hindi as the court language

So currently, court decisions are delivered in English in India (high court decisions, basically the equivalent of circuit courts of app0eals and the Supreme Court in the US). The issue at hand is to make Hindi another language through which to deliver decisions.

So a bunch of MP's from Tamil Nadu, in the South of India (by the way, that's where I'm supposed to be from) are up in arms about this. Some interesting issues are raised here. Tamils are exceedingly proud of their language, because arguably it is from a compeltely different root than Hindi (or Sanksrit for that matter), and therefore, all the languages in India are either related to Tamil or Hindi. So, by making Hindi a court language officially, the MP's feel that it proves some sort of superiority of Hindi.

The paradox is that India, unequivocally, has two legal, official languages - English and Hindi. English is a colonial relic, and Hindi is just spoken by most people. So legally and practically it stands to reason that Hindi would be the court language as well as English...otherwise there are just weird contradictions. So, the protests prove that people are passionate enough to fight this even though it makes logical sense. It proves that regional language is a large enough aspect of cultural pride to make a technicality a fighting point.

Tamil has traditionally been a belligerent language (in my opinion). I'm sure many of you have heard of the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist/freedom fighter group in Sri Lanka. They are unified by their language. That's not to knock the Tamils though - Tamil is justifiably one of the proudest achievements and cultural hallmarks of a historically oppressed Southern India. Almost all the languages down there -Kannada, Malayalam, Telegu - are derived from Tamil, and after centuries (which haven't yet ended) of Northern oppression, indirect and direct, it's another slap in the face to have Tamil again marginalized in favor of Hindi.

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http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/29/stories/2007112959430100.htm

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/002200711281541.htm