India is a nation without a national language. Let’s embrace this 

News: Recently, the Home Minister of India specifically mentioned the use of Hindi language in the North-eastern states. He has announced to make Hindi compulsory in all North-eastern states.

Argument for and against promoting Hindi language in India  

– Idea of nationalism cannot be imagined without an indigenous national language of the country. 

Argument Against 

– In India, language is business-as-usual and is the symbol of competing interests of federal and centrist powers. 

– In fact, the constituent assembly debates on language were very long and extremely charged. It implies that deep sentiments are attached to language in India.  

Indians manage to communicate across linguistic divides. In fact, Both English and Hindi work as vehicular languages, sometimes one and sometimes the other. Therefore, there is no need to make Hindi lingua franca of India. 

The language is not simply about communication in India. It has the potential of being used as a weapon if one language is imposed upon others. For example, the 1st public immolation in independent India was on the issue of language. 

India has a unique history of being a nation without a national language. India has a different model.  

A language evolves slowly. The government cannot force it to grow. For example, Hindi language is the youngest language among the languages included in the 8th Schedule. However, other scheduled languages have a long history. They have abundance of historical literature than Hindi literature. 

English is the global lingua franca. Furthermore, Mandarin is the world’s 2nd most spoken language. It is the language of China which is the rising superpower. And, Hindi ranks third among the languages. 

India’s economic growth has been driven by booming IT and IT-enabled services business in India. These services were driven by India’s English-knowing population.  

As per 2011 Census, around 69 crore Indians remain non-Hindi speakers. Thus, Hindi language does not form a majority language of India.  

What are the issues in the growth story of Hindi language? 

India’s Census data is not realistic. The data is collected for the combined Hindi language group instead of Hindi language alone. For example, it includes Bhojpuri, and other languages of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand. 

In fact, the strength of Hindi speakers would have gone down, if the Census had not included the other languages under the Hindi group.  

The Hindi/Hindu majoritarianism is leading to present language policy changes which aimed at making Hindi compulsory.  

International investors prefer the English language. For example, Vietnam is a more attractive destination than India. 50% of the Vietnamese population can speak English. In India, this share is 10% only. 

Lack of focus on English can lead to loss of economic opportunity for the young Indians in the emerging knowledge economy. For example, West Bengal witnessed this when English was dropped in the 1990s. 

The big power of the world acquired their global dominance without any meaningful knowledge of English. For example, less than 10% of the Chinese population speak English. 

Way Forward 

The rest of the world needs to learn from the unique model of India. India should not imitate the one-language-one-nation model. 

The Parliamentary Committee for the promotion of Hindi should consider the declining trend of other Indian languages. It should make the Census data for Hindi more realistic than unrealistic one. It should understand the realism linked to India’s multilingualism, the federal structure of India and the issue of language sensitivity across the states. 

The cinema and related industry can promote languages. For example, the Hindi language and Bhojpuri has seen high visibility in cinema, literature, newspapers, songs, theatre and publication industry 

English should be made compulsory as a first language in state schools. Further, the students should be allowed to choose a second language from a list of Indian and foreign languages (Mandarin should be one).  

Source: This post is based on the following articles –

– “India is a nation without a national language. Let’s embrace this” published in the Indian Express on 14th Apr 22

– “The real script behind the call for a Hindi-India” published in The Hindu on 14th Apr 22

– “Communication breakdown” published in the Business Standard on 14th April 22.