Mamta Kalia

Indian origin in Suriname too played
a significant role in the promotion of
Hindi in Holland.
Hindi Day is celebrated on 14 th
September in Holland today. On this
occasion debates as well as speech and
essay writing competitions are organized
by different organizations.
As a matter of fact, the state of Hindi
language in Holland is the same as it
is in Suriname. The truth is that Indian
diaspora in Holland is mostly made up
of Surinamese Indians. Hindi speakers
here are extremely small in number and
the basis of their culture and lifestyle
is that of the Indian community in
Suriname. Their Hindi is essentially
Sarnami, even though the foundation of
its structure and syntax is that of the
dialects belonging to the Hindi family.
Sarnami has evolved from the folk culture
and conventions of the dialects of Avadhi,
Bhojpuri, Maithili and Magahi and of
Tulsi’s Manas and Kabir’s songs. This
language is born of the dialects spoken
by the farmers and labourers who had
gone to Suriname from the lands of Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and
Chhattisgarh and even today retains its
original sweetness. Hindi-based linguists
still consider Sarnami a dialect of the
Hindi family but the Indian community
of Suriname and the writers and poets
who use Sarnami consider it a language
on its own, and write it in the Roman
script. In Holland too people of Indian
origin call their language Sarnami and
this is what they use for their speech
144 :: April-June 2010
and everyday transactions and for
literary expression. Thus in Holland too
there is today a community of writers
who write in Sarnami language and there
are many established writers in whose
novels and poems we come across
sensitive portrayals of the struggles of
their ancestors.
Dr Theo Damsteegt, Professor of
Sarnami language at Leiden University
[Netherlands] went to Mathura to do
his Ph.D. there after he did his Master’s
in Hindi and Sanskrit and did his research
on the stone edicts there. He travelled
to Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna and
Ayodhya to study the relationship
between Hindi and Sarnami. At Karen
Institute, which is part of Leiden
University, there is a separate department
for Sarnami too, along with departments
of Hindi and Sanskrit, where Sarnami
is taught systematically. Theo Damsteegt
has been able to get Sarnami the
recognition of a language to be taught
at the university level.
Alongside with Sarnami, the work of
teaching of Hindi too is making progress
in the Netherlands. Several organizations
are active in this area. At the Indian
Institute in Amsterdam Hindi teaching
and training goes on along with teaching
and training of Sanskrit and Bangla under
the direction of Dr Dick Plucker. They
also have discussions and discourses on
the Ram Charit Manas, Mahabharata,
Vedas and Upanishads. Parts of these
texts have been translated into the Dutch
language and introductions to the texts