Hindi, the ‘national’ language

At the trailer launch of the film ‘R: The Deadliest Gangster Ever’, Kannada film actor Sudeep kicked up a row with a statement about Hindi. “Everyone says that a Kannada film was made on pan-India level. But a small correction is that Hindi is not a national language at all,” he said. The Kannada actor was praising blockbusters from the south India, Bahubali, RRR, and KGF, and “… the movies we are releasing today are being watched all over the world. South directors are making their films for the entire world to see.” Later, Sudeep tweeted, “Correct it, Hindi is no more the National Language, it’s no more a National language”! He used the hashtag, #stophindilmposition

This statement came close on the heels of the suggestion by Union Home Minister Amit Shah about making Hindi the alternative to the English across the country. The Home Minister said this while presiding over the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee.

The Kannada star’s comment did not go down well with the Bollywood, the Hindi film industry, and actor Ajay Devgn took to Twitter to assert that Hindi “was and will always be the national language”. In his tweet written in Hindi, Devgn questioned the Kannada actor why his films were dubbed in Hindi if it (Hindi) wasn’t the national language.

This led to a Twitter spat between the supporters of Hindi and those opposing the imposition of the language across the country. Karnataka politicians united against Devgn and slammed him for the Hindi claim. “Hindi was never & will never be our National Language. It is the duty of every Indian to respect linguistic diversity of our country. Each language has its own rich history for its people to be proud of. I am proud to be a Kannadiga,” said leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah. Former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy said the actor (Devgn) was speaking like a spokesperson for “autocratic BJP and its Hindi nationalism”.

The south India has always been against the imposition of Hindi, an Indo-Aryan language on the Dravidian-speaking people.

The spat also brought the focus back to the debate: Should India have Hindi as the national language? Because currently the country does not have any national language even though Indian Constitution has 22 languages in the Eighth Schedule. These 22 may be called the scheduled languages but the Constitution is largely silent on the issue of the national language. The Article 343 of the Official Languages Act only calls Hindi in Devanagari script and English the “official languages” and this means these two languages should be used for official correspondence.

So, why did Ajay Devgn say Hindi was and will always be the national language? Maybe because of the popularity of Hindi in the country, especially after Narendra Modi ascended the throne of Prime Minister of India. Modi takes pride in Hindi and speaks the language even on foreign soils. Heads of several other nations always speak in their mother tongue even when they go visiting other countries. (Of course, interpreters tag along them for the benefit of non-speakers of their language!) The mother tongue of Modi is Gujarati, which is among the 22 languages in the Constitution, but he prefers to speak Hindi maybe because Hindi is the most popular language in the country.

According to the data of Census 2011 on Language and Mother Tongue, 43.63 percent of Indians speak Hindi as their mother tongue. (When the data of Census 2021 is out, this figure is sure to touch 50%) The second most spoken language was Bengali, which 8.03 percent Indians called their mother language. Marathi, Telugu and Tamil follow the list, in that order.

Among the ten largest languages in India, Hindi is the only one that saw the proportion of its speakers rise between 2001 and 2011.

The issue of a national language has often come up in courts. In 2010, a Gujarat court said, “Normally, in India, majority of the people have accepted Hindi as a national language and many people speak Hindi and write in Devanagari script but there is nothing on record to suggest that any provision has been made or order issued declaring Hindi as a national language of the country.”

Historically, Mahatma Gandhi wanted Hindi to be declared the national language of India. In his address to the Gujarat Education Conference at Bharuch in 1917, Gandhi said Hindi is the only language that could be adopted as ‘Official as well as National Language of India’ because it is the language spoken by majority of the Indians. “Hindi has the potential of being used as a social, economic, religious and political communication link,” he said.

But the Constitution makers shied away from this and adopted Hindi in Devanagari script only as the official language of the Union. There’s no problem with this. The problem is with the fact that along with Hindi, English is also the official language. When the Home Minister spoke in the Parliamentary Official Language Committee, he probably wanted to rid English of the ‘official language’ tag. And why not? India has been an independent country for more than 70 years but continues to carry the burden of once being a colony of the British.

At the time of framing and adoption of the Constitution, it was envisaged that English will continue to be used for executive, judicial and legal purposes only for an initial period of 15 years, that is until 1965, but unfortunately, English continues to be the preferred language of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary even today. And this, when Article 351 directs the Centre to take appropriate steps to promote and propagate Hindi language so that it may serve as a medium of expression and connecting language for all the elements of composite culture.

It is about time that Hindi is be given the status of the national language for being the language of almost half the Indians. Native speakers of South Indian languages should understand that the imposition of Hindi is not against their regional languages but against English, a foreign language. The non-Hindi-speaking states can do their official work in Hindi and the regional language. Probably that was the import of Amit Shah’s statement and the intention behind Ajay Devgn’s tweet.

Also read story on native language.