Why Tamil people are not speaking Hindi?

Why you guys are not speaking Hindi? My dear north Indian friend asked me when we were in one month induction program in Mumbai people from other part of the states are fluent in Hindi and made friends quickly myself and another one from Chennai couldn’t make it but they keep on questioning me why Chennai people are not speaking Hindi? I simply say we love Tamil but I always keep questioning myself why we are not .It is not harm to learn a new language and it is also helpful but why we are refusing.

Tamilnadu has seen two major agitations against Hindi movement in 1937 when Rajaji made Hindi as a compulsory subjects in school and in 1965 when Hindi is again announced as sole official language. There was a huge change in political structure after anti-Hindi movement which gave DMK(Dravidar Munnetra Kazhagam) to capture the state by election and congress lost the election because of bringing Hindi as a sole official language .Tamil people liked to continue English as an official language but north Indians brought Hindi as a sole official language. It took 72 lives from Tamilnadu to bring back English as the official language in India.

If I explain this to my friend he won’t understand and say what’s wrong in learning new languages.

The very first thing is Tamil is the classical language and it can stand on its own leg without lending words from other languages. There were Tamil patriots like Periyar and Anna in that period which made them to fight against the Hindi movement to safeguard their mother language we say it as love it’s not only two people the entire Tamilnadu fought against it.

The second one may be fear, you know what happened when  banks introduced computers instead of notebooks ,bank labours were into strikes against this move because they feared they may lose the job because they don’t know how to operate system and they might be replaced by the guy with computer background.

So this applies here also if the government is making anything compulsory then their next move will be Hindi everywhere if you know Hindi you get government job or else you won’t so by doing this people from Tamilnadu may be refrained from jobs .

Second fear is ,fear of language if everyone started speaking in Hindi Tamil will exit from Tamilnadu , Yes surely this will happen you can realize it is happening today after learning English people started speaking in English even to the rickshaw people and to tea shops .We should analyse the psychology behind this, a guy is speaking English in public because people looking at him will imagine he is educated but if he speaks Tamil they will be clueless so choosing the minor language helps him to prove the people he knows something better than others so when two guys meet they start speaking in English in the same way if he starts speaking Hindi  he may stop speaking Tamil.

And the third thing is, it is unwanted for Tamil people in Tamilnadu we learn German if we are going for Germany for higher studies and learning Japanese if we are going for japan for higher studies so we are learning new languages when we have a need. Tamilnadu is rich in everything it has the more number of automobiles manufactures and IT parks in India got good colleges like IIT, Anna University, PSG, Madras University, Loyola and few. I still remember when my HR told me “you should be ashame of not knowing Hindi” I just smiled back at him because I know he knows how better Tamil is. Some people from Tamilnadu are working and living in North India but they can manage with their English.

And the important thing why Tamil people need not to put more focus on Hindi is ,It is easy for anyone mostly for Tamil speaking people to learn Hindi .I went to Mumbai without knowing the “ABC” of Hindi but after spending five months I started speaking in Hindi it’s not tough as you think. Tamil got more words and have unique word for each actions but you know very well in Hindi we use the same word for two or more actions and the grammar is also simple .A Tamil guy can speak Hindi as a native speaker but a non Tamilian cannot speak Tamil as a native Tamilian it will take lot of practice.

The above said is not to humiliate any language and praise Tamil but written in an attempt to show Tamil people can speak Hindi when they need it.

Recently I attended a meeting in my office all of them are native Tamil speakers and only one guy who was helming the meeting from Bangalore when he started speaking in Hindi everyone started responding in Hindi it was a great shock I thought none of them knew Hindi and I know little bit but to my surprise they are so fluent in Hindi then I learnt Tamil people know when to use which weapon.