India’s Language Riots

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30676, 16 February 1965, Page 14

India’s Language Riots

Language can be a means of communication or a barrier to it; it can help towards prosperity and progress, or it can condemn men to poverty and confusion. This is being brought home anew to the people of India. Their vast country, which less than 20 years ago Mr Nehru and his Congress Party leaders began to fuse into one nation, suffers under many afflictions; famine, the threat of the Chinese, the conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir, disputes between the States and the union Government, and the divisions of religion, culture, and language. The language riots in Madras State seem a self-inflicted wound; they have been provoked partly, at least, by the political agitation of opponents of the Congress Party.

Long before independence, the Congress Party promised to redraw the boundaries of the Indian States along linguistic lines. This was done in 1952. It has strengthened the power of the States—and fed their separatist sentiment—in relation to the cohesive force of the central government. The spirit of nationalism demanded the abolition of English as India’s official language. This was simply not practical, although some universities in the north adopted Hindi, at least for the arts and humanities. English remains the language of higher education, science, and medicine. In the schools throughout India, the regional languages or a local vernacular are used. Fourteen languages are specified in the Constitution as the official languages for one or more States. Agitation for linguistic boundaries often came from dominant castes. A State based on one language meant power for those who spoke it, and the patronage that goes with office. Many of the most capable politicians have preferred to enjoy the certainty of authority in the State capitals to the shadowy power attaching to national leadership. While Mr Nehru lived and had about him the leaders of the independence movement, these disruptive influences seldom came to the surface; now India’s new national leadership is being put to a very severe test. The self-destructive protests in the southern States against the recent decree of Hindi as India’s official language are peculiarly Indian. Like fasting, self-destruction and self-harm are regarded as a means of punishing one’s enemy. Language can all too easily become an emotional issue in any country. In India, where it will be many years before all citizens are literate in any language, knowledge of the “ right ” language is indispensable to the individual citizen’s progress in education, business, and government service. A common language would speed the national campaign for literacy; and literacy is vital to economic and social progress. To communicate even the simplest advice or instruction through all levels of society can be cumbersome, often impossible: yet diversity of language, and the barriers and divisions it creates, are problems India will have to live with.