Chanakya’s View: Amit Shah has kicked up a language storm

Bengaluru: The BJP-JD(U) partnership in Bihar, where a proxy war is in full swing, is a coalition "for the moment," remarked JD(U) leader Pavan Varma. In town for a discussion of his latest book, Chanakya's View: India in Transition Varma has been forthright, both in his writings and through public appearances, about the reasons for the growing dissent within the coalition government. Many of these opinions, expressed in Chanakya's View: India in Transition, his syndicated column for the Deccan Chronicle, The Asian Age and other publications, have been compiled into book form.

On his way to the venue, Atta Galata, where he was due to give a talk, Varma told Deccan Chronicle, "We have our own points of view, which we have the right to articulate, whether it's triple talaq, Article 370, the Citizenship Amendment Bill or the NRC."

Varma, a former diplomat who has served as Spokesman in the Ministry of External Affairs, has expressed the party stand on various platforms and says that some of the criticism "is not against intent." The party's stand on triple talaq, he says, is that it is "an abhorrent practice that must be abolished. But we said bring a good law that helps Muslim women, not just one that criminalises Muslim men. It needed greater consideration, wider consultations, the views of Muslim women - that's what we said to the government."

Home Minister Amit Shah's one nation one language move has bruised sentiments in an already tense situation in the state. Protests, violence and censorship by pro-Kannada groups have grown more frequent and CM Yediyurappa reacted on Monday to Mr Shah's move, saying "All official languages in our country are equal. However, as far as Karnataka is concerned, #Kannada is the principle language."

"It is a fact that Hindi is the official language of India. But it is not the national language of India, this is also a fact. So why do we have this state of affairs? India is the only country with 22 recognised languages, which have their own antiquity, script, vocabulary and corpus of literature. Instead of linguistic chauvinism, we must give due respect to each of our languages. In that process, by natural transition, if one language is spoken by more people, it could, in time, become a kind of link language." It is, he says, a process of transition, where the element of "respect for all languages is inherent and not an imposition by fiat."