Alas, slowly will Tamil perish/As languages of the West flourish.” This was a Tamil poet’s fear in the early 20th century. But Subramania Bharati’s apprehensions were unfounded. Tamil found its savior in none other than the Government of India. Tamil was made a classical language. The UPA government’s elevation of Tamil was, of course, far from disinterested, and seemed to be done against the recommendations of some of the academic members of the Centre’s committee of languages.
A promise to this effect was in the UPA’s common minimum programme, and the then President’s first address to Parliament had also raised hope~particularly of M Karunanidhi, leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. Ironically, the DMK’s anti-Hindi movement in the mid-1960s was set off by the Congress’ insistence on making Hindi the country’s sole official language. Keeping the heat on the Centre over its recent stand on the 3-language formula to be made mandatory for the release of funds for the state under the SSA programme, and quoting a poem of yet another poet Bharathidashan, the TN chief minister made it clear that manipulation to impose Hindi would never succeed with the Tamils. A rough translation of the poem is “Hindi, if you step into the Dravidian land of happiness, your feet will be chopped off”.
Recently, condemning the public sector LIC for making Hindi the default language in its widely used website, MK Stalin described it as linguistic tyranny and demanded its immediate rollback. As if it were an ill-conceived idea of the Centre to celebrate Hindi nationalism to revive the latent but divisive language controversy plaguing the nation for quite a long time, there have been protests from southern states warning the Centre that ham-handed attempts to popularize Hindi would lead to serious consequences. Under attack from then TN chief minister Jayalalitha and political parties in the states, the UGC had to withdraw, in 2014, its controversial circular directing universities to teach Hindi as one of the primary languages in undergraduate courses.
Karunanidhi’s push for Tamil as an official language was grounded in his belief that Tamil, as “the first mother tongue in the world” is superior to both English and Hindi. The argument necessarily relegated other languages to an inferior status. This was a case of linguistic chauvinism. Not surprisingly then, the Tamil Nadu government’s decision to make Tamil not only a compulsory language of study but also the medium of instruction from nursery to middle schools from the 1999-2000 academic year stirred a hornet’s nest. The chief minister announced that recognition would be granted only to schools following the new guidelines. Sometime ago, there was a row over Hindi when Home Minister Amit Shah stirred the hornet’s nest by seeking to assert the need for a common language for India, that is Hindi.
It aroused the fear that Hindi imperialism, as envisaged, would jeopardize Nehru’s assurances about the continuing importance of English as India’s official language. Interestingly, there is a great myth about Hindi being given the haloed status of the official language of the Union of India by the eighth schedule of the Constitution. This has won a sizable number of opponents among the non-Hindi speaking states. In fact, Hindi began to be regarded as having a distinct identity in the 19th century when movements were launched to replace Urdu with Hindi as the language of law courts and administration in the northern States.
Nagari Pracharini Sabha, founded at Benaras in 1893, helped to further its cause. Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj and intellectuals like Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay paved the way for the acceptance of Hindi as the link language in India. So, notwithstanding Gandhi’s claim that Hindi and Urdu were but one language written in two different scripts, the few decades preceding Independence saw bitter rivalry between the two. Hindi won in the end. Members of the Constituent Assembly had no doubt about what it would be like. Article 351 declares: “It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language… and to secure it’s enrichment by assimilating, without interfering with its genius, the forms, style and expressions used in Hindustani and in other languages of India specified in the Eighth Schedule and by drawing whenever necessary or desirable, for its vocabulary, primarily on Sanskrit and secondarily on other languages.”
Had this been followed faithfully by our Central leaders in the past 70 years, Rashtrabhasha would have by now acquired a true all-India character. At the outset there was an attempt to follow this constitutional directive. In 1962, BV Keskar was replaced as the Minister of Information and Broadcasting by B Gopala Reddy, and the Persianization (Urduization) of Hindi began. Gradually it became incomprehensible to the non- Hindi speakers, prompting C Rajagopalachari to coin the slogan, “Hindi never, English ever”. Hindi now meets with as much opposition as did English before independence and on similar grounds. What the rashtrabhasha advocates do not appear to understand is that even the slightest hint of compulsion revives the controversy and politicizes the entire issue.
As the language of almost the whole of North India, Hindi undoubtedly enjoys a pre-eminent place among the Indian languages. Being the language of India’s thriving cinema industry, its popularity is not confined to any geographical region. But this has come about because of the natural logic of the market place and not through imposition. If the Centre left the question of language to economics rather than politics, its purpose would be served gradually, but far more effectively. Hasty decisions seemed to have paid scant attention to the plight of the linguistic minorities in the state.
The 1965 anti-Hindi agitation in Madras was largely responsible for the Congress losing power in the state and the Dravidian parties occupying Fort St. George. The 1965 agitation was given up following the assurance that English would continue to be the official language as long as the non-Hindi speaking people wanted it. The agitation had led to major political changes. The DMK captured power in the 1967 assembly elections and thereafter the Congress never came to power in Tamil Nadu. The Official Languages Act was eventually amended in 1967 to guarantee the indefinite use of Hindi and English as official languages. This effectively ensured the current “virtual indefinite policy of bilingualism” of the Indian Republic.
Also, there were smaller agitations in 1968 and 1986, which had varying degrees of success. C Rajagopalachari, the first Governor-General of independent India gave the slogan “English ever, Hindi never” in 1967 to the anti-Hindi agitators and ensured continued use of English as an official language. As Congress Chief Minister of Madras Province in 1937, he had tried to propagate Hindi in southern India. On 21 April 1938, he issued a government order making the teaching of Hindi compulsory in all higher secondary schools in the Presidency. It was met with instant opposition and he had to resign. He learned the hard way and became a supporter of anti-Hindi imposition.
A row over the Union Home Ministry’s directive asking for the use of Hin’i on the Government of India’s social media platforms snowballed, and more political leaders and chief ministers came out with sharp criticism of it. DMK president M Karunanidhi, whose party had successfully led the anti-Hindi agitation in the 1960s, dubbed the move as a beginning of “imposition of Hindi” that would make non-Hindi speaking people second class citizens. Heritage is linked with languages and so political parties would have to devise ways and means to get through. Why then are some political leaders hastening the process without considering the sentiments of nonHindi speaking people? That many Tamils wish to learn Hindi now in an apparent reversal of history says much of the intricate, often ironic, links between language and power.
Of the learners of Hindi language courses and degrees in Hindi medium taught by the Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha, many are from Tamil Nadu. Almost the same is the case with the students of correspondence courses in Hindi taught by the Central Hindi Directorate. With New India’s growing prosperity, Hindi has become a language of power, not only because Bollywood dominates entertainment, but because good jobs demand mobility. Both English and Hindi are good to learn. The leaders concerned seem to have lost the key to history.
(The writer is former Associate Professor, Department of English, Gurudas College, Kolkata and author of Auntie English, English, Quo Vadis and Nobel Prize in Literature: a case for India.)