Fiji-Hindi
Celebrate your mother language
INTERNATIONAL Mother Language Day is a worldwide annual remembrance held on February 21 to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and to promote multilingualism.
UNESCO’s advocated theme for 2024 is ‘Multi-Lingual education – a pillar of learning and intergenerational learning’.
This is aligned to the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032). It is imperative that national educators, researchers and intellectuals in Fiji and in Oceania today, create spaces for our local languages and dialects to ensure linguistic inclusivity in our classrooms and in society.
Multi-lingual education policies will help support our different vernaculars and minority languages.
Fiji-Hindi is the mother language of Girmitya descendants and today is used as an L1, vernacular language by the Girmitya diaspora all over the globe.
It belongs to Fiji and the Oceania. To dispute this fact is futile. Being an Oceanic language, this minority language needs to be accepted by its own people first.
Taking ownership of one’s identity can lead to more intercultural dialogue, cultural diversity and help develop inclusive knowledgeable societies.
It can remove the stigma that the cultural elite often relate to vernaculars and minority languages like Fiji-Hindi.
Historically, during the Girmit period, the indentured labourers did not speak standard Hindi at all. The labourers came from all over India, particularly from the Northern parts where many regional varieties of Hindi were spoken as well as the lingua franca Hindustani ( Lal 1983, Siegal 1992, 1998).
Basically they all spoke different, but related languages and dialects when they arrived in Fiji. In this linguistic space, was added languages like Tamil, Telegu and Malayalam from labourers and later free settlers from the South of the sub-continent.
Due to communication needs of the Girmitya, linguistic fusion took place and a process called Koineization occurred through which elements of the different varieties of languages and dialects like Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Hindi and Hindustani were mixed together and then levelled (Siegel 1989 , 1992).
Fiji-Hindi therefore became the mother tongue of all the children born to Girmitya parents.
Fiji-Hindi did not develop out of the pure variety strand of the Hindi language only. It is therefore not fair to linguistically describe it as a dialect or off-shoot of standard Hindi.
Fiji-Hindi is therefore not a corrupted or broken form of standard Hindi. Nor should it be compared always with standard Hindi which has a rich and longer tradition of literary culture, literature, religious history and formal education and is used by millions of people all over the world.
Since this subaltern, Oceanic language has now evolved into a diasporic mother language for the descendants of the Girmitya, Fiji-Indians in Fiji should become critically aware of one’s linguistic genesis and not be ashamed of its linguistic status.
Since standard Hindi is considered a more prestigious dialect of the Hindi language and it has more economical and political power today due to India’s rise on the global market, the Indian religious sector and Fiji’s Indian community cultural elite prefer this prestigious language to that of their subaltern mother language, Fiji-Hindi.
Fiji-Hindi, the mother language of majority of the Fiji-Indians, has a systematic grammar and its speakers use it consistently in their communication.
No language functions without grammar. Without grammar or its own distinct lexicons, the speakers will not be able to comprehend each other’s communication.
Fiji-Hindi speakers can distinguish between tenses, singular/ plural forms, use of postpositions et cetera.
Language researchers like (Shameem and Gounder, F. 2022) , (Rajendra Prasad 2016) , Grammar sketch of Fiji-Hindi , M.A Thesis, (R. Singh : 2018 Grammar FH ) are all contributing to the written grammar of Fiji-Hindi today.
Fiji-Hindi speakers have intrinsic grammatical knowledge of their language structures and these norms have been validated in linguistic research in grammar books as stipulated by (Prasad and Willans: 2023). Prasad and Willans , very aptly have referred to (Siegel : 1977, Moag :1977), (Hobb : 1985 ), (Pillai :1975 , R. Prasad 2016, R. Singh 2018 ), Siegel : (1987, 1992, 1998 ) to reinforce the argument that Fiji-Hindi is a language on its own. That one cannot suppress it by stating that it is ‘not pure’ or has lexicons from the Bauan dialect of Fiji and other iTaukei dialects, from Hindi, from English et cetera. All languages since time immemorial have borrowed lexicons to suit the socio-linguistic contexts of their people. Standard Hindi borrowed from the Urdu language during the Mogul era of India, English borrowed from Latin and the French languages with numerous linguistic examples.
To consciously believe in a pure language is to be idealistically situated in Utopia.
To support and promote this mother tongue of Fiji and of Oceania , there needs to be a consensus that this language can be used in literary fields and it can be written using the Roman and Devnagri script. Academics, writers, researchers, media personnel, our young people in schools are all capable of contributing to the new literatures of Fiji and Oceania.
The literary revolution has started and the onus is now on Fiji’s diaspora to step up and write our histories in our language.
Once the writing conventions are more firmly established, there are so many historical accounts, ethnographies , stories and anecdotes, idioms that can be captured in the mother language of Fiji-Indians .
Since Fiji is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual nation, conversational Fiji-Hindi can be used more effectively as a pillar of learning in all our classrooms from ECE level to higher education for a more genuine approach to creating a tolerant and inclusive society. As a people who have a diasporic history, Fiji-Indians need to linguistically interrogate and self-realise how the Fiji-Hindi language can helps us appreciate Hindi and standard Hindi yet not lose awareness of their island and oceanic identities today.