Jatin Gandhi
Illustration by Satwik Gade. The Hindu
English is the passport to upward mobility in the modern, aspirational India, but many political leaders seem to be out of touch with this new reality. This disconnect has led to friction in the nation in transition.
During the anti-colonial movement, Mahatma Gandhi’s anti-English stance offered a means of fighting colonialism and the English. In the 1960s and the later decades, the resurgent rural elite stood at loggerheads with the urban elite as cities grew at the expense of the villages and development overlooked the vast countryside. The English-speaking elite became the villains of this lopsided development. The heavily Sanskritised version of Hindi that the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideological parent, the Sangh, propagate offers a counter-elitism rather than an anti-elitism. It breeds exclusivist tendencies of a different hue found in the Jan Sangh’s slogan of “Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan.” The attempts to impose Sanskrit or Hindi each time a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government comes to power are not merely a coincidence.
“In the mid-1960s, an attempt to impose Hindi was made and Tamil Nadu went up in flames. We ought to have learnt our lessons,” cautions Mridula Mukherjee, Professor of Modern Indian History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. “National integration in a democracy has to be a voluntary process. There should no attempt at coercion.”
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Hindi is still a thorn in Tamil Nadu's flesh
Sruthisagar Yamunan
The 1965 anti-Hindi agitation.
When the Centre wanted government departments to use Hindi in social media, protests erupted immediately in the State. The then Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said the decision was against the spirit of the Official Languages Act, 1963.
Perhaps, one of the major reasons the Congress was shunted out of power in the State in 1967 was imposition of Hindi. The State government brought in paramilitary forces and clamped down on the anti-Hindi agitators, and the party never again came to power.
Back in 1937, when the Madras Presidency government led by C. Rajagopalachari insisted on compulsory learning of Hindi in the State, the Dravidian movement, then in the form of the Justice Party, got a major campaign agenda. For three years till the policy was revoked in 1940, the agitations were sustained in almost every part of the Presidency, in the process making its leader, E.V. Ramasamy (Periyar), the tallest leader of the Dravidian movement.
In 1965, when the 15-year timeframe to make Hindi the only official language was about to expire, Tamil Nadu again led the agitations. By this time, with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) gaining ground, imposition of Hindi was part of the narrative of the Aryan-Dravidian divide — the northern Aryans attempting to invade the cultural space of the southern Dravidians. It took an assurance from the then Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, that English would continue as the second official language as long as non-Hindi-speaking people wanted it, to quell the protests.
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Writer A. Marx says politically, the Tamil language issue has ceased to be an electoral issue, though it continues to be an emotive issue.
In 1965, the DMK was the only face of the anti-Hindi agitations, giving it the full benefit of the anti-Congress mood. In 2014, all Tamil parties have a common policy on the language issue, giving no one a clear advantage.
Mr. Marx says the anti-Hindi mood is actually more vigorous in the North than in the South at the moment. “It is people speaking non-Hindi languages in the North who have come down heavily on the BJP this time,” he says.
While the Dravidian parties opposed Hindi, he says, they had a logical language policy nevertheless with the constant emphasis on learning English, ensuring that Tamils were not left behind in the development story.
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Blogger's Comment:
Hindi will never become official language in the five Southern States of India. We have our own distinct mother tongues, Telugu (A.P., Telangana), Tamil (Tamilnadu), Kannada (Karnataka) and Malayalam (Kerala) (first language), English (second language) mouth piece to the world. Hindi will have third language status as we have now, no further change in the status quo.
Our history, culture, literature are tied to our mother tongues and we are identified by it as Telugus/Andhras, Tamils, Kanarese and Malayalis. BJP Hindutva activists RSS, VHP. Bajrang Dal may campaign as much as they can for Hindi/Sanskrit and their efforts will be futile in the Sourthen India.
English is the passport to upward mobility in the modern, aspirational India, but many political leaders seem to be out of touch with this new reality. This disconnect has led to friction in the nation in transition.
During the anti-colonial movement, Mahatma Gandhi’s anti-English stance offered a means of fighting colonialism and the English. In the 1960s and the later decades, the resurgent rural elite stood at loggerheads with the urban elite as cities grew at the expense of the villages and development overlooked the vast countryside. The English-speaking elite became the villains of this lopsided development. The heavily Sanskritised version of Hindi that the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideological parent, the Sangh, propagate offers a counter-elitism rather than an anti-elitism. It breeds exclusivist tendencies of a different hue found in the Jan Sangh’s slogan of “Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan.” The attempts to impose Sanskrit or Hindi each time a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government comes to power are not merely a coincidence.
“In the mid-1960s, an attempt to impose Hindi was made and Tamil Nadu went up in flames. We ought to have learnt our lessons,” cautions Mridula Mukherjee, Professor of Modern Indian History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. “National integration in a democracy has to be a voluntary process. There should no attempt at coercion.”
Read full article: The Hindu
******************************************************************************
Hindi is still a thorn in Tamil Nadu's flesh
Sruthisagar Yamunan
When the Centre wanted government departments to use Hindi in social media, protests erupted immediately in the State. The then Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said the decision was against the spirit of the Official Languages Act, 1963.
Perhaps, one of the major reasons the Congress was shunted out of power in the State in 1967 was imposition of Hindi. The State government brought in paramilitary forces and clamped down on the anti-Hindi agitators, and the party never again came to power.
Back in 1937, when the Madras Presidency government led by C. Rajagopalachari insisted on compulsory learning of Hindi in the State, the Dravidian movement, then in the form of the Justice Party, got a major campaign agenda. For three years till the policy was revoked in 1940, the agitations were sustained in almost every part of the Presidency, in the process making its leader, E.V. Ramasamy (Periyar), the tallest leader of the Dravidian movement.
In 1965, when the 15-year timeframe to make Hindi the only official language was about to expire, Tamil Nadu again led the agitations. By this time, with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) gaining ground, imposition of Hindi was part of the narrative of the Aryan-Dravidian divide — the northern Aryans attempting to invade the cultural space of the southern Dravidians. It took an assurance from the then Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, that English would continue as the second official language as long as non-Hindi-speaking people wanted it, to quell the protests.
--------------
Writer A. Marx says politically, the Tamil language issue has ceased to be an electoral issue, though it continues to be an emotive issue.
In 1965, the DMK was the only face of the anti-Hindi agitations, giving it the full benefit of the anti-Congress mood. In 2014, all Tamil parties have a common policy on the language issue, giving no one a clear advantage.
Mr. Marx says the anti-Hindi mood is actually more vigorous in the North than in the South at the moment. “It is people speaking non-Hindi languages in the North who have come down heavily on the BJP this time,” he says.
While the Dravidian parties opposed Hindi, he says, they had a logical language policy nevertheless with the constant emphasis on learning English, ensuring that Tamils were not left behind in the development story.
Read full article: The Hindu
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Blogger's Comment:
Hindi will never become official language in the five Southern States of India. We have our own distinct mother tongues, Telugu (A.P., Telangana), Tamil (Tamilnadu), Kannada (Karnataka) and Malayalam (Kerala) (first language), English (second language) mouth piece to the world. Hindi will have third language status as we have now, no further change in the status quo.
Our history, culture, literature are tied to our mother tongues and we are identified by it as Telugus/Andhras, Tamils, Kanarese and Malayalis. BJP Hindutva activists RSS, VHP. Bajrang Dal may campaign as much as they can for Hindi/Sanskrit and their efforts will be futile in the Sourthen India.
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