By invitation: Legal faultline language preserve of centre, state

Hindi is only the official language of the Central Government. However, it is not the national language of India. Incidentally, there is no such thing. The recent controversy over the removal of Hindi from the Metro stations in Bengaluru and the demand for Kannada in banks across the state would not have arisen at all had the Central government and its unthinking politicians protected the sensibilities of Kannadigas. 

Language laws in India represent the unresolved fault lines in our Constitution and are a potent force to divide people – a factor that sustains the politics around it.

India is and has always been a multilingual country. A hundred years ago, there were more than a 1000 different languages in this country, and most people didn’t identify themselves with any particular language. A report of the British agents in South India in the 1830s had said that several people in the south speak many languages easily– Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam (of course, these language names were written differently in those days). In fact, the very concept of a ‘mother tongue’ was rarely found in the literature that originated on Indian soil before 1850. Of course, one could not have had thousands of languages in this country if people had chosen to squabble amongst themselves for linguistic supremacy! 

Then, along came European scholars who stressed the notion of linguistic identity. India changed dramatically and disturbingly after the 1850s. Around that time, Hindustani language, the amalgam of numerous languages in northern India was artificially separated into two streams – Urdu, which retained ‘foreign’ Persian words and Hindi, which turned to Sanskrit to deny its Persian roots. 

Eventually, Pakistan came into existence and adopted Urdu as its official language, a minority language in the new country. What happened afterwards holds a firm lesson for us. Pakistan began to disintegrate from the very first day of its formation - Bengali or Bangla, the language in East Pakistan was never accorded much respect or recognition by its Central government which sat a great distance away with Urdu as its anchor. Finally, East Pakistan separated itself from Pakistan and called itself as ‘Bangla’desh. A nation that ignored the linguistic sentiments of its people didn’t last long.

When the debate over the ‘national language of India’ began in our Constituent Assembly our founding fathers realised that they had spent more time on this topic than any other. It was issue that could never really be fully resolved if a single language was to be chosen. Also, the theme of one particular speech by an Urdu member had ruined the enthusiasm of those who had wanted Hindi to become the national language – “although Hindi is spoken by more people than other languages, it is not the native language of more than half the population of this country and those people should not be forced to learn it simply because they are a numerical minority; moreover, it is still a language in its infancy and barely compares with several other languages; it greatly pales in comparison with Sanskrit and why not let Sanskrit, a far more ancient, evolved and greater language and a language that is new to almost the whole country be made the national language so that nobody would be at a disadvantage and everybody will have to learn it anew?”Needless to say, Hindi members didn’t take kindly to this and their disappointment revealed that pushing one language over another could quickly evaporate in the face of a better argument. The debate ended and Hindi was merely  named the ‘official language’ of the Central Government.

The Constitution had initially envisaged a 15-year period for the English language, at the end of which it was to be replaced with Hindi. When this was imposed, based simply on what was said in the Constitution and with little regard for regional sensitivities, several parts of South India erupted into violence. This resulted in a change in the very Constitution that had commanded the language imposition. So, imposing a language on the strength of an enabling law in the face of resistance didn’t work then and won’t work today or in the future. What might happen, however, is that the law itself might suffer a change.

Modi’s Central Government doesn’t seem to know the difference between integrating and imposing a language in states like Karnataka. How would Hindi have been treated here if it hadn’t been the official language of the government? Has the government stopped to consider this? Persuasion is a far more effective method than a blind reliance on the law to advance Hindi in Karnataka; it could bring about a greater acceptance and integration of Hindi.

In terms of legality, the insistence on using Hindi in government guildings and highways in the state cannot be faulted. It is lawful to impose Hindi on Metro stations if the Centre has contributed financially to its development — a 20% investment/capital contribution will suffice. It is lawful to impose Hindi on both the State Highways and the National Highways. It is lawful to impose it on the name board of every building in Karnataka that houses a Central Government institution. 

At the same time, however, the state government and its agencies are well within their rights (legally) to demand that consumer services like banking, railways, airpots and tax agencies controlled by the Central government are also provided in Kannada. In fact, the State Legislature may even make a law to force these consumer services to mandatorily involve the use of Kannada and to impose a penalty for non-compliance. No State in India has gone this far but should it be forced to do so, our Constitutional fault lines will return to the fore. After all, States were reorganised in India in 1956 on linguistic lines and that development gives the States enough armour to counteract the Central Government in such matters.

As far as the pro-Kannada policies of the state government are concerned, I see nothing but depraved politics by Siddaramaiah, who does not seem to have anything worthwhile to show in his nearly five years of wasted governance. And, Kannada does not benefit in the least when Kannadigas place failed politicians as Kannada’s ambassadors to the country and the world.