“Melting Pot” or a “Salad Bowl”?

Are you heirs going to be part of a “Melting Pot” or a “Salad Bowl”?

By Nishtha Raheja-Goel
nrg123@sbcglobal.net

Recently, Forbes reported the Top 20 Billionaires of the World and a significant number were of Indian origin. Indians have definitely mastered the art of generating wealth and amassing fortunes -- but what now?

Is your legacy for the upcoming generation going to be a huge mansion? More money?

What about our heritage? What about our language? What will be their social identity? They might walk and talk like their neighbors but they can never mask their Indian names or their Indian faces. Will they melt and become part of the whole American culture aka ‘Melting Pot’ or maintain their heritage and individuality aka ‘Salad Bowl’?

Language is the key to surviving the melting cauldron and maintaining our individuality. World renowned, linguist and anthropologist, Edward Sapir indicated language is not only a vehicle for the expression of thoughts, perceptions, sentiments, and values characteristic of a community; it also represents a fundamental expression of social identity. Sapir said: "the mere fact of a common speech serves as a peculiar potent symbol of the social solidarity of those who speak the language." In brief, retention of one’s mother tongue helps maintain feelings of cultural kinship with the mother country. What cultural kinship or feeling of brethren will we leave our future generations if we don’t teach our children our language?

With dedicated individuals such as Professor Surendra Gambhir, recently retired from the University of Pennsylvania and Professor Gyanam Mahajan, UCLA, both members of their school’s South Asian departments, current generations have an opportunity to gain foreign language credit for their knowledge of Hindi and/or Urdu. With a ready syllabus and a defined purpose, both are ready and willing to help local educational institutions establish a Hindi and/or Urdu curriculum. Prof Gambhir noted, ‘Studies show that heritage speakers (people who are exposed to a foreign language in their home) pick up language skills in their native language at double the speed of non-heritage speakers. ‘

When asked why Hindi or Urdu was not being offered as an optional foreign language for high school students, many school officials indicated that Indian parents have never evinced an interest in such a program. Why would a parent not want to teach their native language? Why would a Hindi or Urdu heritage student not want to easily pass their foreign language requirement by taking Hindi and/or Urdu?

The National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland has launched an innovative summer program to teach Arabic, Chinese and Hindi/Urdu to more than 1,000 high school students at sites around the country. STARTALK, is a program jointly funded by the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Defense to expand and improve the teaching and learning of strategically important world languages. This summer, there were 21 centers in the Los Angeles area dedicated to Chinese, Arabic and Hindi instruction. To demonstrate their dedication to maintaining their heritage, 900 students showed up for 400 Chinese instruction openings whereas the Hindi/Urdu class has 6 students painstakingly learning Hindi. All six were of Hispanic descent!

With concrete evidence from the Modern Language Association and the Census bureau (see chart), it’s evident that Hindi speakers have had a dramatic rise in population. The top ten states with the highest number of Hindi speaking individuals (see chart) have an obligation to rally together at a school district level to add Hindi and/or Urdu as an optional foreign language for their students.

What can you do as an individual?

1. Don’t fixate on regional differences (Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, etc..). As a community, we have to organize and come together to request Hindi/Urdu instruction in our local schools and universities.
2. Talk to your kids and grandkids in Hindi/Urdu.
3. Volunteer to teach Hindi/Urdu at after school programs.

John Stuart Mill said that "Language is the light of the mind." As proponents of the future of Hindi/Urdu, both remarkable dialects, it’s our turn to share the light of our minds with our children so that the illumination can become a beacon for future generations.