By: Jayanta Sharangthem
A place is called a garden when different types of flowers grow. But when a person tries to make it grow only one type of flower, the place will no longer be called a garden. We are in a pluralistic country where all cultures, languages, religions, and food habits have equal rights under the constitution. India is a union of states; a union of languages; a union of religions; a union of cultures, traditions, and faith. Even in Manipur, there are so many tribes who have their own languages, culture, traditions, and faith. The Hindi-speaking people are trying to push their own language over others. It means you have no concern for the existence of these small tribes, right? You only think of your survival. Why don’t we let the people of our great nation decide what to eat, what to wear, who to worship, and what language to speak? This imposition will cause great disadvantages to the future youth of this nation who have global aspirations. If necessary, let the individual choose to learn other languages. I will call this a war on language. If you impose, there will be no regional pride. If Hindi is the national language, then the mother tongue of each tribe will fall into the second-class category, which will ultimately be diminished with time. Let me express freely what I feel in my heart on this controversial and emotional issue of language. I am a Manipuri. I am from the Northeast, which has a rich cultural and linguistic heritage. I live in Manipur. I am proud of it. I was born and brought up here in Manipur. This is my motherland. My identity is Meetei because I speak Meiteilon, my mother tongue. Except Manipuri/Meiteilon, every language which is not familiar with me, including Hindi, English, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, etc., is a foreign language to me. I somehow speak and write English so that we can communicate with each other to some extent. I agree that I am not good at English because I am not from England or America. I am from Manipur. But I am a master of my mother tongue, and neither the Americans nor the British will be able to defeat me in it.
If we are to compete globally, we must learn English, which has become a linked language over the years, as a second language in addition to our mother tongue. Nowadays, it is not possible to become a doctor, a software engineer, or any other professional job without English. He/she needs to go abroad for further study. Why do you push for a particular language that you are comfortable with? But first, tell me the answer to this question. If the United Nation says English should be the universal language of communication and all must speak it, would you agree or not? So, don’t force us to speak your language, and at the same time, we will not force you to speak our language. What do you feel if we try to force the Hindi-speaking people to speak our Meiteilon? You are imposing Hindi in the name of promotion of languages. You can’t impose Hindi on us because our mother tongue is a reflection of our culture, our thought process, and our identity. Else the people begin to say that they are not proud of India after 2014. It is very unfair to impose one’s ideas on others who do not easily succumb. If you attack on our identity, in order to survive, we will fight for it because without our identity, we are just humans. No more Meitei, no more Manipuri. The core aim of your push means that only your tribes must be survived, and the remaining will be merged into you. Actually, you have no right to tell me how to stand, how to sit, how to sleep, what to eat, or what to speak. It is my birth right. Let the people enjoy freely in their own domain. Live and let me live. You are trying to take an advantage or to make a place or backdoor entry for your national political party into the South or other places to dominate regional political parties. But this tactic, in the long run, will surely destroy their diversity, their uniqueness, their languages, their cultures, their religions. Sometimes, the Hindi-speaking people need to look beyond politics. Hindi imposition is a caste project. Languages are not tools. National integration is not a mathematical equation. You are talking about unity and uniformity, forgetting this vast diversity of tribes, languages, cultures, religions, traditions, food habits, etc. What is your agenda behind this? You want homogenisation, right? But it is not possible for one nation, one language, one religion, and one law, especially in India. One of the most controversial and political issues in Indian politics is related to language problems. After attaining independence, the Indian government decided to enact Hindi as the only official language of independent India. Hindi belonged to the lineage of Aryan languages. People who spoke other languages, especially Dravidians and people in the North-East, saw in this decision an attempt to erase their language cultures. Hindi should not be imposed till the non-Hindi-speaking states agree to it. It may be promoted so that it becomes a standardised link language. But, it should not offend the emotions of other citizens of India who speak their languages proudly. The Constitution of India talks of the composite culture of the nation. All languages should be equally respected and promoted. One should not be forced to learn a language which she/he does not connect with. It would violate constitutional norms.
This is not the first time that the centre is trying to put the Hindi language on a higher pedestal than others, equating it somewhat to the status of a national language. The 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee took place on April 8. The Union home minister stressed the need to make it the “official language” of the country. Additionally, he also announced that Hindi will be made compulsory up to class 10 in all eight states of Northeast India. According to a press release from the Ministry of Home Affairs, it was also said that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English, not to local languages. Now again, Shah is set to launch the MBBS course in the Hindi medium by releasing three textbooks. The Union Home Minister’s statement recently, saying that Hindi should replace English as the “link language” and that the government’s work will increasingly be in Hindi, has set the proverbial cat among the Southern pigeons. Because of anti-Hindi protests, the DMK came to power in Tamil Nadu. With a lot of strong criticism and resistance to the recent remarks of Shah, the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, M.K. Stalin, vociferously criticised the aforementioned idea of “One Nation, One Language” on the grounds of being detrimental to the country’s unity.
