Rapid Hindi Speaking Course: The Indian Army Style
How the Indian Army taught the Assamese people to Speak in Hindi Quickly and Effectively
In 1990, the Indian government decided that it was time to undertake a major initiative to teach Hindi to the Assamese people. It was a day in the end of October, 28th to be precise, when the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government led by Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, and infamously famous for their unique achievement of Naari-Baari-Gaari (Wife-Villa-Car, not my words) was dissolved and President’s rule was imposed in Assam. In addition to this, the disturbed area act was imposed in Assam, subsequent to which the Indian army arrived to maintain law and order. Rumour has it that some of the AGP ministers, made (by five years of ‘rule’ and the comfort brought in by it) as rotund as their election symbol, the elephant, arrived at their respective offices to discharge their duty, only to be told by the Army that they were no longer ministers and they did not belong there anymore. Some say that those ministers could not even retrieve the hidden cash from their chambers. Needless to say these were only rumours, and there was perhaps not an iota of truth to such speculations.
Prior to that October day, it had been the ULFA who had taken the only serious step towards revamping the linguistic landscape of Assam by prohibiting Hindi, the language of the ‘colonialist’ Indian government and its ‘agents’, and banning all socio-cultural activities that could be related to Hindi and other ‘foreign’ languages. The ULFA tried to discourage all those ‘agents’ of the Indian government — be they Oil India or Coal India executives or successful businessmen — from being involved in any conspiracy against the land of Assam by demanding huge sums of money. The more dangerous conspirators, a group to which belonged, for example, a 75-year old office-bearer of the Congress party, coming home on foot after buying vegetables, were summarily executed.
But when the ULFA demanded huge ransom money from Unilever affiliates, the Indian government realized that something concrete had to be done. It also realized that the most effective way to revert the situation in Assam back to the pre-ULFA era was to emphasize on teaching the Assamese people Hindi in a speedy manner. And, thus, Operation Bajrang was initiated, and the Indian Army was put into action.
Bajrang, as we all know, is another name of Lord Hanuman. This is the same gentleman who, when once bestowed with the act of finding a particular herb from a huge mountain and unable to do so quickly, simply lifted the whole mountain and brought it back, to save time and to ensure on-time delivery. Operation Bajrang, true to its name, took a similar approach, when it came to teaching Hindi to the people of Assam. As it was decided that the members of ULFA were the ones most opposed to Hindi, it seemed important to find them first. But then, since the ULFA cadres were from Assam, the Indian Army decided that all the people of Assam must be ULFA members or supporters, and they all thus must be taught Hindi.
To make blood flow to the brain, the Army again opted for a very innovative method: they kept the guys whom they had rounded up hanging upside down from poles while giving them, what is called in the local parlance, dhulai (thrashing). This ensured total flow of blood to the brain, and then teaching Hindi begun, in the format of question-answer sessions about ULFA.
The Army took a very systematic approach to their task at hand; they understood that the Assamese brain had been corroded by the consumption of khar, an essential ingredient of Assamese recipe, which is the dark-coloured liquid obtained by burning into ashes the dried stems of a banana plant and then filtering it through straw and, thus, it was hard for the Assamese tongue to speak in Hindi. Thus, they decided that a mild shock therapy was necessary to activate the lazy Assamese brain, and so they begin their tutorial by slapping people. They usually did this by a very simple and elegant procedure; they would begin by asking everyone a very simple question: ULFA se mile ho kya? (Are you involved with the ULFA?), the answer to which could be only either a yes, a no, or silence. The ones answering yes, and I am sure, there really was none with this answer, would be then slapped for being a member of a terrorist outfit, the ones with no would get treated likewise for lying, and those opting for silence would be slapped for refusing to cooperate with the authorities.
