« Meet the Fockers | Main | New Year's Resolution »

Very saddening to read your comment Shanti :(. If Hindi is so alien to the Mela concept why did we had the name of the event in Hindi (albeit written in Roman), it should be called the “Indian Blog Fair” or whatever. Having Hindi blogs IMHO only added to the glamour of the mela and had widened its acceptance. The “Anugunj” event started by me at Akshargram would be hosted by a non-Hindi blog next month and I was happy over the bridging gaps between the Angrezi and Hindi blogdom. This comes as a shock.

If lots of people cannot read Hindi there are many who would not be able to comprehend the Queens English as well. I have always been making the suggestion to widen the Mela concept and allow nominations of all Indic posts, whichever language. A mela with such notion sounds as rude as a board outside the Mela reading “Dogs and Hindi posts not allowed”. No offense!

Debashish, I didn’t say anything in my post that meant that Hindi blogs shouldn’t be allowed in the Mela. There are hosts like MadMan and others who cannot read or comprehend Hindi blogs. I would be flummoxed if I saw a tamil/malayalam entry when I host. It just means that the entries will not be included in the Mela. Such exclusions will not be there is a language-specific version of the Mela. That was all I was hinting at.

What should I say here? I am at loss of words. Perhaps that explains why we have all these different regional associations of Indians in US. All I can say is this quote from Mahabharat, hope everyone knows of this epic. It is so relevant in our multi-cultural India -

“Don’t be like a coal, which burns and make every thing like itself. Be like a flower which goes in to the garland and adds to its beauty”

Pankaj, maybe I didn’t explain myself clearly. If I were hosting the Mela and someone sent me an entry I cannot read, should I include it in the Mela? How can I summarize it? How do I know for sure what is being said? It will just mean that hosts will leave out entries they don’t understand. To prevent such exclusions, you might have a spin-off of a regional Mela. I think we are still discussing the pros and cons of such a decision, so no one should be jumping to any conclusions.

Shanti

Real problem does not seem to me with including regional posts or not. It is the tirade started by some people and the way MAdMan and you reacted. Just look at the timings of the post, nobody from Hindi blog world had objected of their exclusion fro mela.
Infact at http://akshargram.com/ (their group portal) nobody mentioned about the exclusion because it is mela’s host right to include and exclude the post. But when these people were attacked, no body came in their defense. Instead you suggested to start a regional mela .Do you think that Satyveer and Atosh were right and all hindi bloggers are writing crap? You guys behaved like an ignorant schools teacher who instead of puninshing the bully student , punish the victims but showing them way out of the class.
The way I was looking at these mela events was a positive sign, Hindi English posts (may be other languages in future) at one place. These guys mention from time to time about any new regional blogs at their forum. Few of them have Marathi/Sindhi/English blogs other than hindi blogs.
Now I see a virtual divide in Indian blogging world just like in media/literature because of this alienation.
So sad! I believe bully English readers will keep on pushing their agenda and good English writers will keep mum, spoiling a very nice effort of Mela as well as Indiblog award by making stupid comments as I have already seen at last week’s mela comments.

Shirin, I don’t know what those guys you were talking about said - I don’t think Hindi bloggers write crap. All I was reacting to was MadMan’s suggestion that maybe there should be a Hindi Mela - I was just throwing out suggestions.

For the record, I just read the thread of comments at MadMan’s blog. I hadn’t read it till now. I really don’t have the time to check comments on other blogs leave alone read their posts.

I repeat I don’t think any language bloggers are inferior/superior to any other language bloggers. Please don’t ascribe someone else’s opinion to me just because they cite my post.

Shirin, I dont find Shanti or Madman had any problem with Hindi blogs. What they talk about is logistics of hosting a mela.

What Shanti proposed was one solution. The other one can be a group with different members from diffrent language can host a blog. At this stage managing such a show will be more cumbersome. So better we stick to what Shanti proposed.

Wow! Just… wow!

I start question reading comprehension skills when I give clear reasons for not posting the Hindi entries but despite that, people will still start spinning crazy-ass theories about how it’s some kind of attempt to show some superiority of English.

Look, I know how to read Hindi, but I haven’t done any Hindi reading in so long (I don’t need to; I live in Bangalore) that it was slowing down my reading too much to actually enjoy reading a piece. And I’m not used to reading Hindi online. So rather than spend hours reading the articles word by word, I just left them out. That’s about it. If somebody sent me a Marathi or a Gujarati article, I would’ve done the same thing.
I don’t know how the hell Debashish is trying to spin this into a racism issue. How the hell does he expect posts to be featured that are in a language the host doesn’t understand?

