{"id":182486,"date":"2022-05-03T21:15:30","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T15:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=182486"},"modified":"2022-05-03T21:15:30","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T15:45:30","slug":"the-debate-on-the-national-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/the-debate-on-the-national-language\/","title":{"rendered":"The debate on the national language"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h5><b>What is the News?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently, remarks by a Hindi actor that Hindi is the national language of India sparked a controversy over the status of the language under the Constitution.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>What is the status of Hindi in India?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Under Article 343 of the Constitution, the official language of the Union shall be Hindi in the Devanagari script. The international form of Indian numerals will be used for official purposes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, the Constituent Assembly was bitterly divided on the question with members from States that did not speak Hindi opposing the declaration of Hindi as a national language.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ultimately, it was decided that the Constitution will only speak of an \u2018official language\u2019. And <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">that English would continue to be used for a period of 15 years. After 15 years, Parliament may by law decide on the use of English and the use of the Devanagari form of numbers for specified purposes.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>What happened after 15 years?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Official Languages Act, 1963 was passed in anticipation of the expiry of the 15-year period during which the Constitution originally allowed the use of English for official purposes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Act provided for the continuing use of English, notwithstanding the expiry of the 15-year period.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>What is the Eighth Schedule?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Eighth Schedule contains a list of languages in the country. Initially, there were 14 languages in the schedule, but now there are 22 languages. There is no description of the sort of languages that are included or will be included in the Eighth Schedule.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, there are only two references to these languages in the text of the Constitution.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Article 344(1): <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It provides for the formation of a Commission by the President which should\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">have a Chairman and members representing these scheduled languages. The purpose of <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the Commission is to make recommendations for the progressive use of Hindi for official\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">purposes of the Union and for restricting the use of English.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Article 351<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: It says it is the Union government\u2019s duty to promote the spread of Hindi so that it becomes \u201ca medium of expression for all elements of the composite culture of India\u201d and also to assimilate elements of forms and expressions from Hindustani and languages listed in the Eighth Schedule.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5><b>What is the three-language formula?<\/b><\/h5>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since the 1960s, the Centre\u2019s education policy documents speak of teaching three languages \u2014 Hindi, English and one regional language in the Hindi-speaking States and Hindi, English and the official regional language in other States.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, in practice, only some states teach both their predominant language and Hindi, besides English. In States where Hindi is the official language, a third language is rarely taught as a compulsory subject.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tamil Nadu has been steadfastly opposing the three-language formula and sticks to teaching Tamil and English. It argues that those who need to know Hindi can learn on their own.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Source: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The post is based on the article <\/span><b>\u201cThe debate on the national language\u201d <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">published in<\/span> <b>The Hindu<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on<\/span><b> 2nd May 2022.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What is the News? Recently, remarks by a Hindi actor that Hindi is the national language of India sparked a controversy over the status of the language under the Constitution. What is the status of Hindi in India? Under Article 343 of the Constitution, the official language of the Union shall be Hindi in the&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/the-debate-on-the-national-language\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The debate on the national language<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1566,1760,9],"tags":[10498],"class_list":["post-182486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-factly-articles","category-polity-and-nation","category-public","tag-the-hindu","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}