By Siddhi B. Ranjitkar

June 6, 2002

Kathmandu: SEVEN political parties having representatives in the House of Representatives held a peace rally on May 10, 2002 to counter the Maoist violence. At the end of the rally they gathered at the open theatre delivered their speeches.

Historical

Every leader delivered the speech in Nepali – lingua franca in Nepal. However one of the leaders of the Nepal Sadbhavana Party (NSP) began speaking in Hindi. Obviously, some of the people did not understand him and began hooting him. The leader instead of switching his speech into Nepali retreated and lost the opportunity of expressing his views on the historical mass meeting.

Leaders elsewhere in the world often speak the language of the people they address in order to let the audience understand them. Similarly most of the traders wherever they go to do business learn and speak the language of the people they deal with.

Alas, our political leaders want to impose their will on the people. When you speak the language of your choice and do not think about the language efficiancy of the audience it will be nothing more than imposing your will on the audiences. Do you think that they are obliged to listen to you? Certainly not, they expect you to put forward your ideas as simple as possible and in the language that everyone understands. So in the case of the leader of the NSP he has no choice but to talk to the people in Nepali or simply quit the podium. He opted for the second one.

We have some fanatics. We are how running schools to teach our children in their mother tongues. No one is against teaching in their mother language but they have to think what the kids need to know at the time of globalisation. If you teach your children only your mother tongue then you close the doors for them to go to the outside world. This will drastically reduce the chances of your kids competing with others for jobs or anything in the world. Knowing your mother tongue will be good enough for your kids to remain in your community and live on subsistence farming.

For example, some of the Nepalese kids learn four languages at the same time. They learn their mother tongue from the family they live in; they learn Nepali and English in school, and they learn Hindi, watching TV. Do you want to turn off the TV and deny your kids to understand Hindi, do you want to speak only English with your kids thus denying them to learn your mother tongue and Nepali or do you want to speak Nepali only denying your kids to learn other languages? You may make your own decision on the future of your kids.

If you are loyal to your mother tongue you speak only the mother tongue then your world will be so small that only the people of your community will understand you. Do you want to live in isolation at the time of globalisation? If you want to be one of the members of the globe then you need to learn several languages not only of this region but various regions of the world.

If we try to speak only our mother tongue then we Nepalis will not be able to understand each other. Rais will not understand Gurungs, and vice versa, Newars will not understand non-Newars, and so on. If we do not have a Nepali language as a lingua franca we will be in chaos. We will not be able to communicate with each other. Hence, every Nepalese child should learn Nepali.

The government may permit to run schools in the mother tongues up to the fourth grade, thereafter each child should learn Nepali and English as well. The government should impose them to learn at least these two languages so that they will be able to compete with others.

No one denies that we need to develop various languages. Every language spoken in Nepal is a national language but Nepali is a lingua franca. We should not forget to teach Nepali to our kids while developing our mother tongues.

Common

If leaders and politicians encourage their followers to speak only their mother tongues then they will get lost. For example, the office of the Kathmandu Metropolitan City may write a letter in a Newari language to the Janakpur Municipality that in turn may reply to the letter in Maithili language stating they did not understand the letter because it was written in the Newari language. This is only a hypothetical example but there is a good chance of happening such thing if we are so proud of our own mother tongue. Therefore, let us speak a common language when we live together with the people of different languages.