LANGUAGE IN INDIA

A PEEK INTO SOME OF THE LINGUISTIC IDEAS OF EARLY GANDHI
M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D
B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.

EARLY GANDHI: A CHAMPION OF OVERSEAS INDIANS

Our fascination with Gandhi began when we were yet children. Gandhi for us in south India was Gandhi thaathaa or Gandhi ajja (grandfather in Tamil and Kannada respectively). For generations, this fascination with the grandfather is bound to remain and energize Indian children. But, behind this “old man look,” with those glass rims, of course, there was a young and dynamic person, full of hope and vision already well formed, which would guide him and his followers until his tragic assassination and beyond.

Gandhi’s ideas hardly ever changed from those he held in his early life to his later, more celebrated roles in India. In particular, Gandhi’s ideas on language, language use and Indian languages were well formed and established in his early life. Truly, as Wordsworth wrote, “Child is the father of man.”

In this article we aim at analyzing a few of Gandhi’s early writings on the subject of language choice and language use for India and how such ideas continued to illumine his future civil obedience movements. This article is largely based on Gandhi's writing in London in 1909.

GANDHI’S EARLY CONTRIBUTIONS

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi arrived finally in India in 1915 from South Africa to settle down in India, a decision that proved to be a great blessing to our motherland. But Gandhi was no stranger to India and to the emerging political scenario in India when he arrived in 1915. His fight for the rights of the Blacks and Asians in South Africa had already been well noticed, well recognized, and well admired by the leadership, and the rank and file of the Indian National Congress. In the Calcutta Congress of 1901 (the seventeenth Congress since the inception of this National Organization in 1885), Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi moved a resolution as a petitioner on behalf of the British Indian population in South Africa.

The Indian National Congress from its inception had been interested in the well being of Indians abroad. This natural interest on the part of the Indian National Congress brought to light, session after session, the inhuman treatment meted out to the Blacks and indentured labor in the British Colonies and encouraged the Indian leaders to devote themselves to their cause.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's soul-stirring efforts in South Africa and his conduct of Passive Resistance struggle led Gokhale to declare in 1909 that passive resistance

is essentially defensive in its nature and it fights with moral and spiritual weapons. A passive resister resists tyranny by undergoing sufferings in his person. He pits soul force against brute force; he pits the divine in man against the brute in man; he pits suffering against oppression; he pits conscience against might; he pits faith against injustice; right against wrong (Sitaramayya 1935:79).

The 1910 Allahabad Congress expressed its appreciation of the struggle waged by the Indians in South Africa. The 1911 Congress congratulated Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and the Transvaal Indian community. The 1913 Karachi Congress passed a resolution admiring the heroic endeavors of Mr. Gandhi and his followers and their unparalleled sacrifices in their struggle for the maintenance of the self-respect of India and the redress of Indian grievances. Thus, neither Gandhi nor his program of non-violent action, which was individual-based in character but involved groups of men and women dedicated to the cause of Indians in South Africa, was a stranger to Indian National Congress.

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M. S. Thirumalai
B. Mallikarjun

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