Why hindi is national language of india

Now Reading: 70 years on, India is still fighting over a national language. Small Medium Large. The origins of the debate Before Independence, English was obviously the sole official language for all administrative, legislative and judicial purposes. But as the freedom struggle picked up pace, the concept of a national language to bind together a diverse nation took root.

He was one of the many leaders promoting Hindi or Hindustani for this role. The idea was to give a distinct identity to the nation, so they felt the most popular language in the country would be the best fit. But those from the southern states were staunchly against this — Chennai, in particular, has borne the brunt of several violent anti-Hindi agitations over the years — while other leaders pushed for other languages like Sanskrit and Bengali.

Two languages are sure to divide people. What is the difference between official and national language? The two terms cannot be used interchangeably.

In other words, it is seen as a symbol of national unity. The solution, co-authored by parliamentarians N Gopalaswami Ayyangar and KM Munshi called for letting English continue as the official language along with Hindi for a period of 15 years, with an option of an extension granted to Parliament. It was hoped that by January , Hindi would emerge as the sole official language of the country.

But in , the government enacted the Official Languages Act, which provided an extension to the continued use of English as an additional official language. In an attempt to quell violent anti-Hindi agitations in South India then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru further gave an assurance that English would not be substituted by Hindi until the non-Hindi speaking people desired a change. This assurance was honoured by an amendment to the above Act after his death in The Indira Gandhi government also introduced the National Policy on Education in , which first formulated the three-language formula.

Where does the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution fit in? Recognising that India is ultimately a multilingual country, the framers of the Constitution also allowed states to adopt one or more regional languages — or the language used in the state — apart from Hindi as the language for official purposes. For instance, Asomiya is the official language of Assam while Uttar Pradesh lists Hindi as its official language.

The Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, hailed as the most important language policy statement in India, identifies certain vernacular languages as scheduled languages. At the time of independence, there were 14 scheduled languages, which today has expanded to In addition, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs, there are standing demands for inclusion of 38 more languages in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution out of 99 non-scheduled languages currently. As per the census, India also boasts 1, other languages.

The bottomline, according to Gusain, is that since , Indian language policy has focussed on promoting regional languages rather than taking up the issue of a single official or national language. What is the case for Hindi as an official language? It is not only the most-common language in India, but also the fourth-most spoken language in the world. More states and Union Territories speak Hindi as the second language — as many as 14 in total — compared to 12 states where it is the first language.

Since pre-Independence, this has been the most repeated argument in favour of Hindi as the sole official language, if not the national language. The supporters of Hindi language further decry English as a symbol of slavery, which divides the nation into elites and the far-larger vulnerable masses.

The argument here is that an indigenous, well-developed language ought to be a far better option than the language of the nation that had long subjugated India. A more statistically backed argument is that while other languages in the country may be declining, Hindi speakers are growing. In contrast, the number of people who speak any of the four largest Dravidian languages — Tamil, Kannada, Telugu or Malayalam — are steadily dipping.

Is the government pushing this agenda? The Modi government has made no bones about its preference for the Hindi language. Soon after the party came to power in , the home ministry's official language department had issued a controversial circular asking all ministries and departments, public-sector undertakings and banks to give prominence to Hindi on official social media accounts. It had also announced a cash reward for those employees who do most of their official work in Hindi. Then, in , the draft National Education Policy — before it was revised and rolled out last year — set off a wave of protests in South India over the perceived imposition of Hindi as a third language in schools.

The states may choose the languages mentioned in the Schedule as their official language. Since, the Constitution is silent on a national language, the task to determine the same has fallen on the Courts. In this controversy, two competing arguments are raised i. The side in favour of Hindi states that having a national language would unite the entire country, whereas the other side believes that imposition of Hindi would put non-Hindi speaking people at a great disadvantage.

Additionally, the critics cite India's diversity to state that there is no single language spoken by the majority in India, then how can one language be the uniting factor.

It should be noted however, that such remarks were made in passing, without a formal binding declaration and hence, are not binding. In fact, in Amrutlal's case, the Court categorically rejected a petition, where a party had argued that Hindi was the national language of India.

The lack of a conclusive Supreme Court decision on the issue might raise questions, however, the decision in Amrutlal seems to be the most pertinent decision on the issue currently. Furthermore, the decisions against Hindi, are well reasoned and undertake a detailed discussion on the issue, giving them a higher persuasive value than the others. Therefore, in my opinion Hindi is merely an official language and not a national language.

If Hindi is declared as the national language, every citizen of the country would be required to learn the same. Such a situation would definitely benefit a north Indian as Hindi is the most prominent language in the region over citizens from the other regions, as the latter would be expected to learn a language from scratch. In effect, members of northern India would be placed at an advantage over the others, which is wrong. This concern of disadvantage is addressed with the use of English, as the same is a neutral language not attached to any region.

Additionally, given the relevance of the language globally, its use benefits a developing country like India. The governments continue to push for Hindi aggressively, a recent example of which is the controversial three language formula where the Union mandated teaching of Hindi in all government schools. Nehru had rightly said that Hindi should not be imposed till the non-Hindi speaking states agreed. However, despite their disagreement, the central governments have forcefully imposed Hindi on them.

Justice Dhavan in Jayakant Mishra's case had very aptly addressed this trend. He opined,. A person who does not speak Hindi is no less a nationalist than any other citizen who comes from a Hindi speaking State. That Hindi may be encouraged so that it becomes a standardised link language is another aspect. But, such an effort should not be pushed so far as to offend the sensibilities of other people of India who speak their languages and are equally proud of them.

The Constitution of India balances with a sense of sensitivity and equality amongst the people to give due respect to ethnic identity of the peoples, their language and their culture. The Constitution of India speaks of a composite culture of the nation.

It has been rightly said that India is like a beautiful carpet woven in a design that has a language of diverse cultural representations woven by knots tightly holding the entire fabric of the nation. The dialects are spoken in the regions of Bihar i. Now, all of these dialects are also covered under the term Hindi. Basic Linguistic Features: Hindi shares major linguistic characteristics with other Indo-Aryan languages.

The length of vowels is phonemic. All vowels can be nasalized, and nasalization is phonemic. Nouns are inflected for number, gender, and case. There are two numbers: singular and plural, two grammatical genders: masculine and feminine; and two cases: direct and oblique. Nouns are assigned one of the two genders.

The gender of inanimate objects is not predictable from the form or meaning. Pronouns are inflected for number and case. Adjectives are of two types: declinable and indeclinable. The first type generally, the —a: ending adjectives is inflected for number, gender, and case, whereas the second type is not.

Verbs are inflected for person, number, gender, tense, mood, and aspect. There are three tenses: present, past, and future; three moods: imperative, indicative, and subjunctive; two aspects: imperfective and perfective.