The ruling DMK’s youth and student wings organised protests all over the state opposing the Union Government’s alleged move to impose Hindi on non-Hindi-speaking states and making it the medium of instruction in elite institutions like IITs, IIMS, and AIIMS, as recommended by the parliamentary committee headed by the Union Home Minister. The argument of those opposing Hindi has been that all Indian languages should have an equal status.
It’s not just Tamil. Any mother tongue which is different from Hindi has its own unique beauty and so much history associated with it. Imposing something which is not familiar with is not the solution to unity. And the people of India will never let this imposition happen. Picking Hindi as a national language would provide an unfair advantage to those for whom it is a mother tongue. There is no demand for having a link language for all states of India. Because the link language differs according to the people’s needs in terms of their routine life, place of living, business etc., English, which has been there for over two centuries, alone can be the link language. The intention of imposing Hindi as a link language on itself is wrong. Many of the minority tongues have already been under attack from English and other dominant languages, and with the new education policy advocacy, may drive them to a dire situation close to extinction. It has already been recorded that some of the minority languages are losing their membership and are almost at the brink of being extinct due to several social, cultural, political, and economic pressures that act upon them from time to time. Any attempt at diluting the importance of regional language is viewed as an attempt at homogenisation of culture. The idea of “one country, one language” is not only fallacious but also dangerous to the unity & integrity of India itself. Language is a crucial component of one’s identity and engagement with one’s community. Actively engaging with one’s mother tongue is a necessary facet of design thinking and comprehension, as well as promoting the holistic development of an individual. Thus, it is important to give primacy to the opinions of those non-Hindi speakers who believe that a compulsion of learning Hindi strikes at their right to promote their mother tongues. One of the underlying factors for the birth of Bangladesh was the imposition of Urdu from West Pakistan. The unrest in Sri Lanka can be attributed to not giving adequate protection to the Tamil-speaking minority population. It is evident that the current government has harboured a long-standing agenda of promoting Hindi even among non-native speakers, in spite of the vehement opposition it has faced from different quarters each time it has made efforts to further that agenda. I remember Darwin’s theory of evolution: ‘The extinction of those (like dinosaurs) is because they can’t fight or adapt or survive in the undue circumstances of a changing environment with time’. It means we, the minority, should fight the challenges, else we will be abolished from the surface of this Earth.
Hindi does not have the capacity like English, why do you impose forcefully on educational institutions? So, we should not be bound and put in a box like a bird in a cage. If we are to live together in harmony, you should not force us to adopt your languages, culture, and religions. At the same time, we will not force you to adopt our mother tongue either. Coexistence will be impossible otherwise. Still, if you try to push for a particular language or religion, it is called a dictatorship form or majoritarianism, which has no place in the federalism form of democracy. If the majority of Indians are non-vegetarians, is it possible that everyone should be non-vegetarian? If so, it will not be called “willingness” but “dictatorship. You should not try to dominate and rule over us, and we will not try to dominate and rule over you either. Respecting each other, we should try to rule for the welfare of us all together. Give respect to get respect. Hindi is also, as they claimed, not the mother tongue of many north, south, and central Indians. They speak Mythili, Bhojpuri, Marwari, Mewari, Avadh, Brij, Gujarati, Rajthani, Marathi, Bengali, Santhali, Haryanvi, Punjabi, Oriya, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, etc . Hindi supremacists have been suppressing the northern Indian languages for a long time. They are now planning to suppress other old South Indian languages as well. It is a ridiculous thought to have one language to unite. We have already united as a union of states, making one nation, India. Each person adores his or her native language, as do we. We are proud of our language, our identity, and our culture like you. The people of North and central India should also stop humiliating and torturing the NE people by calling them Chinese, insect eaters, or jangly. If this continues, how can the so-called “Unity in Diversity” be maintained? The politicians should also stop adopting the new versions of Divide and Rule policies like North vs. South, Hindu vs. Muslim, Veg vs. Non-veg, our food vs. their food, our dress vs. their dress, our language vs. their language, our religion vs. their religion, hilly people vs. city people, etc. Or are you playing a different game in order to divert attention from the national issues such as unemployment, price increases, inflation, and the rupee’s depreciation against the dollar?
