Call for equality of languages against ‘Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan’

In Bundelkhand (Uttar Pradesh) this week, the Prime Minister tried using ‘broken Bundelkhandi’ while addressing an election rally. The irony was lost to most but activists working for ‘Language Equality’ duly noted that the Modi Government, as indeed other governments that preceded him, does not recognise Bundelkhandi as a language separate from Hindi. And the fact that not a single school in Bundelkhand teaches Bundelkhandi.

Governments have continued to pay lip service to the three-language formula suggested by the Khosla Committee way back in 1968. It had suggested that besides the mother-tongue, children should be taught two other languages.

But while the Governments have by and large junked the mother-tongue, students have been made to compulsorily study Sanskrit, English and foreign languages. As a result, points out an activist for language equality, Punjabi children cannot read or write in Punjabi but are learning German, while children in West Bengal are fast forgetting their mother tongue.

Garga Chatterjee, former Research Affiliate at MIT and Assistant Professor at Indian Statistical Institute, posted the image of a special coin minted by the Government in 1995, commemorating Tamil literature and celebrated Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar on the occasion of the 8th World Tamil Conference in Thanjavur, and pointed out that while the coin had Hindi on it, it did not have a single letter in Tamil.

Here is a video link to a partial recording of a talk on language equality delivered by Chatterjee earlier this month at Bengaluru.

Activists have been increasingly vocal against what they see as the Centre’s imposition of Hindi. The move by Prasar Bharati to shift out all national news bulletins in all languages except English, Hindi and Urdu out of Delhi is cited as an example.

The argument that languages other than Hindi and English are regional is scoffed at by activists, who point out that the Indian Constitution does not specify any ‘national language’. Urdu was allowed to continue in Delhi by Prasar Bharati because it didn’t know where to shift it.

The 2011 Census identifies Tamil Nadu, Manipur, Meghalaya, Kerala, J&K, Assam, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh as states with the highest number of migrants. None of these states, points out the Campaign for Language Equality and Rights Trust (CLEAR), is a Hindi-speaking state, and yet the Government would like people to believe that learning Hindi was essential for better career opportunities.

This report in The Indian Express indicates that every third Indian is a migrant and that there were 45.36 crore migrants in India, of whom 69% were women who had moved home for work, study or after marriage. This would suggest a greater urgency for Indians to learn more Indian languages. Modern Indian Language cannot just be confined to Hindi.

Last year in February, CLEAR had released a charter of demand which among other things called upon the Government:

• To declare all languages in the 8th schedule of the Constitution as official languages
• Include all languages recommended by the Mahapatra Committee in the 8th schedule
• Ensure that the medium of instruction is the mother-tongue
• That the primary state official language (Tamil in Tamil Nadu) is mandatorily offered as the first/second/third language taught in schools and colleges
• That High Courts be asked to follow the primary official language of a state in official work.