Can a billion people be shepherded toward a single language? And should India’s government try? Shreyasi Singh investigates.
You’d think the citizens of a country with a population of 1.17 billion people, who between them speak more than 1,600 languages and dialects, would understood that language is about communication, not identity. Yet, time and again in India, fissures over regional identities reveal in sometimes ugly ways how far the country is from achieving this ideal.
In November last year, newly-elected Maharashtra state legislator Abu Azmi was assaulted by members of the right-wing Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) for insisting on taking his oath in Hindi. MNS chief Raj Thackeray, the now-estranged nephew of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, had earlier written to all 288 state legislators of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, urging them to take their oath in Marathi. Azmi was slapped, pushed and punched by MNS politicians when he rose to take his oath in Hindi—hooliganism in the country’s high offices that was broadcast live on TV for the nation to see.
The incident followed the controversy a few weeks earlier that erupted after a request by the first-time Member of Parliament from southern Tamil Nadu state, Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilisers M. K. Azhagiri, to speak in his mother tongue in the Lok Sabha (the Indian Parliament’s elected house) was turned down. Tamil speakers were outraged, arguing the speech could easily have been translated into Hindi and English for the rest of the House. They also claimed the decision violated their rights and was an insult to Tamil, which they see as much a national language as Hindi.
The Tamil-Hindi tussle has a long history. Over the decades, many non-Hindi speaking states have opposed the imposition of Hindi nationwide. However, southern Tamil Nadu’s resistance has always been the most sustained and most vociferous, while anti-Hindi campaigns in Tamil Nadu saw mass mobilisation both before and after India’s independence was secured in 1947.
Although seemingly omnipresent, in part due to its cultural reach through Bollywood (the Hindi film industry), Hindi is not actually a national language. According to the 2001 census, Hindi and its various dialects are spoken by about 422 million people or just over 41 percent of the national population.
India has no legally-defined national language, and although Article 343 of the Constitution declares Hindi and English to be the official languages of the union of India, to be used for administrative, judicial and legislative business in Parliament and other central bodies, there are 18 official languages that states can use to conduct their intra-state affairs.
The situation is complicated further by the special provisions made for the development of Hindi under Article 351 of the Constitution, which states: ‘It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language, to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India and to secure its enrichment by assimilating without interfering with its genius, the forms, style and expressions used in Hindustani and in the other languages of India specified in the Eighth Schedule.’
Some experts on India’s Constitution believe the nation’s founding fathers did, in fact, intend that Hindi would become the lingua franca of the country—the ‘link’ speech—but that language-based regional identities didn’t allow this to happen.
Photo Credit: Lakshman Anand
View as Single Page
Reddit
Digg
StumbleUpon
Delicious
Technorati
Yahoo
Google
Plurk
JK
English is the only imposed language that is equally unfair to everyone in India…therefore, oddly, it is the most fair, as any other imposed language would favor some region of native speakers. Let us speak English and our own tongues, and be taught in both.
Krishan Jain
Hindi is first of all not Indian originated language. It is primarily derived from foreign invaders. Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi etc are more Indian languages. It boils to a the question why use English, the language of the colonialists. The colonialists developed the country’s infrastructure to a certain extent.
JK
A single language could help India – only after the country is divided. It is plain unfair that lot of tax money is collected and poured into this individual language – including income tax and banking or airline or railway websites and customer service which all only use Hindi or English. And there is Hindi imposition and differential syllabus in schools. Hindi or Spanish make no difference in Tamil Nadu. (As a comparison, in Europe, up to 10 languages are used at the same time).
Dev Kumar Dutta
At the outset, let me inform fellow readers that Hindi isn’t my native language but I speak the language with sufficient fluency and would’ve been happy if I could do better. However, I understand the feelings of a lot of people who don’t want Hindi to be the national language. I agree that their misgivings have a lot to do with certain linguistic chauvinists mainly from northern India. I’ve often had witty arguments both in public as well as in private with many such people in Delhi and other parts of northern India. I was once travelling from Chandigarh to Delhi by train when two men sitting close by, began arguing in English. As their argument grew louder a third voice barged in Hindi, “Kya Angrezi mey fachar, fachar kar rahe ho? Hindu-o ka desh hai bahi…Hindi mey bolo” (Why are you guys chattering away in English? In the land of Hindus you should be speaking in Hindi).
