The form of numerals to be used for the official purpose of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals. The Official Language Act was passed in providing for the continuation of English as an associate official language in the Union and its use in the parliament for an indefinite period.
After Maithili becoming a national language included in the VIII Schedule of the Constitution of India along with 21 other languages , Hindi now has 48 officially recognized dialects Census of India, Hindi and Urdu languages have their origins in Khariboli spoken in areas around Delhi. Khariboli was adopted by the Afghans, Persians, and Turks as a common language of interaction with the local population during the period of Islamic invasions and the establishment of Muslim rule in the north of India between the eighth and tenth centuries AD.
In time, it developed a variety called Urdu with significant borrowings from Arabic and Persian and that uses the Perso-Arabic script. As Urdu gained patronage in the Muslim courts and developed into a literary language, the variety used by the general population gradually replaced Sanskrit, literary Prakrits, and Apabhramsas as the literary language. This latter variety looked to Sanskrit for linguistic borrowings and Sanskrit, Prakrits, and Apabhramsas for literary conventions.
It is this variety that became known as Hindi. Hindi and Urdu have a common form known as Hindustani, which is a Hindi-Urdu mixed language. Historical and cultural processes and the linguistic affinity that exists in Indian languages led to the emergence of Hindi-Urdu or so-called Hindustani as the lingua franca of major areas of India long before its independence. Hindi was the language that was adopted by Indian leaders as a symbol of national identity during the struggle for freedom. Hindi has been used as a literary language since the twelfth century.
The development of prose, however, began only in the eighteenth century, which marks the emergence of Hindi as a full-fledged literary language. But those from the southern states were staunchly against this — Chennai, in particular, has borne the brunt of several violent anti-Hindi agitations over the years — while other leaders pushed for other languages like Sanskrit and Bengali.
Two languages are sure to divide people. What is the difference between official and national language? The two terms cannot be used interchangeably. In other words, it is seen as a symbol of national unity. The solution, co-authored by parliamentarians N Gopalaswami Ayyangar and KM Munshi called for letting English continue as the official language along with Hindi for a period of 15 years, with an option of an extension granted to Parliament.
It was hoped that by January , Hindi would emerge as the sole official language of the country. But in , the government enacted the Official Languages Act, which provided an extension to the continued use of English as an additional official language.
In an attempt to quell violent anti-Hindi agitations in South India then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru further gave an assurance that English would not be substituted by Hindi until the non-Hindi speaking people desired a change. This assurance was honoured by an amendment to the above Act after his death in The Indira Gandhi government also introduced the National Policy on Education in , which first formulated the three-language formula. Where does the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution fit in?
Recognising that India is ultimately a multilingual country, the framers of the Constitution also allowed states to adopt one or more regional languages — or the language used in the state — apart from Hindi as the language for official purposes.
For instance, Asomiya is the official language of Assam while Uttar Pradesh lists Hindi as its official language. The Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, hailed as the most important language policy statement in India, identifies certain vernacular languages as scheduled languages.
At the time of independence, there were 14 scheduled languages, which today has expanded to In addition, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs, there are standing demands for inclusion of 38 more languages in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution out of 99 non-scheduled languages currently.
As per the census, India also boasts 1, other languages. The bottomline, according to Gusain, is that since , Indian language policy has focussed on promoting regional languages rather than taking up the issue of a single official or national language.
What is the case for Hindi as an official language? It is not only the most-common language in India, but also the fourth-most spoken language in the world. More states and Union Territories speak Hindi as the second language — as many as 14 in total — compared to 12 states where it is the first language.
Since pre-Independence, this has been the most repeated argument in favour of Hindi as the sole official language, if not the national language. The supporters of Hindi language further decry English as a symbol of slavery, which divides the nation into elites and the far-larger vulnerable masses. The argument here is that an indigenous, well-developed language ought to be a far better option than the language of the nation that had long subjugated India.
A more statistically backed argument is that while other languages in the country may be declining, Hindi speakers are growing. In contrast, the number of people who speak any of the four largest Dravidian languages — Tamil, Kannada, Telugu or Malayalam — are steadily dipping.
Is the government pushing this agenda? The Modi government has made no bones about its preference for the Hindi language. Soon after the party came to power in , the home ministry's official language department had issued a controversial circular asking all ministries and departments, public-sector undertakings and banks to give prominence to Hindi on official social media accounts. It had also announced a cash reward for those employees who do most of their official work in Hindi.
Then, in , the draft National Education Policy — before it was revised and rolled out last year — set off a wave of protests in South India over the perceived imposition of Hindi as a third language in schools. This sparked off protests from regional parties as well as the Twitterati, who saw it as an attempt towards Hindi imposition while undermining regional languages.
Little wonder then that his latest tweets on Hindi Diwas are a lot more moderate. Why is the non-Hindi speaking belt up in arms against this? The most effective argument against Hindi as a national language is that it would give only a smaller part of the country an unfair advantage in terms of jobs — especially in public services — and educational opportunities. Ruling out more than minority languages would also rule out the existence of minority communities who are deprived of education, job facilities, healthcare services, and so on in regressive sections of India as yet.
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