A Journal of Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya

Another very major challenge
that emerged due to language in front
of the Indian nation-state was in the year
1965.It may be recalled that according
to the provisions in the constitution, within
fifteen years from the date of its promulgation,
Hindi was to become the official
language of the Indian Republic.
It is a long story as to how Chakravarti
Rajgopalachariji gradually became an
opponent of Hindi. As time drew near
for Hindi to become a national language,
the anti-Hindi sentiments became stronger
in the states which were non-Hindi speaking,
particularly in South India and in the
East.To a large extent, the advocates of
Hindi are responsible for this. We had
Dr. Raghubir's colloquial dictionary which
was frequently quoted for jokes. Akashwani
used difficult sanskritized language, and
one had to take recourse to a dictionary
for it to be intelligible. While on the other
hand, there was the arrogance of the Hindi
speakers who wanted that every non-Hindi
speaker ought to speak Hindi but not read
any other language apart from English.
Though the three-language formula was
formulated, no Indian language could create
a space for itself in the Hindi speaking
regions.In most places Sanskrit began to
be taught as the third language.
A bad example of the intolerance of
Hindi society was Seth Govind Das, who
demanded that if the ‘Madrasis’ (the people
of Tamil Nadu) refused Hindi, then the
armed forces must be called upon to enforce
Hindi. The only saving grace was that
the political leaders did not take serious
cognizance of his remark.But what did
happen in Madras was, that this statement
ignited the wrath of the people and there
were massive protests and arson.The offices
of the Central Government were looted
and several police persons were burnt
alive. This incident made one thing very
clear that if an attempt were to be made
to enforce Hindi on the people, then it
might lead to the disintegration of the
nation. Hence, since then up till now, no
serious attempt was made to make Hindi
the national language. Every year, the
central government offices celebrate the
national language fortnight only as a
tokenism – they promise to work in Hindi,
to use Hindi and subsequently forget all
about it.I am recapitulating the Indian
context, primarily to help us understand
the experience Pakistan has had (as a
nation) vis-a-vis the use of the language.The
situation in Pakistan is slightly different
from that of India in the sense that Urdu
which was considered to be synonymous
with Pakistan was not the language of even
a single region in that country.Pakistan's
five sub-national cultures had their own
languages.
Generally speaking, we can say that
it was Bengali for East Pakistan, Punjabi
for Punjab, Sindhi for Sindh, Baluchi for
Baluchistan and Pushto for Frontier
Provinces, Saraiki and Dari for those states,
January-March 2012 :: 63