Country without a national language

India has no national language because the country has too many languages. Apart from the officially recognised 22 languages are the hundreds of regional languages and dialects. It would be preposterous to imagine one particular language as the national language in such a situation. That is why the visionary leaders of Independent India decided upon a three-language policy for most purposes: Hindi, English, and the local language.

The other day two pranksters from the Hindi belt landed in Bengaluru airport wearing T-shirts declaring Hindi as the national language. They posted a picture on X and it evoked angry responses from a lot of Indians who don’t speak Hindi. 

The worthiness of Hindi to be India’s national language was debated umpteen times and there is nothing new to add to all that verbiage. Yet it seems a reminder is in good place now for the likes of the above puerile young men.

Language is a power-tool. One of the first things done by colonisers and conquerors is to impose their language on the vanquished people. Germany did that to the people of Alsace and Lorraine, for example, when Otto von Bismark annexed those provinces from France. In a story set during that time, the author Alphonse Daudet makes a character who is a French teacher say: “When a people are enslaved, as long as they hold fast to their language, it is as if they had the key to their prison.”

Imposing your language on a people is tantamount to putting those people in prison. This is what the above imprudent youngsters should understand first of all. Language has historically been used as a tool for asserting dominance. The present rulers in Delhi have too many ulterior motives and one of them is to impose Hindi on the entire country. Like all the other motives of these leaders, this one will do no good to the country. It will do a lot of harm, on the contrary.

A language is part of a culture. When you impose your language on a people, you are jettisoning their culture itself. You are reshaping them after your image. Because you think you, your culture and language, are superior. This superiority is sheer fiction in most cases. Flimsy fantasy of some inflated and vainglorious egos.

A language carries certain economic and political baggage with it. A dominant language can streamline governance, trade, and communication to the advantage of the people to whom it really belongs. Imagine a Tamil candidate competing with another from a Hindi state in a civil service exam conducted in Hindi, “the national language.” What chance will the Tamil candidate ever have of becoming a bureaucrat in his country? This is exactly the deviousness of the mission being worked out by the present Delhi dispensation. You can usurp power from its rightful owners using language.

In Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, Caliban, the native of the island colonised by the European protagonist, tells the protagonist, “You taught me your language and my advantage now is that I can curse you in that language.” [I have modernised Shakespeare’s idiom.] Caliban subverted the very purpose for which Prospero, the coloniser-protagonist, taught him the language. Instead of submitting himself to Prospero’s power, Caliban used Prospero’s language to curse him. Caliban used the imposed language creatively and defiantly. He used his oppressor’s weapon as his own means of resistance.

Caliban is not an ideal motif for a person oppressed by a political system because of his lack of refinement. I cited his example here precisely because the wielders of power in the North and their acolytes seem to view people from other parts of India quite as Prospero viewed Caliban.

As Prospero viewed Caliban, Modiji came after the recent Wayanad [Kerala] catastrophe and flew over the despoiled region like an actor being filmed. Months have passed and the victims have received absolutely no aid from Modiji’s government. “We are part of India too,” Kerala’s Chief Minister reminds Modiji time and again, the latest being today.

We are part of the country. When any people of a country have to make statements like that, you know there’s something seriously wrong. More wrong than mere imposition of a language. 

Modiji as disaster-tourist in Wayanad