Maha Bharat: Episode 45

Does India have an official language?

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Debates over languages in India are not new, but this should not be a surprise since we’re such a diverse country with different languages. According to a recent analysis of the Census, more than 19,500 languages or dialects are spoken in India as mother tongues.

And in such a diverse country, it’s obvious that we need a language for our government to function in, an official language. But do you know what India’s official language is? and which one it is?

Find out in this episode!

Show Notes

All clips and voices used in this podcast are owned by the original creators

Links to clips used in this episode —

Full Transcript of Episode 45 –

[We hear the voice of Amit Shah talking about the Official language of India]

Like you just heard, comments made by our Home Minister Amit Shah relating to our official language on the occasion of Hindi Diwas last year sparked a huge debate across the country. 

Many politicians–especially from South India–spoke out against it.

[We hear the voice of Kamal Haasan speaking]

This was Tamil actor-politician Kamal Haasan’s reaction to Shah’s comments. 

Anyway, debates over language is not really a new thing in India. But this is not a surprise, since we’re such a diverse country with different languages.

According to a recent analysis of the Census, more than 19,500 languages or dialects are spoken in India as mother tongues.  

Now, like how people from a particular region speak a common language, our Union government, too, has to have a common language in which all official communications happen–right? So, that’s what you call the official language.  

But do you know what India’s official language is? Do we even have one?  

Come, let’s find out in today’s episode. 

Okay, before I talk about our official language, let me make one thing clear. 

Official language (राजभाषा) should not be confused with national language (राष्ट्रभाषा)–these are two entirely different things. So, usually, these are terms that will be defined in the Constitutions of various countries. 

But what is the difference between these two terms?

So, different countries define it differently. But most commonly, we see that national language is the language which is most commonly spoken in a particular country. For example, the national language of France is French because that’s the language which is widely spoken in the country. Similarly, in China, it’s Mandarin. 

Coming back to the official language. Like I said before, it’s the language that’s used by the government of a country for official purposes–think about all the laws and government circulars.

But let me tell you that for a lot of countries, the national language and official language are the same. Some countries even have multiple official languages. For example, Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. But only one of them is the national language, and that is Malay.

Leave all the talk about foreign countries, let’s come back to India. What about our national and official languages?

Okay, now a lot of people think that we have a national language, and that it’s Hindi. Well, this is actually not true.

There is no mention of a national language anywhere in our Constitution. We are linguistically too diverse to have a national language for the whole country! 

Okay, so do we have an official language then? Well, let’s see what our constitution says.        

Article 343 of our constitution says that Hindi in Devanagari script shall be the Official language of the Union. Apart from this, clause 3 of Article 343 states that the Parliament may use English also as the official language. 

But while Hindi is the primary official language of the Centre, English is the official language of the courts–That’s what Article 348 of our Constitution says.  

But what about the proceedings of the Lok Sabha?

[We hear the voice of three MPs taking oath in the Lok Sabha]

You just listened to Narendra Modi, Shashi Tharoor and Mahua Moitra–who are members of the Lok Sabha–taking their oath. Now, you must have noticed that Modi took his oath in Hindi, Shashi Tharoor spoke in English and Mahua Moitra in Bengali.  

So, we know that Hindi and English are our official languages. But what about Bengali? How is it even allowed to speak in Bengali in the Parliament?

So, Bengali is one of the 22 languages included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. And members can speak in these languages in the Parliament with prior permission of the Speaker. 

[We hear the voice of the Rajya Sabha speaker make an announcement]

That was Venkaiah Naidu, the Rajya Sabha chairman. And soon after the Rajya Sabha allowed these 22 languages in the House, the Lok Sabha also did the same.   

The Parliament will have translators for all these 22 languages–who will translate the text of the members’ speeches for everyone to understand. 

Initially when the Constitution was drafted, only 14 languages–like Bengali, Sanskrit, Kannada and Malayalam–were included in the Eighth Schedule.

