Bollywood makes Hindi courses a hit in Down Under

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Melbourne, May 24 : Bollywood is generating a great deal of interest in Hindi in Australia, if the the number of people enrolling for the language course at the University of Sydney’s Centre of Continuing Education is any indication to go by.

“There are an extremely wide range of people who come to do the classes,” said Dr Philips Claxton, who runs the Hindi programme.

“People who are enrolling are either from heritagestudents—those who have an Indian background and that too from a wide range of backgrounds—Tamil, Gujarati, Malayalam to name a few—to those whose partners, fiancees, spouses speak either Hindi, Urdu or Punjabi, to those who have an interest in (usually Hindu) religious traditions, to those who have a passion for Bollywood films,” Claxton said.

“In fact, I would say that Bollywood is responsible for a large amount of interest in Hindi,” he was quoted as saying in the media here.

Some of Claxton’s other students include those who need some basic language to do fieldwork in South Asia, especially India and Pakistan.

One of the Hindi students, Howard Shibuya, who has recently completed a first Level Hindi course at the University said, “It was a really interesting and enjoyable journey”.

The Hindi programme is a thriving component of the languages unit since early 2006.

“As a language teacher myself, for me, studying Hindi is about a combination of crossing cultures and improving my own higher-order thinking,” Shibuya said. This is the first time that CCE has taken on Hindi teaching and the response so far has been “quite overwhelming and the numbers very healthy”. “We are as yet to offer a course beyond Beginner’s and Level 1. The programme will continue to grow with the gradual development of more advanced courses,” Claxton added.

Though the University of Sydney has been teaching Hindi since the early 1980’s, Hindi is no longer being offered at the University as a first year subject, he lamented.