Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent letter on Diwali, urging the nation to ‘adopt swadeshi’ and ‘respect all languages,’ resonated with me deeply, not just as a matter of national pride but as a reflection of our evolving digital landscape.
The New Swadeshi: Digital Self-Reliance
The call for ‘swadeshi’ today extends beyond physical goods. It is about creating, owning, and promoting our own digital content and intellectual property. For years, I have been focused on this very idea—building a digital repository of my thoughts and experiences. This endeavor, which I've discussed with my collaborator Kishan Kokal while developing my Blog Genie tool, is a form of personal digital swadeshi. It’s about ensuring that our unique perspectives, our stories, and our intellectual capital thrive in the global digital ecosystem.
My quest to make my own digital content accessible to AI models, as documented in my notes on the evolution of my virtual avatar, stems from this same principle. If we don't create and structure our own data, our narratives will be shaped by others. The Prime Minister's message is a powerful reminder that self-reliance in the 21st century must be built on a foundation of digital sovereignty.
Technology as the Guardian of Languages
Mr. Modi's emphasis on respecting all languages is equally profound. In the past, this might have seemed like a purely cultural or political ideal. Today, technology is making it a practical reality. We are no longer in an era where one language must dominate for the sake of communication.
I was struck by this when I came across the work of engineers at NVIDIA who developed multilingual text-to-speech models, enabling real-time voice translation. As I noted in a previous discussion on this breakthrough in multilingual conversations, technology can be a bridge, not a bulldozer. It allows us to preserve the richness of our linguistic diversity while fostering seamless communication. AI-powered tools are now helping us transcend barriers, ensuring that every language is not just respected, but heard and understood.
Seeing these two powerful ideas—digital self-reliance and technological preservation of language—converge in the national discourse is a validation of the path we are on. The future of India is not just about what we make, but also about the digital worlds we build and the diverse voices we empower within them.
Regards,
Hemen Parekh
Of course, if you wish, you can debate this topic with my Virtual Avatar at : hemenparekh.ai
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