I
recall one incidence that took place some years back when I had been
to the office of one of my friends who was in the business of
providing translations. He had some people who were well versed in
most of the Indian languages and with that other many languages of
other countries. He had the practice that whenever a translation job
comes to him about any Indian language he would prepare the first
write up in Devanagari and then give it for translation in the other
language's script; but write it in Devanagari script for his records
also, because as he told me most Indian languages are written in that
script.
He
told me that here are about 53 languages spoken in India and many are
treated as dialects of some other more important language. For
example Katchhi is treated as a dialects of Gujarati though that
language has resemblance with Sindhi. Where the accepted script is
Persian while Gujarati has a separate script of its own. To avoid any
problem, practice of first preparing translation in the desired
language and in its particular script he has replaced and so he would
prefer to write it in Devanagari script and then pass it to the other
fellow who would do the translation in the desired script of that
particular language. That means, he would first convert all
literature in Devanagari script.
I
am a Marathi speaking person and as we all know Marathi has
Devanagari as its main script; so I could read all the translations
made in any Indian language. To my surprise I could read most of the
Indian languages with ease and could understand the content without
any difficulty. I could read Punjabi which is normally written in
Gurumukhi. If it is in Gurumukhi I cannot read it but when it was in
Devanagari I could read and understand it. Same I experienced when I
read a write up in Malayalam, The official language of State of
Kerala. If it is written in that script I could not have read it and
understand it but when it was in Devanagari I could understand the
content easily. However with Tamil I had difficulties; the language
has much different word construction and that made it impossible to
read that when written in Devanagari. I asked my friend why that
translation is difficult to understand? He told me that most Indian
languages are off shoots of Sanskrit language. Excepting Tamil. Tamil
is not off shoot of Sanskrit; it has its own origin and even by
etymology it is much different from Sanskrit. That is why even by
preparing the writeup in Devanagari I could not follow it with ease
the way I could do with other Indian languages. Excepting this one
language in all other Indian languages Devanagari worked well.
However, these days Tamil has absorbed many Sanskrit words and so it
is much more easy to understand it than the older version of Tamil.
I
had almost forgotten this incidence but last week when we friends
were discussing the topic of integration of Indian ethos. Somebody
told me that the many different scripts keep the country divided. I
have suggestion based on the merits of this one script, Devanagari,
which is already in use as an official script of most (10) of the
Indian languages. Being the most used script this script deserves the
position of national script. So far we do not have any such
attributes for this script. We have national bird, games, songs and
many more but the most basic is the script without which we cannot
communicate with each others. But we as yet do not have any thing
like national script. I want my readers to help me in bringing up
this issue and make this one script national script and with that we
shall have a rule that all central government literature such as
government circulars, gazetted documents and many such work is
published in Devanagari and with that in other script of that state
language also. For example, if central government wants to give a
circulars for Bengal state it will print it in Devanagari as well as
Bengali script and the language will be Bengali; today the practice
is to give them out only in English language. I feel, we should
discontinue with that old British time practice of publishing
everything in English and switch over to Indian scripts in that all
Indian citizens who are generally well versed in Devanagari can
understand and that will bring about the feeling that we are one
people. This effect we cannot get by continuing to use English
language because when government publishes it in English it is also
written in English language and not in the regional language. But
when it will be published in Devanagari it will be in Tami in case of
Tamil, Bengali in case of Bengali and so on and so forth. All Indians
will be able to understand what is given in the document.
We
see people from one state go to other states of other languages and
it is always difficult for them to understand what is given in those
languages because of script difference. With this arrangement we will
be able to integrate people more naturally.
I
have seen difficulties when people visit other states of other
regional languages. Suppose you go to Karnatak and you do not
understand Kannada language and its script; you cannot read marks on
roads and other places and that makes moving about rather difficult.
They also put notes in English language but most Indians do not
understand English and so that note is as bad as not there. If they
put them in Devanagari but the language will be regional, most Indian
will be able to at least read it and that may help them get to some
thing (about 70% understanding is possible) and that will make them
feel better. Most of our Indian languages have come from Sanskrit and
so it is better to understand something than not understanding
anything at all. When Devanagari will be national script this will be
possible and moving from one state to other will be that much better.
This will facilitate learning of other Indian languages also.
Articles
on the topic of Differences
in Hinduism and Brahmanism will continue on future post.
You
may contact me on my Email ID given below,
You
are invited to visit my other blogs
Ashok
Kothare,
http://ashokkotharesblog.blogspot.com/
for
stories
I
reckon,
http://kotharesviews.blogspot.com/
for philosophy
You
may visit blog, Freedom
of Expression,
http://blogs.siliconindia.com/kothare/
for intelligent discussions.
Freedom
of Expression, http://kothare-thinks.blogspot.in/
My
New Marathi Blog, http://kothare-marathi.blogspot.in/
मला
असे वाटते
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