India is a land of many languages. Coincidentally of course, India is a land of many states too. We don’t have a national language. Apparently, the government wants a national language because it wants to wipe out all the other 159028 languages that people speak in this country and aren’t recognized as official languages. I would any day trust Bollywood to take care of information dissipation and education, wouldn’t you? For administrative purposes and call centre jobs, English could have been made the official language but that’s the language of the British who were mean evil conquerors and wore funny clothes. And no, we don’t drink tea they drink tea. We drink chai. Or chaya. Or Chaha. Or Teniru. The taste varies with the mother tongue.
That being said, we’re proud to bring to you the August 2009 February 2010 English issue of The Fourth Estate.
