Navigating India’s language divides
NEW DELHI — When advocate Govinder Singh rose to make an argument in the Delhi High Court this month, he did what no lawyer had ever done before him and addressed the judge in Hindi. Singh’s action was generally applauded for striking an overdue blow against a decades-old rule that insists on English — the enduring legacy of British colonial rule — as the working language of the Indian capital’s top judicial bench. A similar linguistic challenge was thrown down last November by Abu Azmi, a newly-elected legislator in the Maharashtra state assembly, when he opted to take his oath of office in Hindi, rather than the state language of Marathi. Source: The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100426com5.html |
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