This part of the Constitution was amended three times after that–in 1967, 1992 and 2003. And now, we finally have 22 languages in the Eighth Schedule.    

There are many languages that are still not part of the Eighth Schedule. 

[We hear the voice of a MP taking oath in the Bagheli language]

So, this happened during the Lok Sabha swearing-in ceremony in 2019. MP Janardan Mishra started taking the oath in Bagheli–which is a language spoken in Madhya Pradesh–but he had to stop midway.   

Since Bagheli is not included in the Eight Schedule, there were no translators available for that language. 

So, Janardan Mishra was asked to choose another language to take his oath in. He then took his oath in Hindi, like we just heard. 

What about our States then? Each state and union territory in India also has an official language. 

[We hear a news reporter announce a new bill passed in the Lok Sabha]

In September last year, Dogri, Hindi, English and Urdu became the official languages of Jammu & Kashmir.  

So like that, each state has its own official language. This will mostly be the regional language of that particular state. For instance, the official language of West Bengal is Bengali and that of Maharashtra is Marathi. 

But today, let’s talk about the official language of the Centre. 

So like I told you, Hindi and English are our official languages.

But have you ever wondered how our leaders came to this decision?

To understand this, let’s go back in time to when India was on the verge of becoming independent. 

So when the British ruled India, our official language was English–the language of our colonisers. 

And as the freedom struggle started becoming strong and we were at the verge of gaining independence (आजादी की कगार पर), we formed a Constituent Assembly–the members of this assembly were elected to draft a Constitution for independent India. 

So, in December 1946, members of the Constituent Assembly met for the first time ever. And one of the first things they had to decide was the language in which the proceedings of the House will be conducted.

Now, you’ll be surprised to know that Hindi wasn’t really their first choice of language. 

Back then, many of our major leaders felt that all official communication should happen in either Hindustani or English.

Wait, what is Hindustani? 

Hindustani is a language that is a mix of Hindi and Urdu. 

By the way, let me remind you of one thing–all this was before our Constitution was written. At this point, the terms ‘official language’ and ‘national language’ were not clearly defined. Also, back then, many of our leaders were pretty much convinced that India needed one ‘national language’ that united the whole country. 

Anyway, coming back to Hindustani.

Jawaharlal Nehru felt Hindustani was the ‘golden mean’ between Hindu and Urdu–matlab, dono bhaasha ke ek sunhaira mel. 

Even Mahatma Gandhi agreed with him. He felt that Hindustani could unite North with South, and Hindu with Muslim. Rather than English, Hindustani should be the national language, he wrote. 

Even then, many members of the Constituent assembly opposed the choice of Hindustani.

Many of them–like Kaka Kalelkar, Maithili Sharan Gupt and Seth Govind Das–demanded for Hindi to be the national language. Some of them even urged the House to order the Government to change all car number plates from English to Hindi!

Not just that–they demanded that the official version of the Constitution be in Hindi, with an unofficial version in English. They felt that it would be ‘insulting’ to adopt a document written in English.

But the committee which was drafting the Constitution did not accept this demand. 

Well, this was a time when nationalist sentiments were running high–and there was this tendency to reject anything that was associated with the British. So naturally, there was a lot of opposition against English. 

The following year, something happened that changed things around completely. 

First, India got its independence in August 1947. And immediately after that, the Partition happened. 

[We hear a narration of the Indian paritition]

So, after the Partition, leaders started pitching for Hindi as a potential national language. It was the natural first choice, because it was the mother tongue of a majority of Indian states. 

The proposal was that Hindi should be the sole national language. 

But this, too, was met with a lot of opposition–this time, from leaders of South Indian states. 

T. T. Krishnamachari, a member of the Constituent assembly  from Madras, felt that if Hindi became the national language, the non-Hindi speakers will be sidelined in our country. 

So, Krishnamachari along with some other South Indian leaders–said English should be the national language. 

It seemed like a never-ending debate! Finally, in 1949–after three years of debate–the Constituent assembly finally came to a decision. 

