EU and Unity in Diversity

The EU has 28 partner countries that speak “an unwieldy 23 languages”, as the Economist puts it. Some guy suggested that every Euro kid should learn two foreign languages. Others felt that everyone should just switch to English.

Some of the arguments against English were interesting and informative, not jingoist:
1)      The language spoken by the maximum number of Europeans is, hold your breath, German! In 4 countries, German is an official language.
2)     French has just as many native speakers as English, and is official in 3 countries.
3)     And most embarrassing of all, Britain will soon be holding a referendum whether to quit the EU altogether!
4)     The EU’s official motto is “united in diversity”, a promise to not crush every member “under a homogenising wheel”. (Wait a minute, unity in diversity? Don’t we have a copyright on that slogan?)

Now doesn’t all this make you proud to be Indian? We have 30 states (give or take), and don’t thrust any language on every state. As the Economist article put it, we didn’t relegate regional languages to also-there’s officially (most state legislatures still function in that state’s language):
“Telling 26 of 28 EU countries that of course they can keep their cute little languages, but that all serious stuff (business, academic work, legislating) must be done in English, is asking them to accept second-class linguistic citizenship.”

Every time you feel sick of Indian dis-unity, I suggest you check out the EU. Let the EU say that comparisons are odious, but we can make them anyway, especially when it makes us look good!

Comments

  1. KumarOctober 1, 2013 at 7:29 PM

    Europe seems to keep thinking of some unity to bind them and ways to prevent erosion of their culture. In some way it is admirable; in some way it implies loss of pragmatism.

    Comparing India with Europe is tricky because we are comparing a nation with a region. Nevertheless the comparison is strangely valid too, since nobody is sure yet if we are only a bunch of loose 'countries' bound together in an attempt to make it all one nation. South Asia on the whole seems to have a problem of the same kind. Even after different groups trying to induce different ways of 'nationalism' or 'culturalism' movements, unity doesn't come easily here. We may have to wait for some more decades to know if things would change here.

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