[lg policy] How Mod's Hindi-first is another step to divide India

Mon Apr 24 14:51:30 UTC 2017

On April 22, DMK leader MK Stalin of Tamil Nadu made a serious accusation
against the Narendra Modi government of violating the Constitution and the
rights of non-Hindi speaking citizens by pursing the policy of "Hindi
imposition" and warned the central government not to invite another anti-Hindi
agitation
<http://indianexpress.com/article/india/modi-government-violating-the-rights-of-non-hindi-speaking-citizens-dmk-4623998/>.
It is not an empty threat, considering DMK’s history of fighting any Hindi
imposition policy of the Centre in the past.

What has triggered DMK’s threat now is the President’s recent acceptance
<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/president-pranab-mukherjee-okays-call-for-all-speeches-to-be-in-hindi/articleshow/58213420.cms>
of the recommendation of the Committee of Parliament on Official Languages
for speeches to be delivered in Hindi by political dignitaries if they can
read and speak the language.

The President also in principle accepted to make Hindi a compulsory subject
from Class 8 to Class 10 in all Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)
and KendriyaVidyalaya schools. Even state-owned airline Air India has been
asked to use Hindi to issue tickets.

For Modi and the Sangh Parivar, “Hindu, Hindi, Hindustan" has always been
an article of faith. Iconic ideologue of the RSS Guru Golwalkar defined
Hindu Rashtra in his book *We or Our Nationhood Redefined* (1939, pp.
43-44) as follows: “In this country, Hindustan, the Hindu race, with its
Hindu religion, Hindu culture and Hindu language (the natural family of
Sanskrit and her offsprings) complete the Nation….”

Golwalkar saw nation-building as an exercise of bringing together these
five unities, geographical, racial, religious, cultural and linguistic.
This philosophy drives Hindutva groups to make Hindi the national language
of India.

There is no national language in India. The Constitution has no provision
for a "national language"; it only lists "official languages". India has
122 languages with over 10,000 speakers. The official business of the
central government takes place primarily in English and Hindi and there are
21 other languages, which are large enough to be recognised as official
languages.

Though the official census figure puts 45 per cent of the country’s
population as native Hindi speakers, this number is actually 26 per cent
<https://scroll.in/article/667570/read-the-fine-print-hindi-is-the-mother-tongue-of-only-26-per-cent-of-indians>
as the census lists Bhojpuri, Magadhi, Marwari and many other linguistic
traditions and dialects as Hindi speakers.

There is no doubt that Hindi is the biggest single language of the country,
but it is not the only language of the country. India is a country of
plurals, and that plurality is primarily of religions and languages.

Since Modi’s rise to power, he and his party are not only promoting
Hindu-first but also Hindi-first policy. The BJP has been always
anti-English and its leaders often refer to the country’s English-speaking
elites as "Macaulay's children".

[image: rss-embed_042417122905.jpg]*For Modi and the Sangh Parivar, “Hindu,
Hindi, Hindustan" has always been an article of faith. Photo: India Today*

A day after taking office as Prime Minister in May 2014, the Modi
government had issued an order asking officials to mandatorily use Hindi on
government social media accounts. After a backlash from the southern
states, the government later explained that the order only applies to
Hindi-speaking states.

In 2014, Modi, his ministers and party MPs all took oath in Hindi and some
even in Sanskrit. Modi even announced he would speak to other foreign
leaders in Hindi, not English. He addressed the UN General Assembly in
Hindi, not in Gujarati.

When US president Barack Obama visited India in 2015, Modi again spoke in
Hindi in official meetings (it is another matter that his name was not
written on his suit in Hindi alphabets).

Modi regime’s glaring push for Hindi risks widening the divide in a highly
diverse country like India. "Hindi imposition" faces open opposition from
the southern and eastern states. In 2014, an MLA in Odisha (Odia has been
given classical language status together with Tamil, Sanskrit, Kannada,
Telugu and Malayalam) was even taken to task by the Speaker of the
Legislative Assembly for using Hindi during the question hour.

I had directed more than a decade ago an international project for a UN
research organisation to analyse the use of language as a group’s identity
and power <http://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9781403949141> within a
nation-state project. For centuries, efforts have been made to achieve the
ideal nation state. This process involves projecting the cultural
traditions and language of one of the groups of the society as the national
culture and national language of the country.

The dominant group usually argues that use of multiple languages in
education and administration may bring long-term or permanent linguistic
division, and so opts for a single language policy in the name of
assimilation.

Some even suggest that the problems of minority groups can be resolved
through their successful lingual integration into the group in power. This
version of the assimilation process is misleading in two ways.

First, it only assumes that there is an active interest of the minority
group to assimilate, not for the pressure from the group in power. Second,
it implies that the minority group has a choice in the degree of
assimilation.

The use of one national language does not automatically produce ethnic
unity or shared culture. At best, it facilitates communication between
groups and gives the appearance of uniformity to the outside world.
However, invariably the imposition of one language provokes resistance from
the other language groups.

This state imposition of a one-language policy as part of a nation-building
exercise was the cause for the break-up of Pakistan and the creation of
Bangladesh. The common religious identity was not enough to keep the
country together. A single-language policy also triggered violent civil
wars in Sri Lanka and Turkey. Language is also at the roots of the ongoing
secessionist movements in Catalonia in Spain and Quebec in Canada.

In most countries, whether developing or industrialised, democratic or
authoritarian, members of language minorities mobilise to preserve their
languages by hook or crook.

As our UN project had found out, language is not only important to preserve
identity but also critical for the groups to get access to power. Language
domination is far more precarious for peace and stability of a state than
religious and cultural domination.

Anti-Hindi protest is not new to India, as it dates back to
pre-Independence period. Tamil Nadu has already witnessed two major
anti-Hindi agitations in the past. A DMK-led protest in 1965 had stopped
the thoughtless plan of the Lal Bahadur Shastri government to adopt Hindi
as single official language.

The new push by the present regime for Hindi has not only brought serious
disquiet in Tamil Nadu, but other non-Hindi speaking states are also
getting nervous.

Modi’s Hindu-first policy has given new life to the secessionist movement
in Kashmir in the last two years. But, if the Hindi-first policy is pursued
with the same vigour, India is probably going to witness many more such
movements in its southern and eastern parts.

As Telugu superstar Pawan Kalyan tweeted on April 23: “If the Centre
doesn’t respect sub-national identity in a country like ours; which is
known for cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity, then they are creating
a fertile breeding ground for separatist movements.”