Remember to fill your ancestry as Indian in tomorrow’s Census 2021

Feel proud to see in Hindi ‘Swayamsewak’ (स्वयंसेवक ) on the medal the volunteers of Olympic Games were honoured with at the Closing Ceremony of Tokyo Olympics 2020.

Hindi language is being recognised worldwide (3rd most spoken language at 615 million in the world after English and Chinese Mandarin), whereas here in Australia tomorrow we are still being divisive on the issue of languages in filling up the Census form.

Yes we Indians are multilingual and we love our matrbhasha (मातृभाषा ) whatever that may be, be it Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, Malayali or Tamil or Telugu, or Kannada yet we are all Indians first. ABS – Australian Bureau of Statistics should add a question on multilingual capability of Indians as we all from any region speak a regional language plus 2 to 3 more languages with a common thread of knowing and speaking Hindi.

In the Language spoken at home there is a box for Hindi to tick. But if you are comfortable to mention any other language please do so.In the Ancestry Question they give you two – Ancestry 1 and Ancestry 2 – If your Father and Mother were born in India (even if in the Pakistan region which was India under the British rule, then it has got to be written as Indian). You are confusing the ABS Stats, if you are writing Ancestry as Punjabi, Malayali, Gujarati or any other region. Regions are not defined as Ancestry but a recognised country such as India is. So please write ‘Indian’ as Ancestry if your parents were born in India before or after partition.

It is a pity that we bring and highlight our divisiveness when today an Australian is teaching Hindi at university, three jobs at SBS have been taken by Punjabi speaking community in Manpreet Kaur, Preeti Jabbal and Parminder Singh in the Hindi broadcasting and no one stops a different language teacher to teach Hindi in schools if they are skilled enough and show proficiency in Hindi. This is the benefit we all enjoy if we unite, that is, and not act divided.

Remember! United We Stand And Divided We Fall!!

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