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Talk of Hindi dominance a joke. English/non-English divide is the real apartheid in India

In his Hindi Diwas speech, Amit Shah claimed Indians were the only ones who defeated English language and Anglicisation.

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I am exasperated with the current debate on the imposition of Hindi. I feel like a mixed-race interlocutor in a debate on why Black oppression takes precedence over the plight of Latinos. I hear myself repeating the basics over and over again. Yes, race matters. No, racial discrimination has not ended. Yes, it is unfair to overlook what is happening to Latinos, to Asians and so on. But no, that’s not the only pressing issue. Can we please focus on White supremacism? Yes, notwithstanding my appearance, I can tell you what it means to be at the receiving end of racism. No, I don’t hate people with white skin.

Replace race with language and that is what the debate over the last few days has felt like. I come from a small town, from what would be described as ‘lower middle class’ family, but somehow was not at the receiving end of class oppression. I am from an OBC community, but my biographical accidents saved me from direct caste discrimination. But I do know a thing or two about cultural exclusion, about what a ‘Hindi-medium type’ faces in the Delhi elite circles, liberal or Left-wing. I guess this personal experience and reading Ram Manohar Lohia made me extra sensitive about the power of language and the language of power. So, I often use Hindi Diwas as an occasion to say something about the state of Hindi and that of Indian languages in general. I was tired of repeating the same things over and over again. So, I had decided to keep quiet this Hindi Diwas.

And then came the Amit Shah speech.


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Why this is not harmless

I am exasperated because the whole country is responding to a speech that was eminently forgettable. But for the speaker and its context, it would have passed off as a routine, harmless, official lecture, a standard drill for Hindi Diwas. As Professor Ganesh Devy often points out, there is something absurd about including language not in the ministry of culture or education, but in the ministry that looks after law and order.

The Home Minister’s speech made it worse. He claimed that all Indian languages were superior to all European languages (How? Why?). I noted the expression “laghuta granthi” (inferiority complex) being used more than once, as he made an astonishing assertion: of all those who were colonised, we Indians were the only ones who defeated English language and Anglicisation (which country do you live in Hon’ble Minister, I wanted to ask?).

He used late Sushma Swaraj’s name to claim that Hindi was the language of 20 per cent of the world’s population (Wikipedia says 4.4 per cent, a correct figure should be around 6 per cent). He recruited Gopal Krishna Gokhale among Hindi enthusiasts (now, that was news to me, am still waiting for evidence).

He attributed to Ram Manohar Lohia the idea that democracy (‘lokraj’) could not flourish without Hindi (Lohia had actually referred not to Hindi but to ‘lokbhasha’, or people’s language). There was a sweet irony in his clarion call to use pure Hindi untainted by any outside (you-know-what) influence, delivered in a Gujarati-fied syntax and a thick Gujarati accent.

All this is pretty harmless, just the stuff of Hindi Diwas rituals. What was not so harmless was his assertion that notwithstanding our linguistic plurality, we need one language for our national unity. And only Hindi could play that role. Though he was careful not to call Hindi rashtrabhasha (national language), the implication was the same.

This was no casual figure of speech because he had said the same thing in his formal, written Hindi Diwas message too. This did not come from any ordinary functionary, but from the man widely believed to be the second-in command. And this came just after this government had abrogated Article 370, degraded the status of Jammu and Kashmir from a state to a union territory, and announced its plans for an NRC across India. The proposal on Hindi as the language of national unity had an ominous ring in this context. It deserved critical attention.


Also read: Amit Shah will soon overshadow Modi to emerge as BJP govt’s main voice


No need for a national language

It needs to be pointed out that there is no national language of India and we don’t need one. The idea that a nation must be united by one language is a 19th century European orthodoxy that deserves to be buried deep. The genius of Indian nationalism is that it could do so. In any case, Hindi has no special virtue or claim to privilege over other Indian languages. If anything, Hindi is younger and therefore relatively poorer than much older languages like Tamil and Kannada. It can play a special role by acting as a bridge that connects some languages, though not all. It has helped connect Arunachali tribes, but I cannot imagine that Malayalis and Tamils would need Hindi to speak to each other. But Hindi has to earn this trust of other language speakers; it cannot demand this.

The only way Hindi can do so is by becoming ‘impure’, borrowing generously from other Indian and non-Indian languages. To borrow a metaphor from Vinoba Bhave, Hindi cannot remain pure like a river; it must expand like an ocean. In any case, this must be left to society, media and market. Any official imposition of Hindi is against the spirit of our nationalism and is, in fact, counter-productive.

Missing the wood for the trees

I am happy that Hindi Diwas produced some debate. I am glad at least some public figures and politicians openly questioned the idea of one nation, one language. But I am exasperated that the debate stops there.

I am exasperated because we don’t ask the next question: is Hindi imposition the most pressing challenge of our times? Outside the pompous and pathetic rajbhasha committee, is Hindi in any position to dominate the country? We just have to step out on the street and look at the billboards on English-speaking courses. Or, the mad rush for English-medium schools. Or, meet young Hindi speakers, who cannot spell or speak correct Hindi, desperately trying to speak in broken English.

If you look at the state of Hindi in north India, any talk of Hindi dominance sounds like a joke. Can we talk about the real issue of imposition of English, please? Can we acknowledge that just like gender, class and caste, language too is about inequality, exclusion and injustice? Can we admit the English/non-English divide in our country is actually a system of informal apartheid?

