India Divided Over National Language
Indian Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah speaks at a Hindi Diwas (Hindi Day) event in Delhi. (Flickr)
Indian politicians have been in an uproar ever since Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah spoke in favor of making Hindi the official language of the state on September 14.
Shah, who is also the president of India’s current ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), spoke on National Hindi Day about the need for a unifying language. He said that such a language should be Hindi, as it is the predominant language of the northern regions of India and has more than 300 million native speakers, and another 300 million people speak it as a second language.
While at an event celebrating Hindi Day in Delhi, Shah said, “India is a country of different languages, and every language has its own importance, but it is very important to have a language which should become the identity of India in the world. If one language can unite the country today, it is the widely-spoken Hindi language.”
Many politicians viewed Shah’s suggestions as an unjust push of Hindi onto non-speakers, who make up almost half of India’s population.
“We have been continuously waging protest against imposition of Hindi,” said M.K. Stalin, leader of the South Indian DMK Party, the third largest party in India’s lower house of Parliament. “Today's remarks made by Amit Shah gave us a jolt [and] will affect the unity of the country…. There is an attempt to impose Hindi dividing the spirit of our country. The DMK is ready to defend the integrity of the country."
Others who spoke out against Shah’s words included the former-president of the Congress Party and prime minister candidate Rahul Gandhi, who tweeted, “India’s many languages are not her weakness.”
India is a linguistically diverse country with 22 official languages, as each state is allowed to decide which language to use in its own affairs. The languages are divided up into two major linguistic families: the Indo-Aryan languages (Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi) of the northern states, and the Dravidian languages (Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada), which are a part of their own distinct family and are primarily spoken in the southern states.
The Constitution of India declares that the official languages of the union for conducting affairs are Hindi and English, but India does not have an official national language. Southern Dravidian-speaking states have long resisted the spread of Hindi. They feel that it erodes their own languages and cultures and that it is unfair that they have to learn a national language.
After the initial uproar, Shah immediately responded with a follow-up tweet: “India’s many languages and dialects are our greatest strength. But the country having one language is how foreign languages do not dominate. Therefore the creators of our constitution unanimously accepted Hindi as the national language.” The “foreign language” that Shah refers to is English, which is spoken by approximately 100 million Indians and is often considered prestigious due to its prevalent use in higher education and business.
Shah made further clarifying remarks to attempt to defuse the situation on September 18. “A child’s proper mental growth is possible only when the child studies in [the] mother tongue. Mother tongue does not mean Hindi. It is the language of a particular state, like Gujarati in my state. But there should be one language in the country. If someone wants to learn another language, it should be Hindi… I have just made the request,” he said. “I have failed to understand what is wrong in that.”