Language imposition in India
The language debate has been bothering me for quite sometime, mostly because there is so much misinformation and propaganda. I want to preface this post by saying that speaking the language itself is NOT the issue, language IMPOSITION is the issue and I will clearly explain the difference between the two and show you what I mean with ample examples. Many people seem to think that either (1) Hindi creates greater integration and that if a nation has to be “strong” we need a “national language” that unites us all and (2) that Hindi is not being forced and that this is all “Anti national/separatist politics.” I want to see this from an academic POV and am hoping the piece will help others either understand this better or offer concrete points to argue for or against. This is going to be long af, think of this as an academic rant and enjoy.(*All sources can be found with a quick google search)
I’m sure most Indians are aware of the recent statements by the home minister and the trends it snowballed because this is not a recent phenomenon, it has been an issue since the conception of India as a nation. I want to talk a little bit about linguistic imperialism versus cultural integration. Firstly, Linguistic imperialism or language imperialism is occasionally defined as "the transfer of a dominant language to other people". This language "transfer" (or rather unilateral imposition) comes about because of imperialism. Cultural integration on the other hand is when individuals from one culture adopt practices from another culture without diminishing their own. The most popular notion of this concept is unity in diversity. Unity in diversity is used as an expression of harmony and unity between dissimilar individuals or groups. It is a concept of "unity without uniformity and diversity without fragmentation”.
Next, I want to contrast India with the European Union which is the most similar international body present. The economist once said “India is a continent masquerading as a country”, The first line of the Indian constitution states “1. Name and territory of the Union.—(1) India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.” The government that holds together India is called the Union (central) government and the governments that govern each state are state governments. Unlike the European Union, the federal structure of India does not allow states to secede from the union and hence it is a country, much like the United States of America. Unlike the US, states are divided on a linguistic basis i.e each state has its own regional language (Also fun fact: the US itself does not have an official language because one of the founders was a polyglot and did not want a language to be forced upon the nation). The easiest to compare is the European Union, each country has its own language and distinct culture (In France people speak French, In Germany people speak German etc.). It’s the same thing in India: (In Karnataka people speak Kannada, in Maharashtra people speak Marathi, In Bengal people speak Bangla etc.).
So how does the European Union handle this linguistic diversity?
The official website of the EU states that “We aim to provide information on our websites in all 24 EU official languages. If content is not available in your chosen EU language, more and more websites offer eTranslation, the Commission’s machine translation service.
We aim to strike a reasonable balance between respect for speakers of the EU's many languages and practical considerations such as limited resources for translation. Some content, such as legislation, is always available in all EU languages. Other content might be available only in languages that user research tells us will reach the largest audience.
All content is published in at least English, because research has shown that with English we can reach around 90% of visitors to our sites in either their preferred foreign language or their native language.”
Secondly how does the EU handle migration between nation states and language integration?
This basic analysis dispels the point that cultural integration requires the implementation of one homogenous language across a landmass. Further proof that one language is an imperialist/authoritarian notion is found in the history of English and how it came to be a global language, Russian, Mandarin etc. Consider the history of Hindi itself:
“Hindi and Urdu languages have their origins in Khariboli spoken in areas around Delhi. Khariboli was adopted by the Afghans, Persians, and Turks as a common language of interaction with the local population during the period of Islamic invasions and the establishment of Muslim rule in the north of India between the eighth and tenth centuries AD. In time, it developed a variety called Urdu with significant borrowings from Arabic and Persian and that uses the Perso-Arabic script. It was also known as extra “mixed language.”As Urdu gained patronage in the Muslim courts and developed into a literary language, the variety used by the general population gradually replaced Sanskrit, literary Prakrits, and Apabhramsas as the literary language. This latter variety looked to Sanskrit for linguistic borrowings and Sanskrit, Prakrits, and Apabhramsas for literary conventions. It is this variety that became known as Hindi.”
