Delirious

“Hindi, like Gaelic, is a colonised space. It is a language complete in itself, with its own history, literature, poetry and tradition. But more than sixty-five years after Indian independence, it has been surrounded and absorbed by English, so among the Indian middle classes it is no longer a prestige language. It is the vernacular, the language one speaks at home; one does not use it to write to the tax office, nor take one’s degree. So if it doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect – if it doesn’t matter if a noun is masculine or feminine; if a verb falls to be transitive in the past perfect; if you just use the English word, because who can remember the Hindi for mathematics or apartment or transubstantiation – then for all I wage my small battle, we’re losing the war. To speak our language perfectly – to choose to do so, despite decades of colonial influence – is another political act.”