‘Howdy Modi’ saw history being made as over fifty thousand Indian-Americans gathered at the NRG stadium in Houston to be a witness to the growing strength of Indo-US ties. Such was the magnitude of the event that President Donald Trump too decided to take part in the same. Narendra Modi’s detractors were rattled at the sheer expanse of the event and the overwhelming love and support he received from the Indian diaspora. Sending ripples across the country, Prime Minister Modi took the ‘Howdy, Modi!’ stage to say ‘everything is fine’ in several Indian languages, gloriously ending the ‘Hindi imposition’ debate and making the Indian American audience fall into a swoon.
#WATCH Prime Minister Narendra Modi says,'everything is fine,' in different Indian languages. pic.twitter.com/IpSKbGpTjg
— ANI (@ANI) September 22, 2019
Ever since India marked Hindi Diwas on 14th September, an unwanted and ill-informed controversy was fanned by individuals and political parties for obvious political gains. Home Minister Amit Shah’s statement on the importance of Hindi as a common language were misinterpreted to the extent that people were influenced to believe that the government is keen to impose Hindi as the sole medium communication in the country, disregarding all other languages of the land. TFIPOST recently explained how this was an attempt to paint a false image of the government’s intentions. It is a fact that the Indian Constitution recognizes Hindi as the ‘official language’ of the country, while it is also known that the Constitution recognizes twenty two other regional languages. However, the fact remains that Hindi by far remains the most popular medium of communication among the people and it is a great unifying factor among various communities and cultures across the country.
PM Modi refrained from commenting on this unnecessary controversy so far. However, being the exemplary orator he is, he grabbed the perfect opportunity to subtly prove all those wrong who were trying to divide India on the basis of the languages. At the Howdy Modi event, PM Modi used eight Indian languages to say that everything in India was fine. He said so on the basis of the name of the event ‘Howdy Modi’, which in Texan would roughly translate to ‘How do you do, Modi?’. PM Modi said “Everything is fine” in Gujarati, Punjabi, Bangla, Marathi, Telugu, among others. This is a huge statement against all those who were only days back trying to portray the Modi government as an entity which is hell bent of uniform Hindi imposition across the country. This was one among the many subtle messages which the Prime Minister conveyed through his address to the huge gathering. Making such a statement in the presence of a global audience, more so in the presence of Donald Trump speaks volumes about how PM Modi has mastered the art of conveying his message and opinion on any given matter, so as to have a far reaching impact. Besides, the use of different Indian languages must have definitely invoked a sense of pride among the Indian-American community, and Indians around the world at large, that the Prime Minister is speaking in various languages and thus showcasing India’s rich cultural and lingual diversity to the world.
There were attempts to paint ‘Howdy, Modi!’ event as a “Gujju-North Indian American” show, however, the truth was far from it as several south Indians slammed such reports, while thousands of Indian Americans, who come from South India, gathered and cheered for the Indian Prime Minister.
https://twitter.com/ramprasad_c/status/1175765979231596545
https://twitter.com/MNair099/status/1175743122753671168
Narendra Modi’s glorious statement should make all those fanning unnecessary controversies think about what they speak, as they can be rest assured that the Prime Minister will befittingly respond at a time and place of his choosing, only leaving such people embarrassed to the greatest extent. Despite Amit Shah’s clarification on his comments, the troll industry simply refused to stop with their bundle of lies. If the statement by the Prime Minister does not make such people realize their folly, then we can be assured that this is a shameless lot of individuals who simple refuse to look at the truth. This should put a permanent stop to the Hindi debate.
As a matter of fact, those with vested political interests made bombastic statements, while completely ignoring the fact that Amit Shah’s statement was made on the occasion of Hindi Diwas, and was not a remark made out of the blue without any context.