Will Hindi as an official language at the UN reflect India's linguistic diversity or denigrate it? Hari Narayan and Sruthisagar Yamunan take sides on the issue.
The fight for domestic parity
In attempting to make Hindi an official language, the government seems to ignore the diversity of the country, along with the struggles regional languages have always faced.
Last month, addressing the media ahead of the World Hindi Conference, Union External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, revealed that the Centre was actively trying to get 129 votes in the United Nations to make Hindi an official language of the international body.
On Thursday, at the inauguration of the conference, Prime Minister Narendra Modi went one step further. He said forgetting Hindi would be a great loss to the nation and pegged the language, along with English and Chinese, as potential world leaders in the digital space.
Hindi conferences since 1975 have consistently hung on to this demand of making the language the face of the country in the United Nations. Successive governments have paid lip service to the call by promising concerted efforts. But any move on this front has met with criticism from regional parties.
In the latest round, DMK president M. Karunanidhi called Ms. Swaraj’s announcement a challenge to the very plurality of India, which is perhaps one of the most linguistically diverse in the entire world.
What took everyone by surprise was the pronouncement by the Minister that India was willing to bear the cost that according Hindi this position would bring — a whopping $41 million a year, which is approximately Rs. 275 crore.
While Mr. Karunanidhi’s position might be deemed too radical, the External Affairs Ministry’s move has to be looked in the backdrop of the fight for linguistic parity that has continued for over 50 years.
The language problem
One of the crucial reasons attributed to the rise of the DMK to power was the 1965 anti-Hindi struggle in Tamil Nadu, which saw violence break out against the phasing out of English as an associate official language. It took a direct assurance from Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, that English would remain in use for official purposes till the States wanted it, to quell the riots.
In his sharp analysis of the move to divide the States on linguistic basis, B.R. Ambedkar wrote that there was no Article more controversial in the Constituent Assembly than the one making Hindi the national language. When the matter was put to vote after discussions, it led to a tie with 78 votes for and against in the first round. At a later point, Hindi won by a single vote, showcasing how sharply divided the country was in projecting a single language as its main identity (Thoughts on Linguistic States-1955).However, it has to be stated that Ambedkar was pro-Hindi in the analysis though many of his predictions of "peril" in non-acceptance of Hindi have not come true.
Proponents of the idea of making Hindi an official language in the United Nations point to a logic that they feel is commonsensical. More speak Hindi in India than any other language. This is indeed a fact that cannot be disproved. The Census 2001, which is the latest data we have on the linguistic question, says 42.2 crore people listed Hindi as their mother tongue. But a deeper look would reveal that this number includes those speaking other languages similar to Hindi. This category accounts for 16.41 of the 42.2 crore.
Given the status of India as the second most populous country, the idea is that if a language has to represent the country in the comity of nations, it has to be the one most widely spoken. This automatically qualifies Hindi as the appropriate candidate.
However, the larger point that is missed is that the majority (58 per cent) in India are not those with Hindi as mother tongue. It might be the single largest spoken language but not the language of every one.
Furthermore, in a democracy, mere numbers cannot be the yardstick for according a special status, for such a setup would put minority rights under grave risk and endanger the concept of equality. In the 1950s, the founder of the DMK, C.N. Annadurai, retorted to the numbers argument in his unique style by wondering why the crow was not made the national bird despite possessing an overwhelming majority.
The question of parity
When Lal Bahadur Shastri assured the continuance of English in official use, it was an implicit recognition of the assertion of rights and the fight for equality by linguistic minorities. The imposition of Hindi was seen as a direct invasion by hegemony into a crucial aspect of regional identity.
Therefore, it is not a surprise that the same arguments that thundered in the 1965 agitations are invoked in 2015 as well. While those in the Centre may point to the resolutions of the Hindi conferences to push the language into the United Nations, the regions are bound to see the move as hypocritical given how their larger demand for domestic parity of languages has been put in the back burner for logistical reasons.
How is it that the Centre, which has refused to heed to the demand of making all 22 languages in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution as official languages, is willing to pledge Rs. 275 crore of taxpayers’ money annually to put Hindi in the UN? Would that money not help in ensuring the use of 21 other languages other languages in the Parliament? If money is not the problem, what keeps the Centre from accepting the demand?
While resolutions in Hindi conferences can persuade the MEA to push for 129 votes for the language in the UN, the demands of regional language conferences, especially World Tamil Conferences, to make their language an official one by amending the Constitution, have fell on deaf ears.