However, this method turned to be less effective that it was expected to be. So soon the Army opted for a more active method. For this method, a group of Hindi talent scouts, known in the local parlance as informers, were brought in to identify the ones who required learning Hindi most urgently. Usually the Army would cordon off a large locality early in the morning and round up everyone and take them to a nearby field or an Army camp. They would then be paraded in front of one of more Hindi talent scouts, who usually wore either black clothes or army fatigue, and whose head and face were covered in black clothes. If the scout pointed at a person, the Army picked him up for a crash course in Hindi; those less fortunate ones were let go after a day of standing in sunlight, once the parading was over.
I came face in face with such a guy in one day in May of 1992. Without my knowledge, I entered an ongoing Indian Army raid in an area, where I went to just buy milk from the family of a close friend. It was only after I crossed an army vehicle with a machine gun mounted on it, and army Jawans standing in attention at regular intervals, I saw a large group of people sitting on the roadside, I realized that I already crossed the point of no return. I tried to act nonchalantly, and simply pedalled my bicycle. An army Jawan stopped me and asked as to why the people were sitting on the roadside. I replied that I had no idea, when he commanded me to get off my bicycle and stand by the roadside. When two of the people protested that they had to catch a bus to Guwahati so as to be able to catch a flight to Calcutta (a city which is known by another name these days), and thus should leave immediately, one of the army Jawans replied politely that it was only after their Major-saab and the informer appeared that we would be let go.
Finally, the Major-saab arrived, and we were asked to stand up in a queue. Then he asked if any of us needed to leave early. I was among the few people who answered. And then we were asked to parade in front of an army vehicle, inside where the informer, clad in all black was sitting. When I crossed him (already almost pissing in my pants), he said in a low tone: “Hey Pankaz. How are you?.”
He then looked at the Major-saab and nodded to imply that I was clean.
More than twenty years later, I still try to imagine who it could be. To be honest, I have quite a clear idea as to who it could have been (perhaps a classmate of mine from the high school days), I cannot say that with any degree of certainty, due mainly to the highly nervous state I was in, being the certifiable coward that I was (and am).
Thus, I missed a good chance to learn Hindi, and would have to wait to reach Delhi a few months later and meet my extremely patient and thoroughly Delhi-educated roommate, Dwijen (what a good teacher he was) to learn how to pronounce “ch”, “sh”, and “j”, something that the average Assamese tongue cannot master.
Back to the original story.
Now, it is a well-known fact the Indian Army is not only powerful, but also very intelligent. The officers handling Operating Bajrang soon figured out that the Assamese people, due to their poverty could not afford a balanced diet, and thus did not have enough blood to keep the entire body, from head to toe, active. However, to learn a new language, it was important to have total blood circulation to the brain. To make blood flow to the brain, the Army again opted for a very innovative method: they kept the guys whom they had rounded up hanging upside down from poles while giving them, what is called in the local parlance, dhulai (thrashing). This ensured total flow of blood to the brain, and then teaching Hindi begun, in the format of question-answer sessions about ULFA. To make sure that no blood was stuck in the joints and various organs, the Army used bamboo sticks and rifle butts to hit at suspect areas such as the ankles, knees, stomach and the testicles. Though effective, this method too was not full-proof; many of those who failed to learn Hindi in spite of such efforts were later found dead. The official name for failure to complete the course in Hindi was encounter. (Someone with whom I spent months drinking tea and doing small talk, later joined the ULFA, I was told, and vanished, ended up being dead in an encounter; another who studied in the same school as mine, and whose only fault was having uncanny facial similarity with a district commander of ULFA was shot dead while being part of a wedding convoy in a crossfire with phantom ULFA terrorists, who were not to be found.)
Such minor hiccups aside (and notwithstanding the fact that most Assamese people are unable to pronounce sounds such as “ch” and “sh” unless trained properly), this project worked very well. Within a decade or so, the situation was such that, if an outsider walked into a shop in any town in Assam, the shopkeeper would invariably ask: Bhaisahab, kya sahiye? (What do you want, brother?); similarly, if one ordered for a cup of tea, the waiter would ask: Aur kus? (Anything else?).
If only the Indian Army had put a little more emphasis on teaching the correct pronunciation of the Hindi language to the lazy Assamese folks.