It was my turn to join in and I pointed out to the intruder that there were millions of Hindus in states outside northern India who don’t know a word of Hindi. So, what did he intend to do about that? He responded by saying that it was the duty of every Indian to know Hindi as it was the national language.
In that coach full of Hindi speaking people I bluntly told him that I and millions of other Indians didn’t consider Hindi to be the national language and that he shouldn’t try such bullying outside northern India. He stared hard at me and it did worry me because the entire coach suddenly fell silent and the guy was heavier than me and had a few friends with him.
I came out of that incident unscathed but it didn’t change my approach one bit. On another occasion, in Delhi, a Naga friend paid me a visit when I was with some of my local North Indian friends. The Naga friend was with us for an hour and during that time, spoke mostly in good Hindi (in my opinion). After he left, my local north Indian friends began cracking jokes and mocked about the way my Naga friend spoke Hindi. After sometime, when I could take it no longer, I quietly told them that they should feel obliged that he took the trouble to speak in Hindi because he always speaks to me in English. It was for their benefit that he spoke in Hindi which I thought was pretty decent. Again, I faced the same argument – Hindi is the national language. I told them that ever since independence we’ve had an overdose of nationalisation and in the process, forgot all about nationalism. Starting with the father of the nation to the national language among others, we seem to be making a virtue of abstractions such as the national animal, the national bird, the national game, etc. And it’s all due to this business of “declarations”, “proclamations” and what have you.
My friends, all of whom were close to the Indian National Congress, asked me what problem I had with the father of the nation. I replied that I didn’t think we need a father of the nation for a country as old as ours. It’s fine for new countries like the USA but not for an ancient country like ours. We’ve lived with diversity since the dawn of civilization and we’ll continue to live as long as we adhere to this basic common sense. Having said that, I admit that Hindi is the most widely understood and spoken language in India including southern India, although its localization, would never satisfy the puritans of the cow-belt of northern India. I have no problem with Hindi as a language but I surely have a problem with the fanatics who want to preach it.
O. P. Sudrania
Raj’s MNS is quite competent to do this job; even though he has not succeeded in extracting a revenge from his uncle. How a family feud can spoil the whole nation, after the King Gyanendra, MNS is the best example.
Yes, I blame both Nehru and Ambedkar for this unnecessary language controversy. Nehru stands alone in the gigantic figure as the supremo. Gandhi pampered him. He had intense personal relationship with Lady Edwina, marred by dubious controversies. I have no doubt that Lord Mountbatten influenced Nehru shrewdly for manipulating his own agendas. Lady Pamela Hicks, their younger daughter has openly accepted it. That is why, I request that the personal correspondence between Nehru and Lady Edwina should be made public. This will throw a lot of light on the political mileage she drew from Nehru for her husband. Nehru, Lady Edwina, lord Mountbatten, even his father are all well known for their extra-marital relationship. For a person in such a high office, such a relationship has a lot of public significance.
Coming to Hindi as a National Language, I have to suggest that majority of leaders at that time, soon after the independence, the sentiments were running high for the Nation. Who was Nathram Godse? He was a Maharashtrian. But the same Maharashtrians are today killing the same nation for which one Maharashtrian had killed Mahatma Gandhi. I need not elaborate. You all know it. India can learn an alien language in less than 2 hundred years to fight for it, but they are so nostalgic for a language of their land which most of the founders of independent India including Raja Rajgopalachari and Bengal wanted to have it. But a single Platonic Love can be far more powerful tool to overturn the whole thing.
I request you all to go back to 1947 sentiments and think accordingly. If you have any misgiving for reservations, someone has rightly said, 62 yrs of all these quotas has not altered the situation, I do not think it will alter any further. Take for example the Hajj subsidy. Even the Waqf Board has recommended to Govt of India to cancel it several yrs ago, but it is contd because of the vested official interests involved. You can go on and on, it is an endless game.
My humble request to Shreyasi would be to weigh the pros and cons of the repercussions on the national unity.
O. P. Sudrania