LANGUAGE IN INDIA

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE POLICY IN THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY OF INDIA
M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.

EARLIER ARTICLES ON THE SUBJECT

I (Thirumalai) undertook a project some years ago to prepare a descriptive and narrative history of the evolution of India's language policy since the inception of the Indian National Congress in 1885. This is an ongoing project, but I thought that some of the preliminary writing that I have done may be shared with the researchers interested in this important aspect of India's Freedom Struggle. Earlier articles published in LANGUAGE IN INDIA can be accessed using the links given below.

• LANGUAGE POLICY IN THE FORMATIVE YEARS OF INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS 1885-1905
• LANGUAGE DYNAMICS OF A POLITICAL SPLIT : SURAT CONGRESS, TILAK VS GOKHALE
• EARLY GANDHI AND THE LANGUAGE POLICY OF THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS
• THE ROOTS OF LINGUISTIC REORGANIZATION OF INDIAN PROVINCES - DR. ANNIE BESANT AND HER HOME RULE MOVEMENT
• LANGUAGE POLICY IN THE MOTILAL NEHRU COMMITTEE REPORT, 1928 - SEEDS OF THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION
• LANGUAGE POLICY OF THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS DURING THE PRE-PARTITION PERIOD 1939-1946
• LANGUAGE POLICY OF THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS 1935-1939 - SOWING THE SEEDS OF A POLICY FOR FREE INDIA - And the Anti-Hindi Agitation in the South

THE CONGRESS PARTY IN THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

Elections to the Constituent Assembly were held in July 1946. These were not based on direct adult franchise. Members were elected indirectly on a limited and communal franchise. The Provincial Legislative Assemblies were treated as the electorate following the then existing pattern.

The Indian National Congress won all but 7 of the 210 General seats, and All India Muslim League all but five of the 78 Muslim seats.

The Muslim League refused to participate in the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly and, thus, when the Constituent Assembly was finally convened on December 9, 1946, the Assembly had only the representatives of the Indian National Congress and a small number of other delegates representing non-Congress ideologies.

REPRESENTATION OF INTELLECTUALS AND PROFESSIONALS, AND OTHER POLITICAL PARTIES

The Congress had ensured that its representatives in the Constituent Assembly should not only be the practical politicians from its own rank and file but also those intellectuals and professionals, who, although they were not members of the Indian National Congress in the strict sense of the term, were considered to be nationalist in their outlook.

The Indian National Congress also nominated members of some other political parties to the Constituent Assembly with a view to ensuring participation of all shades of opinion in the constitution-making exercise.

The intellectuals and professionals thus elected on the Congress ticket were expected to help the politicians in their pursuit of a Constitution that would fulfill the dreams of the nation as a whole, as reflected in the various policy resolutions of the Indian National Congress.

WE CAN BE PROUD OF OUR LEADERS

Indians can always be proud of their leaders who led them to freedom. It was mainly to the influence and unreserved support of the towering personalities of statesmen like Jawaharlal, C. Rajagopalachari, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Abul Kalam Azad, G. B. Pant, Kripalani, and others that the intellectuals and civil servants like Alladi Krishnaswamy Aiyar, K. M. Munshi, Gopalaswamy Ayyangar, B.N. Rau, and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar could have a more or less free hand in formulating the provisions in the Constitution.

Behind all these efforts in 1946 was the Indian National Congress, which had a history of sixty-one years of deliberate activity in the political life of India.

FREEDOM TO EXPRESS INDIVIDUAL OPINIONS

Within the Constituent Assembly, the Indian National Congress assumed the responsibility for framing up a Constitution for Free India only in an indirect manner in the sense that partisan politics was kept to the minimum by giving enough freedom to the members of the Constituent Assembly to express their own independently considered opinion on all issues before them.

It was possible because, somehow the Congressmen of yester-years were relatively more disciplined and had been imbued with a greater sense of duty to the nation and were endowed with a perception that always insisted upon a consensus; and hence the unwritten law of accepting finally the less explicitly stated commands of leadership at the top carried the day. Fortunately for the nation, the leadership at the top - Jawaharlal, Abul Kalam Azad, Vallabhbhai Pate, C. Rajagopalachari, et al. - were men of great foresight and forbearance.

PARTY LOYALTY AND SUBMISSION TO LEADERSHIP

In a nutshell, although the Congress Party always kept its presence not explicitly felt within the Constituent Assembly, most of the members of the Assembly were influenced and guided by the policies of the Indian National Congress, and when conflicts arose, These were settled by following the Congress guidelines, meetings of the Constituent Assembly members of the party in closed door sessions.

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M. S. Thirumalai
B. Mallikarjun

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