Today, you try to impose a language on us, and tomorrow, you will almost certainly try to impose a religion on us. If the people of central India like UP and Bihar are willing to learn Manipuri or any other South Indian language, why should we not learn your language, Hindi? So, what you don’t want to do should not try to be done by others. Shame on the people who brought this issue to the national table. You are destroying unity rather than attempting to repair it. We will not bow to imposition. This big burning topic, if continued, will lead to a civil war in India. This type of debate about imposing only one language over others, in my opinion, will further increase the demand for a separate state from various perspectives, destroying the so-called unity that has been maintained since Independence. Our country’s pluralistic identity should not be destroyed. It is very sad to impose Hindi for political gains in order to extend Hindi-majority-national parties to the South after wiping out strong regional parties like DMK, AIADMK, and TMC. This may also suppress other ethnic groups. But on the contrary, this issue of languages will even strengthen the regional political parties in due course of time. And also, non-Hindi-speaking people can’t compete with Hindi-speaking people in exams and competitions.
Language is the carrier of society’s culture. It is through one’s own language that people are able to express effectively. The disappearance of language due to imposition of non-native language will eventually lead to sublimation of native culture & the traditional knowledge. A language is much more than just something we use to communicate. A language has hope; a language has imagination; a language has history; a language has culture and tradition in it. As the country has many languages, Hindi cannot be imposed as the main language of instruction in the higher centres of learning and a single language cannot be termed as the country’s language. Language shares geographical features and is closely related to the culture, customs, and identity of people and things. It is the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way. Language is also a statement of relationships among the thoughts and expressions of a human being. India is a country of different languages, and every language has its own importance. The language question is not just about imposition but about the distortion of an individual’s cultural identity. After the annexation of India, the British then tried to promote English for better governance. Even after India got independence, there were always two major language-related issues: (i) the dispute over the official language of the union and (ii) the linguistic reorganisation of the states. If India is to exist as a country under unity in diversity, as an Indian, one should be given the option and choice to learn any language as one wants, not forcefully imposed. Its imposition will pose a threat to the unity of India. For more than 70 years, we have been brainwashed into thinking that Hindi/Sanskrit will be the national language.
Different contexts may be mapped out in this regard. First, the context of colonisation, wherein colonisers threatened the languages of the land by advocating an ideology that aimed to “civilise” and “modernise” the colonial subjects so that they could serve their “tastes”. Secondly, the context of the formation of the post-colonial nation state, which had patronised the dominant language of the land as the lingua franca of the state (by adopting it as a national/official language) and of the education system (by adopting it as a medium of instruction or as a compulsory language), This process was driven by the political elite who often used linguistic nationalism as a weapon to achieve oneness, unity, integrity, and nationhood. Thirdly, in the post-independence era, the rise of sub-national linguistic identities challenging the national linguistic identity has also contributed to the marginalisation of the minority tongues within their sphere of influence. Fourthly, and most recently, the context of the market-driven process of globalisation, which sought to blur the boundaries between nation states, let alone the “nations” within the nation states, through the increasing use of English, which has consolidated and strengthened the onslaught on the minority languages. The assimilative nature of dominant languages makes them detrimental to the survival of minority languages or languages of less power. The “majority” ethnic languages or English, as the case may be, depending on the context, are the culprits for the extinction of minority languages in any given society. For instance, the minority tribal languages in many states are taught in either the dominant language of the state or in English (as in the case of many or all of the north-eastern states) and seldom in their own tongue. The immediate justification given for such policies is that the scripts of these native tongues are either not developed or do not exist. Even when they do exist, it is not “appropriate” for teaching and learning. Secondly, the much propagated and envisioned three-language formula has never gained ground except in a few states, leaving the goal of trilingualism or multilingualism a distant dream for most parts of the country. Thirdly, the minority language speakers constantly face the ridicule from peers and teachers when they speak the dominant school language or the language of their home. Usually, these are reflected in the informal or formal references to the minority tongues and peoples in talk, behaviour and in imitations that may indicate humiliation and discrimination toward the speaker of minority tongues. Even when a minority language speaker speaks the dominant language(s) with the accent of one’s own native tongue, then also it is a matter of laughter and invites social sanction and hence social rejection of the minority language and its speaker. One of the consequences of poor education policies in education is that the child is far removed from his/her linguistic and cultural context and it may prove disastrous for the education of the children from linguistic minority communities such as tribal, border or even the so-called dominant indigenous linguistic groups. It must be borne in mind that the child’s mother tongue education is crucial for successful early childhood experience. Denial of such educational experience through their mother tongue, as research shows, results in their poor response to the formal education, especially in the first few years of schooling. The purpose of language policies in education, therefore, is not to complicate this complex problem, but to address it convincingly without any further loss to the linguistic and cultural contexts of the linguistic minority children.