And that’s how Hindi–along with English–became our official language. 

All those who were fighting for Hindi celebrated this decision. And on 14 September 1949, Hindi Diwas was celebrated for the first time ever in India.   

Anyway, coming back to the decision of our Constituent assembly–It’s important to note the change in words here–official language, not national. 

But here’s the interesting bit. English was not meant to be our official language forever! The makers of our Constitution had planned to slowly phase out the use of English. They hoped that one day, the whole of India would accept Hindi as their own language.   

The Constitution–which was adopted on 26 January 1950–stated that English may be used for all official purposes only for the next 15 years. 

So, English was supposed to be around only till 26 January 1965. That was the deadline. 

Well, we all know how that turned out: English is still one of our official languages! 

How did this happen? Why didn’t the government give up the use of English in 1965?

Well, this is mostly because of pressure from the anti-Hindi movement that was gradually spreading across South India–mainly Tamil Nadu–during all those years. 

Leaders of South Indian states felt that Hindi was being unnecessarily imposed on them.

“If Hindi should be the official language because it’s spoken by a majority, then the common crow and not the peacock would have to be the national bird.” 

This is what Tamil leader C.N. Annadurai–who founded the DMK–once said in the Lok Sabha, when one of the members made a case for Hindi to be the national language. 

Anyway, the movement against Hindi was too strong in Tamil Nadu. Prime Minister Nehru couldn’t ignore it. 

So in 1963–two years before the deadline–the House enacted the Official Languages Act. This Act said that, “English may be used along with Hindi in official communication.” 

But the South Indian leaders still didn’t back down–they felt that this Act was too ambiguous. The movement became even stronger in 1965.  

26 January 1965 will be observed as a ‘day of mourning’–DMK leader CN Annadurai declared.  

And starting from 25 January, there were huge protest rallies across Tamil Nadu. In one rally in Coimbatore, some protestors carried a mock “dead body” of the Hindi “demon” (raakshas)! 

But soon, things started turning violent, and the police had to open fire at the protestors. There were also several self-immolations by young men (kuch yuvako ne apne aap ko balidan kar diya).

Now, Lal Bahadur Shastri–who was our Prime Minister at the time–wanted Hindi to be our national language. But he also had a rebellion to manage at the same time. 

And so, Lal Bahadur Shastri said that states could continue using English or a language of their own choice. Not just that–two states can communicate with each other in English, or in regional languages translated into English. More importantly, Shastri also said that English could be used by the Centre too! 

So yes, that’s how we still have English as an additional official language. 

But of course, our Constitution does give special importance to Hindi. So, Article 351 states that it’s the Centre’s duty to promote the spread of the Hindi language. But there is still a large opposition against the spread of Hindi language becoming the ONLY national language.

[We hear the voice of MP Shashi Tharoor speaking in an interview]

That was Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s response, when asked if Hindi should be our national language. 

More recently, something else happened. The Draft National Education Policy 2019 had suggested making Hindi and English compulsory, along with one Indian Regional Language. Several opposition parties from the Southern states criticised this proposal.

[We hear a news report about states opposing this government decision]

So in June 2019, the Centre had to change the Draft National Education Policy–since the opposition was so strong. 

Clearly, language is a very sensitive issue in our country. For us, language is not just a means of communication, it is something more than that–especially because all Indian languages have a rich variety of literature and culture associated with it. 

So by promoting a particular language, the government is promoting its culture too–which is exactly why there is a lot of politics associated with it. 

But anyway, not much has changed for us since 1965–we have two official languages and no national language. 

This is how things stand even now. I hope you learnt something new from today’s episode. 

I’ll see you again next week, in a brand new episode of Maha Bharat!

Credits

Narrated by – Dhruv Rathee
Producer – Gaurav Vaz
Written by – Medha V and Gaurav Vaz
Title Track Design – Abhijith Nath
Audio Production – Madhav Ayachit