Injustice to our own language

We Assamese people always develop a propensity to make a parade of our leading and in speaking our own language we always maintain a reservation. For instance, while speaking to Rickshaw wala, cart puller (from Bihar and UP) and the traders of the market (Rajasthani) we seldom use Assamese, we like to speak in Hindi. By so doing how much damage we are doing to our mother tongue cannot be gauged by us. I personally buy grocery items from a Marwari trader, Cole Road. The trader is a perfect gentleman and fluent in Assamese. I often notice that some of our men and women visiting the shop speak in Hindi. One day I asked a lady politely to speak in Assamese letting her know that the trader is fluent in Assamese. I told the lady in front of the trader and next time when I visited the shop the trader let me know wearing a smile that the lady began speaking in Assamese. We people do injustice to our mother tongue ourselves by never interacting in our own language. That is to say, we never leave avenue for others to learn our language. People say, learning a language is an art, the more languages we can learn is for our own benefit. During my stint in Kolkata, I was surprised to see how fluent the non-Bengalees (ladies and gentlemen) are in speaking Bangla. But of late, we could notice most of Marowari ladies cannot speak Assamese, particularly of the new generation. This is manifested from the interaction with media by the Marowari girls holding ranking in H.S.L.C. and H.S.S.L.C. We people feel proud of the immense contribution to our literature by someone of the community – Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla, Debi Prasad Bagrodia, Dr. Nirmal Sahewala and Gopal Jalan to name a few.

Ashok Bordoloi,

Dibrugarh.