Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin was emphatic in his opposition to the Parliamentary Committee’s recommendations on accelerating the use of Hindi in education and employment sectors. He appealed to the Centre not to force ‘another language war’. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan also echoed the same views and stressed on the “state-specific aspects of the education sector”. Objection to the House Panel recommendations emanated from other sources as well.
The recommendations suggested that in the recruitment examinations, “mandatory English language question papers should be discontinued” and “requisite knowledge of Hindi for the selection of employees should be ensured” (Parvez Sultan, The New Indian Express, Oct 9, 2022). The Panel report even recommends casting stigma on the officers or employees who “do not work in Hindi”. The Committee recommended ensuring the knowledge of Hindi for the selection of the employees.
The suggestions reflect a lack of understanding of India’s diversity and pluralism. The report ignores the three-language formula the country has successfully followed based on the constitutional provisions. The idea of discrimination on the grounds of language in education and employment sectors negates the equality clauses in the Constitution. Earlier, when Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri attempted to install Hindi as the sole official language, agitations spread across the non-Hindi-speaking states. Some Union cabinet ministers threatened to resign. The turmoil created by Shastri’s decision ended only with a legislative assurance to use English also as the official language of the Union. History tells us that any decision on language should not be taken lightly by disregarding the notions of linguistic federalism. Conflict in the name of language is a reality worldwide and throughout history.
The Constitution opted for the peaceful co-existence of the Indian languages. It was the invocation of the K M Munshi-Ayyangar formula evolved during the Constituent Assembly debates. That showed almost equal treatment for Hindi, English and the regional languages. This mosaic has a humanistic face.
Under the constitutional scheme, India does not have a national language. Article 343 only says that the official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. The Union’s official language cannot be taken as synonymous with the national language. The reason is that India is a ‘Union of States’ as Article 1 of the Constitution proclaims. The 8th Schedule of the Constitution enlists 22 languages from Assamese to Sanskrit and Urdu as official languages, and Hindi is only one among them. While accepting Hindi as the official language of the Union, Article 343 said that for 15 years from the commencement of the Constitution, “the English language shall continue to be used for all the official purposes of the Union”. After 15 years, Parliament was empowered to decide on the question of continuing English as the official language. As we have seen, it was by the indefinite extension granted by amendment to the Official Language Act that English also now continues as an official language of the Union.
Thus, the Constitution made a great balancing act on the question of languages. It did not want an abrupt abolition of English as an official language. By way of Article 344, it envisaged a Commission to make recommendations to the President on the progressive use of Hindi and restrictions on the use of English for official purposes of the Union. But it maintained and fostered all languages necessary for “We the people”. Instead of imposing any particular language, Article 345 made it the prerogative of the State Legislature to use any language in the State as the official language.
In Article 348, the Constitution says that the language to be used in the Supreme Court and High Courts and legislation would be English. However, 348(2) empowers the executive head to permit the use of Hindi. Article 350 is a people’s manifesto. It underlines the right of everyone “to submit a representation for the redress of any grievance to any officer or authority of the Union or a State in any of the languages used in the Union or in the State”. This effectively facilitates the conversation between the governed and the government. Article 350A promises instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage.
This accommodative democracy in the constitutional scheme has been significant. It was also a gesture of reconciliation of conflicting claims. It opted for utilitarianism instead of dogmatism. It assimilated tolerance and understanding. In the Constituent Assembly, the views on languages were divergent.
Seth Govind Das and many others supported Hindi as the official language. Naziruddin Ahmad pleaded for the continuation of English “for such a period till when an All India language is evolved”. His attack on Hindi was vociferous when he said that it was “in a very rudimentary condition” as a language. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra reminded them about the glory of Sanskrit, indicated the “bewildering variety of dialects” in Hindi, and implied that Hindi is not an unvarying language. Frank Anthony criticised “the almost malicious and vindictive attitude towards English” and said that the “resentment against the British” should not impact the attitude towards that language. Krishnamoorthy Rao said, “All languages spoken in India (are) our national languages.”
In Union of India V Murasoli Maran (1976), the Supreme Court acknowledged the retention of English and said that it doesn’t stand in the way of ensuring progress in using Hindi. The court, in that case, endorsed free in-service training in Hindi for government employees without any penalty for failure. The court validated the action and said it was a legitimate exercise of power to promote Hindi and only provided certain incentives. The present recommendations travel far beyond the action endorsed in Murasoli Maran’s case. Clarification by some members of the House Panel that no imposition of Hindi is intended is only a consolatory gesture.
At the commencement of the Assembly debates on languages, Dr Rajendra Prasad, who presided over the Assembly, said: “There is no other item in the whole Constitution of the country which will be required to be implemented from day to day, from hour to hour … from minute to minute in actual practice” and that the decision on the language issue “should be acceptable to the country as a whole”.
In a democracy, the majority is not the sole criterion for deciding the destiny of the people. The core of constitutional democracy consists in embracing tolerance and linguistic pluralism.
Kaleeswaram Raj
Lawyer, Supreme Court of India