The Quiet Entitlement of Hindi Imposition: A Tale of Two Attitudes

There’s a curious double standard playing out in modern India, particularly in its southern states, that’s beginning to grate. Picture the scenario: a young professional from the Hindi belt relocates to Bengaluru. He strides into the city, confident, fluent in Hindi, and utterly unbothered by the linguistic landscape around him. When locals speak to him in Kannada, he blinks, sighs, and responds in Hindi. If questioned, he smiles and says, “Come on, Hindi is our national language. Learn it. It’s easy.”

But the moment someone suggests that he should learn Kannada, or at the very least show some cultural sensitivity to the state he's chosen to live in, the tone changes. The smile fades. Offence is taken. “How dare you force a language on me!” he exclaims, without the slightest hint of irony.

This is the quiet entitlement of Hindi imposition—not the bludgeoning, overt, authoritarian imposition of yesteryears, but the smug, modern, suit-clad version. Polished, polite, and patronising.

It’s not that anyone minds if someone from outside Karnataka doesn’t speak perfect Kannada. What grates is the assumption that locals must accommodate him, while he bears no reciprocal obligation to understand or respect them. What offends isn’t ignorance—it’s arrogance.

Let us be perfectly clear: no one is asking a migrant to master ancient Kannada literature. But the sheer unwillingness to even attempt a basic greeting, to read a signboard, to say “swalpa adjust maadi” instead of “adjust karo yaar”—it reeks not of cultural difference, but cultural disdain.

And why does this matter? Because language is not a mere tool of communication. It is the vessel of a people’s memory, their jokes, their idioms, their curses, their lullabies. It is the soul of a place. When you live somewhere, truly live there—not as a guest passing through, but as a citizen—you owe it a minimal amount of respect. And that respect begins with language.

The situation becomes all the more absurd when you consider that the very people insisting that locals must speak Hindi, do so under the banner of “national unity.” But unity is not achieved through dominance. It is achieved through mutual respect. Telling someone in Bengaluru to abandon Kannada and adopt Hindi is no different from telling someone in Delhi to start speaking Malayalam. Both would be equally unreasonable. Only one, somehow, is seen as “patriotic.”

This behaviour becomes especially galling when juxtaposed against the treatment of South Indians who move northwards. They learn Hindi, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of courtesy. But they rarely, if ever, demand that Delhiites or Lucknowites learn Tamil, Telugu, or Malayalam in return. That sense of linguistic supremacy doesn’t exist. And perhaps it shouldn’t anywhere.

What we’re witnessing, then, is not a linguistic tug-of-war, but a lopsided assertion of privilege: “You adapt to me, but I will not adapt to you.”

If we are serious about being one nation—Bharat, not just India—then we must understand that unity is not uniformity. A truly united India is one where a Kannadiga speaks Kannada with pride in Bengaluru, a Tamilian speaks Tamil in Chennai, and a Hindi speaker learns to say “namaskara” without grumbling.

Respect is a two-way street. And if you're moving to Karnataka, the least you can do is meet your hosts halfway. Not out of compulsion, but out of civility.

And perhaps, just perhaps, when asked to learn Kannada, instead of sulking, one might pause and consider—how very odd it is to complain about “language imposition” while expecting everyone else to speak yours.

What's to be learned from the south?

For all the fiery disputes over water sharing and political boundaries, South Indians have long demonstrated a quiet, instinctive respect for one another’s languages within their respective states. A Malayali in Chennai doesn’t walk into a shop and demand to be served in Malayalam. A Kannadiga visiting Hyderabad doesn’t expect Telugu speakers to switch tongues. There’s an unspoken code—when in Rome, speak Roman, or at least try. One may grumble over river allocations, but rarely does one presume linguistic dominance within another's domain. It’s a mark of mutual regard that, despite all the historical rivalries, each state recognises the sanctity of the other’s language within its own soil. The fights may be loud, but the boundaries of respect are quietly honoured.

Why Doesn’t India Mandate At Least 3 Months Paternity Leave? Are We Too Busy Fighting Language Wars?

