Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not to local languages. He was Presiding over the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee and said 70% of the agenda of the Cabinet is prepared in Hindi and time has now come to make Hindi an important part of the unity of the country.
Hindi language is not our national language but it is the official language of India including English. Let us understand the foundation of people's opposition to Hindi-
Several political leaders particularly from South India seem to be offended by this comment. Former Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah tweeted, "As a Kannadiga, I take strong offence to @HMOIndia @AmitShah's comment on Official language & medium of communication. Hindi is not our National Language & we will never let it to be.”
Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin said this is against India’s ‘integrity and pluralism’.
TMC leader Sougata Roy said, “... The people of this country, where there is so much diversity, will never accept such a thing. Even India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had said that Hindi will not be imposed on non-Hindi speaking states until they are willing to accept it.”
The language data of the 2011 census tells that Hindi is India's fastest-growing language. According to this census data, there has been an increase of 100 million Hindi speaking people in the country i.e. 25.19 percent.
About 100 million people considered Hindi as their mother tongue. At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of Kashmiri and Gujarati speakers.
Looking at the complete picture of the Hindi language in India, about 520 million people consider Hindi as their mother tongue. The Bengali language is the second largest spoken language with 97 million speakers.
While Marathi, , ranks third, spoken by 83 million people. Before this, Telugu language was number third.
According to Article 344(1) and the 8th Schedule of the Indian Constitution, there are 22 official languages.
In 2018, the then External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had demanded the United Nations to make Hindi the official language. She argued that Hindi is a widely spoken language. Also, it is spoken in Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad, Tobago and Suriname and the Indian diaspora all over the world knows the Hindi language.
The argument of South India on this matter was that if a non-Hindi speaker Prime Minister from the south does not speak Hindi in India, will he be bound to speak Hindi in the United Nations?.
The inclusion of Hindi on the logic of being widely spoken, then in such a situation, Arabic language is spoken in 22 countries. Despite this, Arabic is not the official language of the UN.
Whereas Hindi is spoken on a large scale in only one country and in other countries it is not spoken fluently.
Both Hindi and English are our official languages. The differences regarding Hindi are not from today, but the foundation of its opposition had already been laid before independence.
In 1937, a movement against Hindi was seen in the Madras Presidency. At that time there was talk of teaching Hindi in the South at the behest of the Indian National Congress. People protested for almost three years and protests also turned violent several times.
Lord Erskine of Madras withdrew this decision after Congress's resignation in the year 1940. With independence, English was kept as the official language for a few years but several attempts were made to keep Hindi as the only official language.
However, the then Prime Minister Nehru enacted the Official Language Act in 1963, according to which both Hindi and English are the official languages ??of India.
Fearing of dilution of this Act, protests from South India were reported again in 1965, But then PM Indira Gandhi assured or guaranteed not to do so in 1967.
There have been instances in the history where a section of people sought separation on the basis of the language they speak. An example of this is the transformation of East Pakistan into Bangladesh.
In 1971, a new country Bangladesh came into existence. The biggest reason for its separation from Pakistan was related to the language itself.
West Pakistan was insisting on the use of the Urdu language in East Pakistan. Whereas the people there loved their Bengali language very much.
This rule being imposed on them became a big reason for their rebellion and the result is in front of us as a separate country in the form of Bangladesh. However, even though it may be argued that one language will bring uniformity to India, we should never forget that the beauty of India lies in its diversity.
At the same time, it also needs to be understood that Devanagari Hindi is not our national language but it is an official language. None of the languages ??of India is the national language. In such a situation, we would not like to allow our country to be divided on the basis of language.
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