The debate on official language

(Mains GS2 : Functions and responsibilities of the Union and the States, issues and challenges pertaining to the federal structure, devolution of powers and finances up to local levels and challenges therein.)

Context: 

• The Official Language Committee, headed by Home Minister Amit Shah, recently submitted its report to President Droupadi Murmu.
•  It recommended that Hindi be made the medium of instruction in Central institutions of higher education in Hindi-speaking States and regional languages in other States. 

Origin of debate:

• Article 343 of the Constitution declares that Hindi in Devanagari script shall be the official language of the Union.
• The origin of the linguistic row goes back to the debate on official languages where  in the Constituent Assembly, Hindi was voted as the official language by a single vote. 
• However, it added that English would continue to be used as an associate official language for 15 years and the Official Languages Act came into effect on the expiry of this 15-year period in 1965. This was the background in which the anti-Hindi agitation took place. 
• However, as early as in 1959, Jawaharlal Nehru had given an assurance in Parliament that English would continue to be in use as long as non-Hindi speaking people wanted it.

Language groups:

• India has two major groups of languages — the Indo-European language group and the Dravidian language group where Hindi belongs to the former and Tamil (more ancient than Sanskrit) belongs to the latter. 
• All the prominent languages in the Dravidian group, i.e., Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada, have rich literature. However, it was English which brought the northern and southern regions together. 
• In the Constituent Assembly, Maulana Azad had said: “we have got to admit that so far as language is concerned North and South are two different parts. 
• The union of North and South has been made possible only through the medium of English. If today we give up English then this linguistic relationship will cease to exist”.

Matter of emotions:

• India has seen great emotional upsurge, violent protests and immolations etc. in the country’s southern parts in the 1960s as a result of an attempt by the then Union government to exclude English and replace it with Hindi.
•  It does not require any great research to understand that the language issue has the potential to emotionally divide people. 
• It is not a question of the willingness or the unwillingness of people of a region to learn Hindi, rather the issues are more complex.
• An example, Once Hindi replaces English, the language used in the examination for recruitment to the all India services will be Hindi alone.

Equal treatment:

• At different points in time, leaders, starting from Jawaharlal Nehru in the mid-1950s, assured the people of Tamil Nadu that there would be no “imposition” of Hindi.
• The essence of the Official Languages Act, 1963, is to provide something to each of the differing groups to meet its objections and safeguard its position.
• Chief Ministers of Kerala and Tamil Nadu have called for equal treatment to all the languages specified under the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.

Conclusion:

• Today, the Union has Hindi and English as two official languages — as in Canada which has English and French as its official languages. 
• In these circumstances, the policymakers should seriously think of making the provision constitutionally that Hindi and English should be the official languages of the Union.