[lg policy] SSP's formula to replace English

[Harold Schiffman]

The Samyukta Socialist Party has accepted as its language policy a
two-language formula to replace English as the medium of education and
administration in the country. The policy emphasised the need to learn one
of the regional languages other than Hindi by the people of Hindi States
and Hindi by the people of non-Hindi States. Use of English, by the
non-Hindi States, has been favoured only for the time being, in case they
wanted to use it in their correspondence with the Centre. The language
policy resolution was yesterday [December 31, Lohianagar (Gaya)] discussed
at the delegates session of the party’s National Conference. The resolution
got overwhelming support from the delegates of almost all the States,
specially from the South. Mr. Dorai Babu of Tamil Nadu, who seconded the
resolution, and Mr. Chandrasekharan of Kerala, who supported it, said the
language policy as embodied in the resolution was the only solution to the
language controversy. The resolution favoured knowledge of one of the State
language mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution along with
Hindi as essential for recruitment to Central Government services and of
candidates from Hindi States. It said “This conference wants to clearly
declare to the people of the country that all the languages mentioned in
the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution such as Tamil, Telugu, Bengali,
Sindhi, Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, etc., are all national languages
and there can be no conflict among them and their progress is
inter-dependent. The real conflict is between English and the State
languages. Once English is removed all these languages will grow in their
status and richness.” Mr. S.M. Joshi, SSP Chairman told a Press conference
that Hindi alone could be the link language of India. But he warned against
fanaticism or rigidity on the part of Hindi zealots and said that no
language could be imposed on the people against their wishes. He pleaded
that people in the North should learn at least one South Indian language to
win over the sympathy and affection of the people of the South. The SSP and
the D.M.K., Mr. Joshi said, had no difference over the language issue and
both of them wanted to oust English and develop the regional languages.


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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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