By Dr Satish Misra
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who is also the ruling party’s most authoritative spokesperson in his capacity of still being the party chief, strongly pushed the case of Hindi to be the national language because it was “the heart and soul of the freedom struggle”.
“Unity and diversity is the strength of our nation but a national language is needed so that foreign languages do not overpower our own”, Shah said while speaking at a Rajbhasha award ceremony on Hindi Divas, 2019 in the union capital.
Shah’s support for Hindi was reflected in a series of tweets to mark the Hindi Diwas and in one of which he wrote:” There are several languages in India and they have their own importance, but is also important for the nation to have one language that it is identified globally. Today, if there is one language that can bind the nation, it’s Hindi, the most widely-spoken language of the country.”
From next year, Shah said Hindi Divas would be celebrated as a public event. “Divas would be celebrated outside Delhi and for a week”, he stressed adding that Hindi movement should reach people. Shah even went to the extent of distorting and misquoting Mahatma Gandhi and the first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s support for Hindi. The two leaders had talked about Hindustani and not about Hindi but quoting out of context and misquoting of national leaders’ statements is nothing new because majority of BJP leaders indulge in it to mislead gullible and uninformed citizens.
Majoritarian agenda seems to be back with vengeance and Shah apart from pushing for it is also giving vehement expression to it now. Batting for Hindi is not a new development in the BJP as it, like scrapping of Article 370, or introduction of a common civil code or construction of a Ramjanmbhoomi temple at Ayodhya, has been on the party’s agenda almost since its inception rather from the days of its erstwhile Avtar- Bhartiya Jan Sangh. In those days, RashtriyaSwyamsevak Sangh used to shout “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan”and that has been its core Hinduatva agenda.
For tactical reasons, these issues had been pushed to the background but the new thrust for it reflects the confidence that the party leadership under Modi-Shah duo strongly backed by the RSS has acquired after two successive Lok Sabha victories. As expected, Shah’s forceful intervention in favour of Hindi has drawn sharp reactions from parties in southern states with the Congress cautioning the Modi government against tweaking the three-language formula and asking the ruling party to refrain from stirring controversies on “emotive” issues that had been settled by the Constitution makers.
DMK chief M K Stalin asked the Prime Minister to intervene failing which his party would launch a nation-wide agitation and said that Shah’s comments amounted to degrading non-Hindi speaking people as second-grade citizens. PMK chief S Ramadoss said Amit Shah can’t impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking people. The ruling AIADMK, a BJP ally, said whatever the compulsion the state would stick to the two languages formula teaching in Tamil and English laid down by former CMs C N Annadurai, MGR and J Jayalaithaa.
West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee tweeted, “we may learn more languages, but we should not forget our mother language.” Former Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy of the JD (S) asked why only Hindi Divas was being observed and why there were no such celebrations for other languages. Kumaraswamy reminded Shah that Kannada like Hindi is also an official language of the country, so when will you celebrate Kannada Divas.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan called the move as a planned attempt to trigger a controversy and divert attention from real issues. The CPI said Shah’s intervention to push Hindi smacked of an attack on the very concept of diversity as it aims at hitting the edifice of federalism.
MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi tweeted saying “Hindi isn’t every Indian’s mother tongue that dot this land? Article 29 gives every Indian the right to a distinct language, script & culture.”
In fact, Hindi is spoken by 43.6 percent of Indian and by virtue of that it is used by the largest number but that does not empower any government or for that matter any leader to impose it on 57.4 percent non-Hindi speaking citizens. Slowly but surely, Hindi has been spreading and its acceptability has been growing but the BJP-RSS penchant for pursuing the politics of non-issues results in precipitation of unnecessary controversies resulting in waste of human energies on negative and destructive agenda. Shah’s avowed championing of Hindi has, in fact, resulted in a serious setback to its cause because it has created more opposition than support across the country.
One plausible reason for Shah to raise the controversy over Hindi is to divert the national attention from serious economic crisis that the country is facing today on account of Modi’s government’s faulty policies like demonetisation and hasty implementation of the goods and service tax (GST) along with pushing for non-productive economic and financial issues.
However, Shah’s call to make Hindi one language to “bind the whole country” is an insidious step to push “one nation, one religion, one election; one culture, one leader, one party, one language” ideology of the RSS-BJP.
In their mistaken understanding of the nation that is as diverse as India, the RSS-BJP are trying to push for uniformity in place of unity. Unity comes from voluntary association and identification of a cause or concept and not by forceful pushing down the throat of millions of non-Hindi speaking citizens.
By pursuing the politics of non-issues away from real challenges of employment and pushing economic growth at a time when the nation is confronted with economic recession and falling GDP, the Modi government is taking the country to the brink of disaster.
(Dr. Satish Misra is a Veteran Journalist & Research Associate with Observer Research Foundation).