Now let’s come to India. Firstly, contrary to the popular myth, Hindi is not the national language of India, India does not have a national language. Instead India has 22 official languages as stated in the 8th schedule of the constitution of which Hindi is one language. To further intuitively explain how vast and varied India truly is let’s see some economic indicators: the GDP of Tamil Nadu (one of the states) is comparable to that of Singapore, Hong Kong, Denmark ($330 billion) while UP is comparable to Bangladesh ($250 billion), which acts as further proof that each state in India is comparable and acts like each country in the EU.
But why is this myth so prevalent? There are two pieces of legislation that govern the use of languages in India: the constitution and the official languages act. While the official languages act was amended to include Hindi and English as official languages after mass protests and the death of many against Hindi as the national language, the act is quite sneaky in reality. Furthermore, while there are in theory “22 official languages” both the constitution and the official languages act grants power to Hindi over all the other languages. Further, Articles 344-349 describe the provision of laws for language use. The main issue is with Article 344 specifically point (2) and with Article 351.
This means that the more people “think” Hindi is the national language, the easier it will be to make it one. But article 347 does clarify it is up to the people of the states to choose. This is why there is so much propaganda that Hindi is the national language.
Since the chairman of the official languages committee is the home minister I.e the same person who sparked this issue again, I will leave the readers to determine if you think this is an empty comment by the minister or if this is a statement that will go through Parliament (keeping in mind the current trends in legislation implementation in the country).
Moreover, even when states have their own official languages,
the central by law can implement Hindi in states that don’t want it if the language committee agrees and if there are a majority Hindi speakers in central offices within the state (other than Tamil Nadu [this is not because the state has special privilege or anything, it is because during the second wave of language protest almost 30 people died in Madurai city alone, at-least 4 students lit themselves on fire as a sign of peaceful protest and the state govt threatened to secede from the union unless immunity is giving to the state against future imposition]).
To paraphrase the above: if many central government employees can speak Hindi even in states that have different laws, then official communication between union and state can shift to Hindi. Regions A, B and C are those that have adopted Hindi as a state language, Hindi as official communication language between union and state, English as communication between union and state respectively. So states that fall under zone C still have limited legal protection.
Ok so as an average citizen you may say that “I don’t really care about all this, I just want to communicate with people and I speak my mother tongue at home so who cares which language it is, we have 10,000 other problems plaguing India anyway”. Firstly, language is preserved and carried forward only through communication, if the language of the state is not used in public life then the language slowly erodes. Secondly and most importantly, the culture of a people is carried in the language. The death of language is the death of culture. So here are some comments to show that reality:
Lastly, of course we have other problems that are plaguing the country and yes we must focus on that too (as an economics student I care way to deeply about the current economic crisis for my own good), so to tie all of this analysis together here’s another statistic:
This is a really long post no one really asked for lol but so many people seem to think that we need a “link language” that has to be indigenous to India to communicate within the country... so last question: why English and not Hindi?
Scene 1: Hindi imposition
Hindi speaking states (language fluency): Hindi - 1 language [this comes because of economic & educational disparities between states so knowledge of English is limited, if you want more info on this I’ll do a separate post on it]
Non-Hindi speaking states (language fluency): English, Hindi, Regional language - 3 languages
Hindi speaking states (language fluency): Hindi, English - 2 languages
Non-Hindi speaking states (language fluency): English, Regional language - 2 languages
Notice that in scene 2 Hindi then becomes just another regional language which is what it’s supposed to be in the first place. Adopting English thus promotes equality among the entirety of the subcontinent.
Further English facilitates competitive advantage of a state at the global stage while Hindi destroys individual rights and state rights in the nation aiding in centralisation of control of state, laws and individuals. As can be seen from the statistic above: “one nation, one religion, one language”, I will leave it upto the readers to determine if that policy is oppressive or integrating.
Going back to the first 2 questions though: Do we need 1 link language forced on everyone for cultural integration: No (see US and EU discussion above). Is this anti national politics? No, if advocating for equality is anti national then India as a country will fundamentally break.
