Mamta Kalia

It is for these reasons that the Roman
script is being used for writing Sarnami.
The assumption is that if the script is
Roman, it will be easier to understand
and even people of other languages will
be able to read it. But the question of
understandability still remains since the
readers do not understand the words.
The Roman script has been accepted
specifically for achieving universal
readability of Sarnami because the
primary basis for the global study of
Sanskrit language and literature is the
Roman script. In countries like Suriname,
colonizers wrote down in Roman script
whatever Indian labourers said– for easy
remembrance and also so that the names
of these people could be pronounced
correctly. Subsequently, the children of
these labourers did their studies in
schools using the Roman script and they
started writing their dialect too in the
same script which eventually was
recognized by the government as the
Sarnami language.
There has been progress in the spread
of Hindi in the Netherlands during the
last five decades but generally there have
been a lot of hurdles to its uninterrupted
growth. Since here too Dutch is the
language used in official transactions and
in office jobs as in Suriname, the new
generation gives primary importance to
Dutch and focuses its entire attention
on it. And the guardians too desire the
same so that their children can have
a meaningful future.
In Europe there are about twenty-
five lakh people whose mother tongue
is Hindi and who speak Hindi. In the
Netherlands, hurdles have come in the
way of the growth of Hindi from Sarnami
language too. There has been universal
and open opposition to Hindi several
times in the past from movements that
promote Sarnami. The Sarnami
movements were led by students of Leiden
University in the decade of the 1970s.
Once, in a Hindi conference organized
at Paramaribo, the supporters of Sarnami
did not only oppose Hindi but declared
Sarnami as the original language of their
ancestors, though even at that time a
few people gave importance to Hindi
and accepted that it is the mother
language of Sarnami.
In Holland, in the 50s, Surinamese
Indians were very few but whoever was
there was kept involved in the promotion
of Hindi by an organization called Manan.
Through this organization, Hindi was
promoted in temples, schools and other
institutions.
It was Prof Fogel who began the
teaching of Hindi language in Leiden
University. Subsequently other
universities too were influenced by Hindi
and they too have started teaching Hindi.
As in other countries of Europe, in
the Netherlands too Hindi received less
attention compared to Sanskrit and it
remained a second-grade language. But
in spite of that, it has remained the
language of livelihood for the Dutch-
Hindi scholars of the Netherlands. Also,
April-June 2010 :: 147