I think Shanti’s response to Pankaj Narula adequately explains the rest.

One english man rightly said that Indians cannot become good leaders but they become excellent servants :)

Keep it up. This fucking lamer says Hindi is a regional language. He porbably doesnt even knows that Hindi is the de facto language of india.

Event that malli friend of mine knows how to read/write in Hindi.

Instead of encouraging more people to write in Hindi, all these fucking morons do is reject there entries.

w00t

“Look, I know how to read Hindi, but I haven?t done any Hindi reading in so long (I don?t need to; I live in Bangalore) that it was slowing down my reading too much to actually enjoy reading a piece. And I?m not used to reading Hindi online. So rather than spend hours reading the articles word by word, I just left them out. That?s about it. If somebody sent me a Marathi or a Gujarati article, I would?ve done the same thing.”

Who the fuck cares about what YOU CAN read and what you YOU CANT read. If its about india, its about Hindi. Got it ?

Himanshu and his imaginary friends, if you can’y understand MadMan’s points, you need to work on your English reading comprehension a little harder.

As for if it is about India it is about Hindi - please refresh my memory as to when that law was passed. Most South Indians would be interested.

“you need to work on your English reading comprehension a little harder”

Even if i do, i wont work on it :p

“As for if it is about India it is about Hindi - please refresh my memory as to when that law was passed. Most South Indians would be interested.”

Dont start crying about South India and stuff :) Almost every Indian knows more than one language. I myself speak three languages.

But, in India, nothing has wider appeal than Hindi.period.

Its not that i hate regional languages. Its just that i dont like the phirangi language english ;)

neways, i m sooo happy to see so many hindi blogs popping up :) googling for “hindi blog” returns some nice blogs.

let the world turn from ascii to unicode ;)

You are wrong on that too - It is English that is more widely spoken in India and not Hindi. I speak three languages too, but I have seen more people speak English than Hindi. I don’t exactly have the inferiority complex that needs me to label everything (“phirang language”? What centuy did that come from?).

“You are wrong on that too - It is English that is more widely spoken in India and not Hindi.”

HA HA HA !!!!!! You are probably living in a walled garden!!

Are you SURE that you are an Indian ?? LOL. You see …my friends are just laughing and rolling on floor after reading your comment.

It seems that you havent been to India. You are probably one of the second generation “American Indian” who’s probably never ever visited India :D

Indian literacy rate is just around 54%. So, that means, there are millions of people who can’t even read/write in there native language properly. And you expect them to talk in English ? How come?

Its absurd. Its like expecting them to talk in Italian or French. I mean, how do you expect them to speak a FOREIGN language ??

And there’s a very small number of Indians who have been to a public school or something, so they are capable of talking in heavily acscented english. they are probably just .001% of the total population :)

And belive me, there english is pretty shitty, as the americans always seem to be making fun of Indian call centers and there “Indian English”.

so, because all your friends belong to that .001% of the population, you seen to belive that everyone can talk in English.

If the freedom fighters had known that someday an Indian would say that “It is English that is more widely spoken in India and not Hindi.”, they would have not even cared about India’s freedom.

Please do us all a favour! Stop calling yourself an Indian.

“I don?t exactly have the inferiority complex that needs me to label verything ”

According to you, if someone aint capable of talking in english, he should feel inferior ?? So that means, all those japanese people who dont know anything about english, should feel inferior??

Just take a look, almost every LCD produced in this worlds is capable of displaying japanese characters. I still play games on consoles that display japanese text.

The latest portable consoles like gameboy ds, or sony PSP, they both display menu in japanese. Does this means that sony and nintendo must be ashamed of themselves ???

See that need to put down things and people you know nothing about and making assumptions? That is the symptom of an inferiority complex. You must be really hurting that your English isn’t good or you wouldn’t jump to those conclusions.

Even if you were a total illiterate, I wouldn’t consider you inferior - you on the other other hand, reveal yourself as a petty person with this silly language brouhaha.

reading your comments, it seems to me that its Shanti who needs to take some english language classes ;)

way to go himanshu …

Gautam, given your lovely email address I can understand what kind of a filth lives within your brain and would never want you on my side on any issue.