Linguistic Discrimination and India

 

Imposition of a language is also an imposition of a culture as well as history and even emotions. Language never comes alone. It is an enormous package burdened with a heavy baggage. India’s present rulers cannot be unaware of it. Nevertheless, they are hellbent on imposing Hindi on the entire nation.

In the 37^th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee on 8 April 2022, Amit Shah declared majestically that Hindi would be made compulsory in all schools of the Northeast till class 10. 22,000 teachers were already recruited to teach Hindi to the Northeasterners, the Home Minister said. He also exhorted all Indians to use Hindi instead of English for communication among people whose mother tongues are different.

“One nation, one language” is a pet slogan of Amit Shah’s. He raised it rather vociferously in June 2019, soon after the Draft New Education Policy was made public. The irony would not have been lost on those who were following the principles of the NEP. Plurality is one of the foundations of the NEP. It seeks to encourage diversity and creativity. It supports multiculturalism and multilingualism. Yet the Home Minister clings rather like a mischievous imbecile on One Nation One Language! [Another matter of curious fun is that the NEP tries to promote Sanskrit among all students with yet another slogan of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat!]

Does our government really know what it wants? Or is it playing some games just for the sake of hanging on to power for as long as possible?

Whatever the answers are, certain sections of the population end up being victims of linguistic discrimination when the Home Minister’s slogan moves from words into action. And vision statements like the NEP can gape like gargoyles on grotesquely characterless edifices.

India has too many languages for any one language to boss over. As the 3 June 2022 issue of the Frontline says, “In a country as multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-linguistic, multi-sartorial and multi-culinary as India, where multilingualism is increasingly becoming the norm, it is impossible to conceive of one language to the exclusion of all others.” This issue of the Frontline is dedicated to India’s quintessential multilinguality. It says that India has around 700 full-fledged languages, 1800 mother tongues, numerous dialects and many other minor/unrecognised languages. All India Radio broadcasts in 24 languages and 150 dialects. Will all these languages give way to the proposed majestic march of Hindi? What a futile dream! And for what purpose unless it is some cheap political ends? 

The Frontline goes on to draw our attention to the fact that one-third of the world’s 6000-odd languages are spoken in India. These languages fall into several genetically and geographically diverse families. The Dravidian, the Indo-Aryan, the Austro-Asiatic, and the Tibeto-Burman groups of languages make India “a unique linguistic area of centuries of co-existence”.

Hindi is, in fact, a nobody there. A newcomer. Hindi is no older than the 18^th century. And whose language is it? It is spoken mainly in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan (the BIMARU states). And it is not even their language, argues the Frontline. Bihar has its own languages like Maithili and Magahi besides Bhojpuri. UP has Awadhi, Bundeli and Bhojpuri. MP has Bagheli, Malawi and Gond. Rajasthan has Mewari and Marwari. Interestingly, even these languages are older than Hindi. Hindi which is nothing more than a latecomer dialect is now claiming status as the national language of a gargantuan assortment of cultures called India.

The concept of Hindi heartland is a myth created by myopic politicians with ulterior motives. It is tremendously discriminatory. The concept seeks to impose one synthetically forged language and culture on a billion plus people. This is how dictatorships begin. This is how enslavement of peoples begins.

This should not go on. Let India remain a country of diversities. Cultural, linguistic, religious, sartorial, culinary… Let that be an infinite variety that enchants the world. And if Amit Shah and others want Indians to learn Hindi, do not ram it down their throats. In the words of the Frontline, “If Hindi is not forced to be seen as a marker of identity of India, probably speakers of other languages will not find it unacceptable.”

There is no worse form of discrimination than imposing your identity on the other.

PS. This post is the 2^nd part of Blogchatter’s CauseAChatter on the theme of DISCRIMINATION.

Part 1: Gender discrimination in the womb

Next will be on Religious discrimination