Another aspect is the utter lack of consultation before making the decision, despite awareness that the move would entail strong reactions. Matters of foreign policy are in the exclusive realm of the Centre. But the question of a representative language is much more than mere foreign policy.
The larger context
Apart from the concept itself, the push for Hindi will be naturally viewed within the larger context of what the Modi-led government has been attempting since assuming power. In September last year, following a strong protest from Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, the University Grants Commission was forced to take back a circular asking universities to teach Hindi as a primary language in undergraduate courses.
A few months before that, parties across regions slammed the Centre for seeking to promote the use of Hindi in official accounts in Twitter and Facebook. That the BJP comes from a stable that promoted the idea of ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’ was also a point raised by parties in Tamil Nadu, which has remained the hotbed of language politics. Even on Thursday, Mr. Modi did not fail to invoke the Ram Charit Manaswhen he played hard for Hindi.
The very fact that a robust infrastructure for translation, with a huge recurring expense, has to be put in place for the use of Hindi in the UN suggests that an overwhelming majority there would not be able to understand documents in Hindi. Thus, it is more an act of symbolism to assert India’s growing power than of any great substance.
Given the issues involved, it is obvious that the move to push Hindi into the UN is seen as an attempt to project the entire country as a nation of Hindi speakers even as linguistic parity remains a dream in the domestic corridors of power.
Read the counter-view: Give the common crow its rightful space
Hindi is not one language though it is mostly written in Devanagari script. It is an imperfect amalgam of several rich languages.
As Tamil Nadu, one of the most prosperous States in the country, showcases its economic muscle through the Global Investors Summit, what is considered by many as muscle-flexing of a different kind is being played out in Bhopal. The 10th World Hindi Conference, which, due to political circumstances has acquired a tinge of controversy, is being held in the capital of Madhya Pradesh. Juxtapose this on External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj’s announcement earlier this month regarding the government’s intention to seek official status for Hindi at the United Nations, and the echoes of ‘Hindi imposition’ that formed the anti-Hindi protest movements exactly half a century ago would haunt the cultural corridors of Chennai.
These voices are most pronounced in the States south of the Vindhyas, especially from in the State whose rich language, Tamil, is considered by many to be the farthest from Hindi. However, in this melee where the Hindi-Tamil divide is being viewed as an unbridgeable dichotomy, a few salient points are lost.
To paraphrase what the respected ex-Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, C.N. Annadurai, once said to make an argument against Hindi as a national languages solely on the basis of its numerical superiority, Hindi or Hindustani, is the ‘common crow’ of Indian languages. It is ubiquitous, its usage found in different forms across most of the country, its prevalence so commonplace that many of us take it for granted when carrying out our daily activities. Yet, it is aesthetically pleasing in its own way, its simplicity and easy maneuverability is what makes it so uncomplicated to learn. From the experience of those who, despite having little background in Hindi, found it easy to master it once they settled in different parts of the country and from my own personal experience, I can attest to the fact that there couldn’t be an easier language to master among the 22 official languages of our country.
The reason? Hindi is not one language though it is mostly written in Devanagari script. It is an imperfect amalgam of several rich languages — like Urdu, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and Maithili and several dialects spoken in the northern parts of the country like Awadhi, Bagheli, Chhattisgarhi and Bhojpuri — which, to quote Gandhiji, makes it one big binding force for the nation-in-the-making that is India. Further, mastery in Hindi opens the doors for mastery — not just working knowledge — of several other languages belonging to the Indo-Aryan family like Bangla, Marathi, Gujarati and Punjabi.
To draw a parallel, mastery over Tamil will open doors for mastery over at least three other South Indian languages — Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu, all belonging to the Dravidian family. However, because of its rich heritage stretching back to centuries and because of the vastness of its literature, it would take considerably longer period of time to gain such a mastery. Hence, no doubt, Tamil is a far more purer language in terms of its status. But, like Sanskrit, knowledge of its literature remains limited in reach due to the same vastness. Mastery over it is not difficult but it is surely more time-consuming.
Though many would consider them anachronistic, it is surely interesting to know about Mahatma Gandhi’s views on making Hindi a representative language. He said, to quote an authoritative source for Gandhian literature, for a language to be considered representative of the country, it should meet five parameters. The first, it should be easy to learn, at least “for the official class.” Second, activities pertaining to the country, including political, should be possible throughout the country in the language. Third, it should be the speech of the majority inhabitants of the country. Fourth, it should be easy to learn for the whole of the country. And, fifth, weight ought not to be put for momentary or short-lived conditions. He felt that Hindustani, the version of Hindi that borrows liberally from Urdu, Persian, Arabic and other languages, was the most-likely candidate. I’m sure he would have felt the same about its possible inclusion at world bodies like the U.N.
