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In Rohtak, it is Haryanavi all
over the place. The city also has a sizeable number of Jhangis,
refugees from the Jhaang district in West Punjab, now in
Pakistan. But the presence of Jhangi dialect is not very
visible in the town. How about many groups of educated girls,
chatting away in chaste Haryanavi on a campus! You can have it
only in Rohtak. An experience of a life-time!
You also need
a life-time of patience to discern the respectable and the
disrespectable in Haryanavi. You may misunderstand, you may be
misunderstood. That is how Rohtak is to a non-Rohtaki, an area
not quite on the move, at least on the surface. Rohtak gives a
strange feeling of standstillness. Perhaps, the impression is
not entirely wrong.
Rohtak is
also a town of quality Banias. The city claims to have the
biggest wholesale cloth market in the region. One of the
Banias was Babu Balmukund Gupta who is a renowned Hindi
essayist and humorist of the Dvivedi Yug at the beginning of
last century. However his literary and journalistic career
blossomed in Calcutta. Anyone who has studied Hindi upto the
matric level should be able to recall his name as his famous
"Shiv Sambhu the chitte", addressed to Lord Curzon
and generally included in school Hindi curriculum.
Madhv Prasad
Misra who is considered one of the very first story writers of
Hindi in modern times, also comes from this area. And among
the younger generation, Alka Saraogi, whose maiden novel
"Kalikathe" has received this year’s Sahitya
Akademi award, has her roots in Bhiwani, a nearly town. Like
Babu Balmukund, Alka also resides in Kolkata.
So, this area
has its share of literary glamour, if there is any glamour
left in literature in Indian languages. Interestingly, it is
the region’s Calcutta connection which comes out prominently
when one points out Rohtak’s literary endeavours (Madhav
Prasad Misra’s karma bhoomi was also Calcutta). Oh Kolkata!
Oh Rohtak! Kkowledgeable people tell. Banias of the area
settled in Kolkata, particularly the elderly, continue to
promote the Hindi cause back home. Marwaris living in Bengal
have proved to be great patrons of the Hindi language and
literature in the past two centuries. Quite a steadfast
commitment, unparalleled and deserves a history of its own.
Back to the
present times. In Rohtak, social activitism appears relatively
more on the ascendence in comparison to other parts of
Haryana. Rohtak district perhaps has the largest number of
NGOs in Haryana. The State Resource Centre, Haryana (SEARCH)
is unmistakably the leading organisation.
The state
headquarters of Haryana Gyan-Vigyan Samiti (HGYS), the All
India Democratic Women’s Association are also located here.
SEARCHand HGYS have prepared valuable material for
neo-literates, women, students and teachers on various social
issues. HGYs has also brought out a science magazine for
children in Hindi Parasmani for long. They published one for
the elderly as well called Science Bulletin.
These efforts
underline the positive elements in Haryanavi society’s
dynamics in recent years.
In the feudal
air of the town and around, the emergence of such a modern
democratic space provides assurance. The momentum it creates
should continue as the people involved are idealistic enough.
Almost all of them are young, some very young. Can you
remember somebody around, a college student and a girl for
that matter, full of sensitivity, urge, commitment and
dedication? In Rohtak, there are a few such men and women. And
though they come from different academic and class
backgrounds, they all cherish literature. And they cherish
poetry above all!
Inside the
compound of SEARCH, in a poetry symposium held on one chill
evening of December, I was introduced to a keen listener He is
a police head-constable and a Hindi story writer, with a few
books to his credit. Rohtak is not all Haryanavi. It also
throws up other possibilities.
In the face
of heavy odds, there is an audience for Hindi poetry. This
audience is in a minority of course. But is it not something
to be undiscovered that this audience does exist? A poet is
not alone, or he is only as much alone as the ones who come to
listen to him! Even literary minorities are a community. Small
communities with an underlying sense of relationship!
Himmat Singh,
the secretary of Maharishi Dayanand University Teachers
Association, a teacher of economics, is a member of this
community. So is his wife Saroj, also a university teacher of
computer sciences in Guru Jambeshwar University, Hisar. I have
yet to see a more passionate lover of Hindi poetry outside the
known literary circles than Himmat Singh. For long I continued
to believe that he was a language teacher. A Ph.D from London
University, Himmat Singh defends his beliefs, sense of justice
and love for poetry just like a soldier defends his position
on the frontline. And that too in a university like MDU which
has an ex-Army General as its Vice-Chancellor! Bravo Himmat!
Himmat Singh is also
fortunate. He has a few sincere companions on MDU campous.
Like Rajendra Chowdhary (economics), Harish Arya (mass
communication) Dr Pradip Kumar (medical sciences), Jagmati
Devi (physical education), Manjit (English) Atique Khan (law)
and Bhupendra Yadav (history). Add to it the name of Pramod
Gauri, down to earth director of SEARCH.
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