In a country where the extended family is fast becoming a museum piece, and nuclear households are the norm, one would expect some semblance of policy catching up with reality. Alas, India, in all its cultural grandeur and bureaucratic slumber, still treats paternity leave as a novelty—if not an outright joke. While the world moves forward to support equal parenting in tight-knit modern families, India appears more animated arguing whether Hindi should dominate the South, or if Tamil is the oldest language on earth.

We’ve all seen it. Young couples, newly minted parents, managing a colicky infant, sleep deprivation, work calls, and pressure to “bounce back” in style. The mother bears the brunt of it all, naturally, but the father? He’s often seen fumbling about, expected to be stoic and efficient, returning to work after a perfunctory hospital photo op and some laddoos. In corporate India, three days is common. Fifteen days in the central government is considered generous. Three months? That’s Scandinavian sorcery.

But this isn’t about coddling men. It’s about basic family support in the absence of the joint family safety net. The good old grandmother-aunt-army has dwindled. Today’s urban couple is mostly on their own. In such a context, expecting the mother to handle postpartum recovery, breastfeeding, baby blues, and housework with no institutional support for the father is not just foolish—it’s cruel.

A meaningful paternity leave isn’t a luxury. It’s the difference between a family surviving and a family thriving. It allows the father to bond with his child from day one, to become more than a spectator in his own family. It gives the mother breathing room—not just physically, but emotionally. And it sets the tone for shared responsibility that can last a lifetime.

Yet, policy remains indifferent. One would think this is a simple, humane step forward. But our leaders are otherwise occupied—fighting over what script should be used on milestone boards, what language a civil servant should write an exam in, or which region has linguistic superiority. Parliament spends more time arguing over whether Hindi should be compulsory in schools than it does discussing parental leave policies.

It is perhaps our greatest contradiction—boasting of “strong family values” while offering little state support to families actually trying to function. We invoke “Bharatiya sanskriti” at the drop of a hat, yet recoil from reform that would make parenting less isolating. We romanticise the joint family, but do nothing to help the millions who no longer live in one.

Of course, the patriarchy lurking underneath helps. If a man asks for leave, he’s looked at as either weak or holidaying. Many men themselves feel ashamed to take time off—trained to believe that their worth lies only in the office, not the nursery. Corporates, conveniently complicit, will cry about “costs” but happily fund pointless team-building offsites.

Let’s stop pretending this is radical. Countries poorer than us, less loud about “values” than us, have managed it. India’s economic aspirations will remain hollow if its families are left to fend for themselves without even the basic dignity of co-parenting time. We need not emulate Sweden overnight, but surely we can do better than three days.

If the political class can take month-long leaves to canvass in elections, surely the common man deserves a few weeks to change nappies and warm bottles. And if the idea of three months of paternity leave seems outlandish to some, one might politely ask: is that because it’s unaffordable, or simply because it’s not written in Hindi?

We must choose—does it want to be a country perpetually arguing over tongues and scripts, or one that actually speaks the language of care, support and modernity? The nursery is waiting.

40கள் தொடங்கியது.

ஒரு மிக நீண்ட இடைவேளைக்குப் பிறகு மீண்டும் வலைப்பூவிற்கு வருகிறேன். 

A sense of homecoming என்று ஆங்கிலத்தில் சொல்வார்களே, அதைப் போல உள்ளது. 

நேற்று எனது 40வது பிறந்த நாள். 

ஒரு பக்கம், நமக்கு வயதாகிறது என்னும் நினைப்பு இருந்தாலும் மறுபக்கம், எனது நெருங்கிய பள்ளி, கல்லூரி நண்பர்கள் அனைவரும் ஏற்கெனவே 40களில் இருப்பதால், "நான் வந்துட்டேன்" என்னும் ஒரு ஆழ்மனக்குரலே ஒலிக்கிறது. 

I was never ready to be 40, என்றே சொல்ல வேண்டும். மனதளவில் எப்போதும் சிறு குழந்தையாகவே இருக்க விழைந்துள்ள எனக்கு, 40 என்னும் போது, அது ஒரு நகைமுரணாகத் தென்படுகின்றது. 

40 is the new 20 என்று எனது நண்பர்கள் கூறுகிறார்கள். 

அதையே நம்புவோம். 

அன்புடன்,

BD