Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian and Spanish: these are the 11 foreign languages currently being taught at Connecticut College according to the Spring 2010 course schedule.
Additionally, Croatian and Czech are offered for independent-study. The college deserves praise for offering such a linguistic smörgåsbord from which students can choose (ironically enough smörgåsbord is Swedish, something we don’t teach).
However, I can’t help but notice that something is missing: Hindustani, also known as Hindu-Urdu or simply Hindi. It is the second most spoken language on Earth, being the primary tongue of some 600 million people ranging from Fiji, Nepal, Afghanistan, Guyana, Suriname, Myanmar, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uganda and Kenya. When secondary speakers are taken into account, the number of people who understand and can communicate in Hindi surpasses one billion.
Hindu-Urdu is the official language of both India and Pakistan, two countries with a potentially huge impact on the future of humanity. India, home to nearly 1.2 billion people and counting, is the largest democracy on Earth. According to the US Census Bureau’s International Database, India is predicted to overtake China as the world’s most populous country by 2025.
India is on the front lines of the battle against climate change, the “War on Terrorism” and the expansion of predatory multinational corporations. A linguistic grounding is no less indispensible to our understanding and future relations with Pakistan.
While some may not grasp the importance of Pakistan to US foreign policy, or even be able to find it on a map for that matter, I’m hoping the average Conn student can at least do the latter. The success (I use that word as loosely as possible) or failure of our little experiment with Afghanistan hinges almost entirely on Pakistan’s internal struggle with the Taliban and what our modern, politically correct lexicon has coined ‘extremists.’ Where drone attacks have failed, perhaps a linguistic and cultural understanding can succeed. It is no surprise that the State Department and other government agencies are scrambling to find individuals fluent in Hindu-Urdu and other languages like Pashto and Dari, languages essential if we wish to truly bring peace to Afghanistan.
It might not be in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, but I think it is a pretty safe bet not to fight a war while lost in translation. It doesn’t matter whether those who drop a bomb and those who are killed by it speak the same language, but it certainly helps when signing peace treaties or building schools.
I feel that I have sufficiently dramatized the importance of Hindi so let me return to the primary purpose/pipedream of this article: persuading the powers that be to start a Hindi language program at Conn. As it stands, the college offers links to a number of study abroad programs in India and Nepal. There is already a Hindi Club on campus comprised of ten students who, rather than wait for the college to get its act together, decided to learn Hindi on their own. Compare that to the five students currently in elementary Russian or the two students who comprise the entire Hebrew language program.
But Conn’s connection to Hindu-Urdu runs far deeper than the Hindi Club. As was pointed out by Jazmine Hughes in The College Voice article “I Am Camel, Hear Me Roar,” “…the camel mascot was established in 1969, the same year the college went co-ed. Mike Shinault…named the CC team after a Pakistani team he’d seen during his time in the Navy.”
If my arguments appealing to logic have floundered, then maybe a more sentimental approach can succeed. The camel, the pillar upon which so much of Conn’s unique identity rests, stems directly from an intimate bond to Pakistan! How’s that for a cross-cultural connection?
Therefore, I declare that it is damning to our school spirit not to offer courses in Hindi. However, as I again refer to the Spring 2010 course listings in the hopes that Hindi might spontaneously manifest itself, I find that we have not just one but five sections of elementary Italian.
Now then, I realize Italy and the Italian language have given contemporary mankind numerous treasures such as Dante’s Divine Comedy, Vivaldi’s The Four
Seasons, and more recently Andrea Boccelli, Olive Garden and Guidos, but I feel as though having five sections of elementary Italian but not one section of Hindi is an affront to the principles of higher education upon which this institution was founded.
Though I risk offending the pugnacious Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, I fail to see Italy as having the same impact on the future of the United States and the world at large which India and Pakistan have right now.
Though it may be an uncomforting realization for some, the glory days of Western civilization are waning. The pages are turning; we are about to begin a new chapter. The 21st century will belong to the Orient, not the Occident. Already, the economic centers of the West are being eclipsed by the far off cities of New Delhi, Hong Kong, Mumbai and Taipei to name but a few. The world is turning, and it is time we turn our gaze with it. Just as Conn fostered a fantastic Chinese language program, it must do the same with Hindi. Lest this institution wish to pass up such a tremendous opportunity to bolster admissions, publicity and the college’s overall academic standing.
A quick search on Conn’s website reveals said mission statement to be the following, “Connecticut College educates students to put the liberal arts into action as citizens in a global society.” The college faces financial difficulty, but is nevertheless barreling ahead with the arbitrary decision to redesign our Pakistani-born mascot, I can only come to one conclusion: the new camel will inexplicably transcend cultural and linguistic barriers and cause an enlightening of the human spirit in any who gaze upon it. If this is not the case, then, in order to keep the college from making erroneous claims or perpetuating falsehoods which might disenchant or anger students, I propose the following alteration to our mission statement: “Connecticut College educates students to put the liberal arts into action as citizens in a global society*.”
*Bull
How can an interested student find out more about Hindi club?
That’s par for the course.
Indians and Filipinos don’t count. In the US they aren’t even considered “minorities” because they assimilate and don’t cause problems.
On the other hand, a lot of Indians don’t speak Hindustani…one could argue that thinking all Indians speak Hindustani is like thinking all Chinese speak Mandarin, or all Pinoys speak Tagalog.
Some would argue that the languages were imposed on the countries not just to encourage nationalism and unity, but to allow the stronger ethnic group to impose their culture on the rest of the country.