He was in favour of keeping his windows open for difficult cultures to enter, without getting swept off his feet by any. At the United Nations, there are six languages that enjoy official status. They are: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. These languages, to quote Wikipedia and U.N., are spoken by 2.6 billion people, less than half the population, across the world and are official languages in more than half the nations.
Including Hindi will make the body more representative and open the doors for other languages, Tamil and Telugu included, to enter. Being culturally and linguistically better-represented will also help in strengthening India’s bid for Permanent Membership in the not-too-distant future. Also, Hindi is already an official language at UNESCO. Making it official, sooner or later, at the other bodies will only be a logical move.
All it will involve is adoption of resolution by a simple majority and final passage by a two-third majority at the UNSC. These steps can also be initiated for other Indian languages later.
It is not my objective to say that Hindi is the only language that meets the criteria among Indian languages or Hindi can be the only language that can seek to meet the criteria for an official language at the U.N. Gandhiji’s objective or that of many of the learned advocates of Hindi now, was not to glorify the Sanskrit roots of the language, unlike that of the imposition lobby which sought to promote a highly Sanskritised version of the language half a century ago, acts that repelled many scholars and intellectuals, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru included. It was their act of attempted imposition, countered by anti-Hindi agitation here, that resulted in an entire generation of Tamil speakers being deprived of this sweet language. It was as if we banished the common crow from visiting our kitchen windows.
None of the progressive-minded thinkers have ever considered it wise to impose it on the non-Hindi speaking regions, like those in the South and those in the Northeast. However, many of them have been of the opinion that with greater integration, there would be better exchange of cultures and consequently, Hindi would not only lend some of its unique features to these distinct languages but also borrow generously from them. This happened liberally in the case of the other three South Indian languages — Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam. This did not happen in the case of the most ancient and the richest language in terms of literature, Tamil. What could have been the reason?
The apprehensions of the ‘anti-imposition agitationists’ 50 years back were genuine. They feared that once Hindi was made the ‘sole’ official language for the purposes of communication, people from regions where Hindi was not the prime language spoken, especially those living this side of the Vindhyas, would stand to lose out on educational and employment opportunities. Fifty years later, the debate stands almost settled. India doesn’t have a national language. There are 22 languages that come under Schedule VIII of the Constitution.
At present, a move to get Hindi the status of an international language is being given a political angle. It is unfortunate that a language spoken by nearly half the population of this country, by 490 million people worldwide, next only to Mandarin, is facing such a hurdle. There are voices that say that spending crores on getting business transacted internationally will be a boondoggle. Should that be held as an argument against Hindi’s recognition? And should recognition to Hindi preclude recognition to any other language? Other Indian languages — Telugu by 70 million people and Tamil by 68 million people — can be considered the peacocks, richer in splendour but limited in diversity. However, it is Hindi, the common crow, that is the most representative of all.
Parallels are being drawn to the imposition of Sanskrit, Gita and Yoga by this government. However, we need to consider that India’s quest at the U.N. high table is due since 2010, during the time of the previous government.
Another point whose salience is lost in the melee is that Hindi is not the only language whose recognition is due in the U.N. A more many-splendoured and mellifluous language, Bangla, the second most spoken language in the country, is also to be considered in the near future. However, the windows of recognition to it will open only if we support Hindi being approved.
If the countrymen from this part of the Vindhyas feel that this is not time for Hindi to be made a language there, considering that pro-Hindutva leanings of the current dispensation, let the move be placed on hold now. Let the government’s ideology run its course. Let the debate over Hindi’s usage, in a world more connected and more cosmopolitan than what it was 50 years back, acquire new dimensions. But please don’t bring back the ‘anti-Hindi’ mood of 1965, please don’t create a false dichotomy between Hindi and Tamil, and please don’t give more credence to the revered rationalist Periyar’s slogan of ‘Vizhga Hindi’ (“down with Hindi”). These anxieties were genuine at one point of time. However, they are past their expiry date and there is no question of forced imposition on a State that is economically and culturally more diverse than it was 50 years back. To oppose Hindi by virtue of being ‘anti-Hindi’ rather than ‘pro-Tamil’ will, unfortunately, unnecessarily and impractically, push us 50 years back.
Let the common crow make its presence felt in the comity of nations. It will be a humble but resplendent representative of our Indian culture. It will also open the doors for the other official languages of India to find representation at U.N. and other world bodies.