This new move will bring about a power struggle between the national and regional, and in this, the minorities in their respective states will be stripped of their linguistic rights even further. They are the real scapegoats of this double power move in both the regional and the national space. Declaring a language official or compulsory is not a naïve or innocent act aimed at communication alone. It also means purging other languages and minorities of their freedom and rights. Such a move can only be one of domination – of assertion of power. The forceful way of imposition, which can also be captured in the language of Shah when he says “have to accept”, is a serious threat to the autonomy and agency of people to choose language, let alone speak their mother tongue. When the linguistic element becomes secondary and the cultural element takes precedence, then the interplay between the national and sub-national is bound to have a fresh dynamic The creation of an official language also created classes and social divides. First, a class of people who know that language and the rest who don’t. In that specific sense, the point is not to kill other dialects and languages entirely but to make them subordinate and dependent on one or the other dominant form. India is a deeply multicultural society and home to great linguistic diversity. The idea of promoting “unity in diversity” is one that has been continually reiterated as being in the best interests of a deeply diverse country. Scholars, too, have pointed out that efforts to accord primacy to Hindi over other languages effectively “threaten the diversity of federalism in India,” and represent a monopolization of “faith, education and language” on the part of the union government.
The basic argument advanced in this is not to reject any language as irrelevant but to plead for meaningful language policies in education so that the minority languages survive, flourish, and grow rather than extinct in the shadow of one or the other dominant languages, as linguistic identity represents a unique ethno cultural diversity. One significant outcome of the dominance of a few languages is that the linguistic minorities are assimilated into one or the other of these few dominant linguistic groups, restricting the use of one’s own tongue to the home. In some cases, the dominant street language pervades as the language of the home among the linguistic minorities, dethroning their own native tongue in due course of time. Subsequently, they are forced to turn into bilingual or trilingual in order to appropriate themselves within the hegemonic linguistic situation. The dominant linguistic groups, on the other hand, remain largely monolingual and look down upon the minority tongues as primitive or not proper or uncivilised. The lack of instruction in the mother tongue for the linguistic minority children in schools is often cited as one of the reasons for diminishing numbers of minority tongues. The linguistic minority communities had to opt for the language of the school, which is usually the dominant language of the area or the state in which the school is located. For instance, a gond in Andhra Pradesh gets education in Telugu and a gond in Chhattisgarh gets education in Hindi or those in Maharashtra in Marathi. Similarly, a Marathi-speaking child living on the Andhra Pradesh side of the border will have to learn Telugu and on the Karnataka side of the border will have to learn Kannada, despite having provisions for transacting education in Marathi for such border communities. The situation is precarious for the tribal communities but are seldom taught in that language. It is this fact that reaffirms the threat to the minority languages in the country. This fact cannot be overlooked as linguistic identity is identified with ethnic and cultural identity, which then threatens the emotional, social, and group affiliations of a child growing up in a multilingual society. In education, the language of early childhood experiences is the most important factor as it has some relevance to the context in which the child is socialised. We have witnessed several debates over the language question and have even faced a serious threat to its very existence as a union. However, each of these debates centres around a few dominant languages, leaving aside the numerous other minority languages, such as those of tribal communities, forcing them to join one or the other larger linguistic community. The debate on national language had ignored to a large extent the presence of other regional tongues/vernaculars which are sizeable in number and strength, let alone the other minority tongues, spread across India. As a result, post-independence India witnessed massive disagreements over the imposition of a single national language, namely, Hindi, all over the country.
Linguistic diversity is part and parcel of the diversity of life in nature and culture. Any loss in linguistic diversity is a loss in the vitality and resilience of the whole web of life. Every time a language disappears, along with the cultural traditions and cultural knowledge it conveys, it’s a piece of the planet’s living fabric that gets torn off, leaving all of the living world more fragile, more vulnerable, and with fewer options for the future. This linguistic and cultural diversity has come under attack in different periods of history and has threatened the existence of many of the minority languages, mainly those which are numerically less represented and also those which are powerless or are of less utility in terms of social mobility. Instead, the government should try to promote and preserve regional languages in order to protect them from being mixed with other languages. We all hear our children calling mummy, daddy, instead of Ema, Epa, etc. We all speak Meiteilon with suffix and prefix of English. It seems, with due course of time, our Meiteilon language is imperfect without English. It means our pure Manipuri language is also diminished with time. We should take care of it. The changes and losses in the number of mother-tongue speakers are associated with shifts or being mixed in the use of a given language with others, as well as with a decline in the transmission of that regional language to new generations. The magnitude of the problem shows that there is a global crisis of linguistic language loss. So, we need to call our attention to the importance of maintaining of linguistic diversity for the conservation of biological diversity. There is a parallel connection between linguistic diversity and biological diversity as linguistic diversity evolves with the adoption of the geographical climatic diversity of biodiversity.