When would we start discussing the real challenges of a language policy? How do we counter this growing menace of English-medium schools where neither the parents nor the teachers have a nodding acquaintance with English? How do we bring the medium of instruction as close to the home language of the child? How do we ensure equal and democratic access to English language to every child? How do we improve the capacity of the 22 languages under the Eighth Schedule so that they become efficient medium of scientific and technical knowledge? How do we save and strengthen hundreds of ‘dialects’ and languages that are not listed under the Eighth Schedule?

When would the victims of linguistic apartheid manage a debate on their own terms? Or, is the resistance to Hindi dominance a way of escaping these difficult questions? Perhaps now you understand why I am exasperated.


Also read: ‘Hindi medium-type’ Ravish Kumar proves truth matters. But does it have to be so lonely?


The author is the national president of Swaraj India. Views are personal.

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10 COMMENTS

  1. 1. Hindi will not be and cannot be imposed as a national language. However, there is little wisdom in not accepting fact that Hindi has a potential to become (what Union Home Minster Amit Shah claims to have said) ‘a common language’. 2. During last three decades or so our politicians have used language politics to stir up emotions of gullible citizens. However, fact is also that these politicians have ensured that investments are made to setup private schools where English is the medium of instruction. 3. In all new schools in the private sector, study of Tamil or Malayalam or Kannada or Marathi, as the case may be, has become less and less unimportant, as it is study of a ‘second’ or ‘third’ language. 4. My view is that we must not allow politicians to indulge in divisive politics of language. Objective of our education policy should be to ensure that all Indian languages prosper and for that to happen we should be ready to take effective steps towards meeting that objective.

  2. Let me tell you something. Take a common white man living in an English speaking country, and ask him to frame a common place sentence in his native language. Nine times out of ten he will make the commonest of mistakes for which we would have got rapped by our English teachers in school. He cannot write anything without making the most basic spelling mistakes. But yes his diction is far better than ours as are his abuses which pepper his sentences. This is similar to his math skills where he requires a calculator to do what most Indians do mentally in a matter of seconds. Our strengths are to be honest rather than be dragged into this abyss of which language is better and imposing a common language for all. We have existed for so many years without humungus problems and have enjoyed our lives with those harmless jokes of how each state has their own diction.

  3. One can dream , daydream that is , but only supandi believes that dreams come true .For the rest of us , there is the question of earning to live , just to survive and maybe ‘aspire’ for a decent standard of living .When you look at most of the Hindi speaking states , the per capita income is in the range of 20000 to 30000 rs , why would other states want to import impoverishment .Saying anything further would be politically incorrect .

  4. “But for the speaker and its context, it would have passed off as a routine, harmless,…”
    That is exactly the point. The speaker is styling himself as the next Baadshah (bad shah?) of India – and his diktat – fatwa – is that there be a unique national language and that be Hindi. It IS profoundly problematic – don’t muddy waters Yogendra with a totally unrelated issue of the English divide.

    Moreover it is ingenuous to talk solely of the ENGLISH divide whereas the lived reality of millions of tribals, for example, is that they face exclusion because they are not good at their state-language. Similarly, it is unforgivable, for a supposed liberal like you, to not talk about the Dalit discourse that posits that replacement of brahminical Sanskrit (traditionally forbidden to Shudras and other “low”-casts), by English as the language of elites, has gone a long way towards levelling the playing field.

  5. As long as Indians do not generate knowledge in their own mother tongues, India will remain this poor backward country. For some reason in India language is confused with knowledge. No rich developed nation has replaced its own with a foreign tongue as India is trying to do. The ones doing so are a few in Africa who are as poor and backward as India. U.S.A., Russia, China, Japan, S.Korea, Israel, France, Germany, U.K. all technologically advanced countries extensively use their own mother tongues.

    • … in their own mother tongueS… as long as we agree that all languages (including english) are equally valid, we are fine.
      also, strictly speaking, you are wrong – no one does science in hebrew and the last reknown French and German language scientific journals mearged to become an english one couple of decades ago.

  6. Children do not learn English because, as one black child said, When I grow up, want to become a white man. English unlocks possibilities for advancement that other Indian languages do not. It does not cost much in terms of effort and money. It is cruel for state governments to deprive young children of this route to upward mobility. There is a Himalayan sized inferiority complex amongst some who feel a deep aversion not just to English but to western education, accepting that India has fallen far, far behind the rest of the world, not just the West, seek some kind of refuge and solace in the glories of a mythical. – one will not say non existent – past.

    • Inferiority complex mean when you do not recognise and try to be something. This inferiority complex is mainly with English champions in our country. This Himalayan sized deep inferiority complex is with English speakers of our country. Germans/French/Chinese didn’t require English to advance their development, but we do. Our people are being forced to learn English.

    • “deep aversion not just to English but to western education, accepting that India has fallen far, far behind the rest of the world, not just the West, seek some kind of refuge and solace in the glories of a mythical” – as usual ashok’s rants. My recommendation to this not so well read wise man is the latest book by Richard Dawkins “Outgrowing God” and his thoughts on how science is taught to American kids and dogmas that exist in the beacon of Western civilisation. Richard Dawkins, ashok sir, is someone you can refute only if you are REALLY scholarly. Jai Hind.

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