Protests Over Language Bill

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31548, 9 December 1967, Page 13

Protests Over Language Bill

(N.ZP.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW DELHI, December 8. The Indian Parliament was in uproar for more than an hour yesterday when the Government introduced its bill to retain English as an official language alongside Hindi.

Opposition members shouting at each other made so much noise that the Home Minister (Mr Y. B. Chavan) could hardly be heard as he rose to explain the purpose of the bill. He said it was intended to allay misgivings among people in Southern India and other non-Hindi areas by allowing English to continue as an official language for as long as they wanted. Outside the Parliament building, students burst through a police cordon and made a bonfire of copies of the bill, which has caused riots across Northern India in the last two weeks.

More than 700 people have been arrested in anti-English rioting among the Hindispeaking people of Northern India. Militant Hindi demonstrators stoned schools in New Delhi yesterday and, on the main road east of Delhi, students attacked cars with English letters on their number plates. In the northern city of Lucknow, the police arrested

40 anti-English demonstrators, including nine blind boys who squatted at the railway station shouting slogans against the Government. Violence and tension continued in several other Northern Indian towns today.