LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 1: 10 February 2002

Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Associate Editor: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.

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FEBRUARY 2002 ISSUE

E-mail your articles and book-length reports to thirumalai@bethfel.org or send it by regular mail to:

M. S. Thirumalai
6820 Auto Club Road #320
Bloomington, MN 55438 USA.
Contributors from South Asia may send their articles to

Dr. B. Mallikarjun,
mallik_ciil@hotmail.com.

Your articles and booklength reports should be written following the MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

PRO-HINDI, ANTI-HINDI, AND WHAT?

M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

1. THREE PRONOUNCEMENTS

The people who matter, and who should know their business well, made two, rather three, important pronouncements in the month under review. The Education Minister of the Tamilnadu AIADMK Government, Hon'ble Thiru M. Thambidurai, declared that the three-language formula mooted by the National Council of Educational Research and Training is an indirect attempt to impose Hindi on the non-Hindi -speaking people. The State Government stood by the two-language formula and would not accept the move to introduce a third language that would prove an additional burden on the students, the Minister said.

Thiru Thambidurai declared, like his predecessors since the independence of the country, and since the linguistic re-organization of the states in India, that the Tamilnadu Government was committed to promoting Tamil as the medium of instruction at all levels including that of higher education. Since non-availability of books in Tamil, particularly in science disciplines, was cited as a major impediment for students, the Government had encouraged universities to bring out textbooks in Tamil. He also said that many universities in Tamilnadu were not properly utilizing government grants given for bringing out books in Tamil.

2. TAMIL JINGOISM FOSTERED BY THE GOVERNMENT

During this month, the Minister of Tamilnadu made the statement at least twice that the NCERT is trying to impose Hindi on the non-Hindi people in an indirect manner through the proposed revision of the curriculum. Once in a while, the governments in Tamilnadu must assert their loyalty and love to Tamil, and their resistance to Hindi! Mother Tamil must be worshipped and adored as a goddess. Idols must be erected, and the people should be told that Tamil has no match in this world in terms of its history, continuity, purity, and literature! At the same time, Tamil as a language of communication will languish, unable to meet the basic communication needs of the people in modern times.

3. HEROIC MEDDLERS, NOTIONS OF DEMOCRACTIC DECISION, ETC.

An official of the NCERT chose to say that the decision (on the proposed language curriculum) was arrived at through a "democratic" process. While there is some truth in this statement, for the educational agencies of the various state governments might have been involved in the process of arriving at the proposed curriculum, his statement only shows how sensitive issues that would rock the nation in the future would be shown now to be a "democratic" decision by the officialdom.

The concept of democracy, rule by the majority, is least applicable to the conditions such as the Pro-Hindi and Anti-Hindi positions, the issues that involve the very concept of Indian nationhood. We have gone through this process or farce (of democratic decision, and democratic majority) in 1960s. Perhaps there is a generation gap, or an unwillingness, or sheer and wanton ignorance on the part of the official and the agency that he represents to see that the language issue of the country is not an easy issue to be solved with such notions as "democratic" consultations, and "democratic majority." It is to be elevated to the highest level of thinking that would consider the unity of the country as the most important point, and the thinking and action that would engender a belief in every part of India that they receive a good treatment within the Indian Union.

4. ANTI-HINDI AGITATIONS

In the recent past, there were two major Anti-Hindi agitations in the South, one in the 1930s, and another in the 1960s. Dozens of people who participated in the Anti-Hindi agitation of the 1930s are still around. There are thousands and thousands of those who participated in the agitation of the 1960s very much active even now in the political life of south India.

5. HISTORICAL REASONS

Eminent Indian historians, from the north, south, east, and west, have carefully analyzed the causes of the resistance to Hindi in south India and have suggested that, among other things, some linguistic-ethnic communities like the Tamils have long preserved traditions of resisting the impact and domination of other languages in their age-old history. The grammatical, literary, religious, archaeological, and other knowledge-based systems have developed among the Tamils deliberately focusing on their language and the conventions developed independent of or based on other Indian traditions. Where there was dependence on Sanskrit, the pioneers in the various fields had always tried to adopt methods of loan translation.

The reason offered by the Education Minister of Tamilnadu as to why the Tamilnadu Government of his party would not accept the Three Language Formula is only a small portion of the resistance movement against the teaching of Hindi.

6. POLITICAL EXIGENCIES

Political exigencies have forced the DMK, AIADMK, and their splinter groups to somewhat ignore their original agenda and focus on the internecine quarrels among themselves in the last twenty-five years. This does not mean, however, that these groups or others in the political arena in south India, would totally give up their resistance to making Hindi the sole official or the dominant language of communication at the Centre and for the Central government programs in their own provinces. The assurance given by Jawaharlal Nehru, and the 1968 Official Languages Act are good beginnings, based on which we should be able to work out an amiable solution through statesman-like pronouncements and actions at the ground level. Nation building does not end with the framing of the Constitution; it actually begins with the promulgation of the Constitution.

7. THE PRIME MINISTER'S PRONOUNCEMENT ON THE ROLE OF HINDI

The third pronouncement is from the Prime Minister of India. The Hon'ble Atal Behari Vajpayee, a great poet, orator, and lover of Indian languages and literatures, chose to comment on the position of Hindi when a splinter group of the AIADMK, called MGR-AIADMK, joined the BJP. He reiterated the position of Hindi as the link language, the official language, as envisaged in the Constitution of India. If he thought that the people who originally resisted Hindi as the official language of India, are coming to join his party that stoutly stood for a pro-Hindi position, he has really missed the point. Political exigencies will not soften the historic trends, but statesmanship will. Is he trying to send a message to the Dravidian parties that the issue is dead now? Or is he indirectly answering the banner of resistance raised by the Education Minister of Tamilnadu in the early part of January? Only time will tell.

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