This situation might not be unique to Konkani! --FN Alok Rai’s Hindi Nationalism was released ... in Orient Longman’s “Tracts for the Times” series. Engaging and erudite, the book traces the decline of Hindi from its glory days to the stilted, bureaucratic, homogenized language that it has become today. Rai attributes this decline to the politicization of Hindi by communalists and sectarians who are increasingly being perceived as the “owners” of the new Hindi. Hindi has, over the years, been used to counter the perceived or real “threat” posed by first Urdu and then English. En route it has been hijacked to serve the agendas of various factions, notably the upper castes. This has resulted in its degradation into an artificial language, a sort of "high Hindi" that is far removed from common speech, Rai explains. He explores the history of Hindi -- from the first indications of linguistic polarization that arose during the Raj to the connotations of chauvinism that have come to be linked with Hindi in the post-independence era with the rise of the "one nation" theory where Hindi was touted as the language of the unified Hindustan.
http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/20/12AminRai.pdf
