Bringing Hindi into the 21st Century: Proposal of a non-binary conjugation of Hindi verbs

Abstract

This paper explores an important direction of bridging the gap between some linguistic features
of Hindi with fast arising new needs, and with the recognition of previously ignored and socially
shunned realities of gender identities. The discussion builds on experiences in Hindi language
pedagogy at the U.S. college level, but the ideas and directions are valid more generally for
reasons beyond the classroom setting. Gender is not binary (Monro 2019). Gendered languages
though, reflecting societal bias of inclusion and exclusion oftentimes include only binary gender
forms in various linguistic features of the language, thereby de-humanizing non-binary identities
into non-existence, or existence on the extreme fringes of society (Knisely et al. 2020; Woolford
2020, 2023; Singh 2012). The normative binary gendered forms typically found in such gendered
languages are male and female. Hindi is one such language. Reacting to a specific challenge that
presently arises in teaching Hindi, I will discuss a proposal to examine and address the strictly
binary nature of some Hindi grammar. The proposal originates in response to an attempt to make
the classroom experience more inclusive and is a discussion from the perspective of a language
pedagogue.