Pride in one’s language is of no value till it rewards its users. This applies to every tongue in the world. If our political ancestors were serious about Hindi or any other language, we would have seen economic opportunities develop around it that sustained its speakers
Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s assertion that the promotion of Hindi will help unite India with a common language invited him the ire of the leaders of the non-Hindi States, particularly from southern India. The outrage ensued in Shah’s clarification that he never stood for the imposition of Hindi on any other mother tongue, his own being Gujarati, but advocated the promotion of Hindi as a common second language to encourage national integration.
However, Shah’s clarification didn’t have so much attention as his purported first statement. Between his two comments, there was immediate pushback from the leaders from southern States, including from his own party members in Karnataka. While the nation discussed Shah’s contention from various perspectives, ranging from cultural and language domination to north Indian hegemony, not much time was spent on some other underlying messages.
Language may be one issue, but the social reality of the society of its speakers is another matter. There are some unspoken codes encrypted into it which need thinking it through. They might not make for pleasant reading.
Like all languages, Hindi and its dialects, are as beautiful as any on the planet. But Hindi cannot paper over the poor public image its native speakers have in the eyes of the rest of Indians. The reaction against the Home Minister’s statement is a collective disagreement with what the Hindi belt stands for. To a large extent, it has a poor social track record. Law and order, justice, gender equality, poverty alleviation and many other indices paint an abysmal picture. It is not that these are not true of other parts of India; but in large parts of the north they appear to be the norm. In journalistic and anecdotal accounts, even north Indians living in the south have concurred with such a perception.
For long, it has been a truth universally acknowledged that the capital of India has a bad name in India and abroad.
Therefore, it is tough to make Hindi appealing to others. Sure, there have been changes in many parts of north India for the better, but on many human development indices, they have been found wanting. A study conducted by the Bengaluru-based Public Affairs Centre in 2013 said so. Better leadership and quality of governance has led to southern States surging ahead and widening the gap in terms of per capita income and poverty between the south and north.
The non-northern regions have better schools, public services and local Governments. There are more north Indians working there, than the reverse. Indeed, being linked as Hindi speaking States of the north and getting conflated with the Hindi belt does injustice to Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, which have seen more progress as compared to the Hindi heartland. And this brings us to the biggest elephant in India’s political room: Uttar Pradesh. No state has such outsize power and say over what India does. It is Hindi chauvinism’s seedbed. How does it fare in human development markers? The Giri Institute of Developmental Studies conducted research which it published in 2018 that said it had among the lowest quality of life among Indian States.
Uttar Pradesh’s size is its blight. Uttarakhand was carved out due to long agitation among otherwise feuding hill tribes who united as their opponent was common. There are long-standing demands for statehood in water scarce Bundelkhand, and in the sugarcane and industrial belts of Purvanchal and Harit Pradesh. Given its hulk, Uttar Pradesh is keeping India backward, and denying its own people rights and services as citizens.
If the State with the largest number of Hindi speakers is the bellwether of so much that has gone awry in India, how can its language become the national one, so think the non-Hindi people. Any language cannot become an important one till it hasn’t earned public approval. With his comments, the Home Minister may have eroded any toehold of legitimacy Hindi may have had with non-Hindi speaking peoples of India. He might have also played a cruel joke on Hindi’s first-born speakers. For they too aspire to move to English.
Pride in one’s language is of no value till it rewards its communicators. This applies to every tongue in the world. If Amit Shah and our political ancestors were serious about Hindi or any other language, we would have seen an industry develop around it that sustained its speakers. Spanish, Standard Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, and, of course English, are some of the most powerful languages of the world, as to a great extent their speakers can get better chances to earn better livelihoods. Not many Indian languages offer that opportunity. For all their cultural capital what’s the future of an individual learning Sanskrit or Urdu in today’s India? Have these languages been empowered to generate sustainable employment? How does one make an ancient or old language germane today?
Perhaps, it would be pragmatic and advisable for India to develop the means to master the English language and become its world champion. The economic and other incentives will be aplenty. Our current political masters hail from India’s most trade savvy regions. If they plan it well, they can leverage the chance to make India the best English communicating country in the world, to great ends. Language and culture are also a form of capital. The subcontinent’s many languages prospered due to state patronage. So, let’s leave Hindi aside for the moment. Can we focus on English?
(The writer is Associate Professor, Jindal School of Liberal Arts & Humanities.)
