which had studied (or may not have studied at all) hindi in their school days just because it was a part of the curriculum and not giving it the due importance of being the National Language of our country!
Well... I believe that just by singing national anthem or calling ourselves Indian just because we were born in India, doesnt make us Indian at heart. Of course neither does knowing Hindi and not appreciating the other languages in our country. However, when we give so much importance to our constitution and the creators of the constitution ..... cant we give them respect by simply accepting what they have together mentioned as national identities in our constitution.
I believe, irrespective of the faith you follow, the language you speak, the part of country you live in, these national identities bond us into being Indians. Imagine how shameful, it could be for us if a national leader on an international arena isnt able to sing the national anthem...!
For me the national language, the national anthem and national song ... all are as important as the colour of my passport, because that is my identity in the international shores!
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