There is nothing strange in a person from India visiting Trinidad and being beset by dreams of connection with Indo-Trinidadians. They look so much like us…if only they could speak Hindi like us too. Once upon a time they must have…

The reality is not so simple. First of all, when our ancestors made the great journey to Trinidad, Hindi was not one of the native languages they brought with them. What they brought were dialects of Bhojpuri, and other local dialects from the larger hinterland of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and varieties of Tamil and other local dialects from South India. And just as sugar boiled down and crystallised in the great vats on the sugar estates, a new variety of Bhojpuri came to life in Trinidad, at a time when Bhojpuri in India was still a fragmented scattering of village dialects. So in a sense, Trinidad led the way: in India Bhojpuri is only now beginning to standardise as a major regional language of literature, media and political discourse.

The relationship between Bhojpuri and Hindi in India is complex, and not unlike the relationship between Creole and English in Trinidad. By that I mean both pairs of languages co-exist in a diglossic relationship. Bhojpuri inhabits the same social space as Creole: it is mostly used in oral discourse, while Hindi has captured the literate end of the spectrum. Hindi was not one of the native languages brought to Trinidad, though some educated migrants would certainly have learned to read it.

What happens when a Trinidadian—like me—comes to India, knowing Hindi and even Bhojpuri? Is there a flash of recognition, and a sense of re-connection?

Well, that too is complicated. Bhojpuri-speaking friends do banter with me briefly, to bond. After that we slip back into Hindi, or English. And political groups ask me to speak at rallies, to show how international Bhojpuri is. After five minutes of trying to fit the storytelling mode I know from Trinidad to the demands of modern political discourse, I unobtrusively slip back into urban educated Indian Hindi.

But when I find people more similar to our ancestors, newcomers to Delhi, they respond to my overtures in Bhojpuri with carefully correct Hindi: they know, like the jahajis, that they are on a great migration, and that language is part of that journey. They know that speaking Bhojpuri would mark them as… unambitious. They too yearn for change.

How would the villagers in Bihar have reacted if Kamla Persad-Bissessar had come across as…a jahaji, no different in language from her ancestors? Would they have been heart warmed? Or disappointed?

I think they would have been satisfied with a few words in Bhojpuri or Hindi at the start, which is exactly how she spoke. The rest of her speech, in English, was their greatest dream come true: one of theirs had reached the top of the world!

There is a carefully nurtured misconception that Hindi is happy and stable in India. It is not. Anyone visiting the large cities of North India is immediately struck at the sight of all the signage and billboards on the streets in English. The licence plates on the cars. The way people you are likely to meet instantly sense that you must be a diaspora Indian, and that Hindi must be difficult for you. And they put you out of your misery by speaking English.

Simply put, people in North India who live like the Trinidadian middle class increasingly live their lives not in Bhojpuri, and not in Hindi, but in English. They spend beyond their means to send their children to English-medium schools. And so strong is the recognition that an education in English medium is the only guaranteed route to jobs in the modern sector that even the government schools in Delhi have begun to phase in not English, but education in English medium.

So: is Hindi "difficult"? If a number of children in North India now think so, how is it surprising that people who have been living in Trinidad for over a century should think so too? Hindi is certainly "difficult" for a diaspora Indian to pick up in the big cities of India, because it is hard to get an opportunity to "practise". The only reason I now get to speak Hindi a lot is because I have passed that threshold: it is clearly easier for me to speak Hindi than for many of the people I meet to speak English. But it has taken me years to reach this stage: not years of learning a code, but years of absorbing a new identity.

It could have been different. Hindi could have grown and embraced the big world, instead of shrinking under the impact of English. But that would have taken a certain large-heartedness. A spirit more…inclusive than just the puny wish to reach out to the Indian community and no one else. A warm desire to invite everyone to share in the language and the culture. And a greater tolerance for less-than-perfect Hindi spoken by a foreigner, or someone from the diaspora.

But the world is what it is. And any move to herd the Indian community in Trinidad into a mythical past identity, or a connection with a modern Hindi which is not as secure or accepting as it is made to seem, is fraught with danger. For when a community floats a separate linguistic currency all of a sudden, even if only for nostalgic reasons, it is a political act that smacks of a kind of secession. And this, ultimately, is not the goal the Indian Government has in mind.

* Peggy Mohan, who is from T&T, was a lecturer in linguistics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. She lives in New Delhi and is also an author.

—The Michael Harris column

returns next week.