Special Feature – Hindi Day, September
14th
Hindi
beyond Official Language status
*PRIYADARSHI
DUTTA
September 14 is observed as the
Hindi Day. It was on this date in 1949 that the Constituent Assembly adopted
Hindi in Devanagari script as the official language of the Indian union after a
long and animated debate. Part XVII of the Constitution comprising Articles 343
to 351 deals with the subject. The Article 343 (1) declares the official
language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagri script. But a reading of the
Articles 343 (2) onwards reveal what a difficult and complicated terrain the
official language issue had to navigate in a multi-lingual nation like India
with its government institutions dominated by laws, rules and regulations set
down in English.
It can at best be described as a
compromise. All proceedings of the Supreme Court, High Courts, authoritative
texts of all Bills and Acts introduced or passed in Parliament of state
assemblies, all orders/rules/laws and regulations passed under the Constitution
have to be in English (as in colonial India). Until the passage of the Constitution (Fifty
Eighth) Amendment Act on February 17, 1987 no updated version of the
Constitution (containing the amendments) could be issued in Hindi containing
the amendments. For various reasons the performance of Hindi as an official
language is far from satisfactory. That is why Hindi is no way in sight of replacing
English in government even after 70 years. Our Constitution makers had allotted
merely 15 years for this task.
The concept of official language
(Raj Bhasha) pertains to various organs of the state viz. legislature,
executive, judiciary and armed forces etc. However, the nation is larger than its
government institutions. The mass mobilization that Mahatma Gandhi initiated in
India happened outside institutions. His Non-Cooperation movement or opposition
to Congress participating in elections under the Government of India Act, 1919
reveal his disapproval to the nation being dependent on its institutions. Gandhi
was aware of the gulf between the state apparatus in colonial India and her
teeming millions. He wanted to address the Indian nation rather than India, the
state. One of the ways Gandhi did it was to use the language of the masses
rather than English.
The language question was an
integral part of Gandhi’s Swadeshi campaign. He understood that people
could be involved in the mission for Swaraj only through their languages.
Therefore after his return from South Africa in 1915, Gandhi insisted on
greater usage of Hindi (and other regional languages). His article in Pratap
(Hindi) on May 28, 1917 advocated recognizing Hindi as the national language.
Therein he stated that most
Indians, who knew neither Hindi nor English, would find the former easier to
learn. He said that it was only on account of cowardice that Indians had not
started conducting their national business in Hindi. If Indians shed that
cowardice, and cultivate faith in Hindi, then even the work of national and
provincial councils could be conducted in that language.
It was in this article that Gandhi
first mooted the idea of sending Hindi missionaries in south India. His idea
crystallized in the form of Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha established in 1923.
Gandhi’s long speech at 2nd Gujarat Educational Conference at
Bharuch on October 20, 1917 is considered a classic. Therein he paid tributes
to the pioneering efforts of Swami Dayanand Saraswati in popularizing Hindi.
Swami Dayanand (1824-1883), like
Gandhi, hailed from Gujarat. He used Sanskrit as the medium of religious
disputation and preaching. He never bothered to learn Hindi even while spending
decades in the Himalayas and northern India. But in 1873, while visiting
Calcutta, he came across Keshub Chunder Sen of Brahmo Samaj. Sen advised him to
use Hindi instead of Sanskrit to increase his reach amongst the masses. Interestingly
neither Swami Dayanand nor Keshub Chunder Sen were native Hindi speakers. He heeded
to the friendly advice and mastered Hindi thoroughly in a short time. He wrote
his magnum opus Satyarth Prakash (1875) in Hindi. The Arya Samaj founded
by him acted as a powerful agency to popularize Hindi.
Thus Gandhi took up the baton for
Hindi where Swami Dayanand had left it. Whereas Dayanand’s mission was
religious, Gandhi’s was national. Gandhi viewed Hindi as tool to ‘de-colonize’
the Indian mind. His mission to popularize Hindi found many takers in southern
India.
G. Durgabai (1909-1981), who later
became a member of Constituent Assembly, ran a popular Balika Hindi Pathshala
at Kakinanda (Andhra Pradesh) as a teenage girl. The Balika Hindi Pathshala was
visited by C.R. Das, Kasturba Gandhi, Maulana Shaukat Ali, Jamnalal Baja and
C.F. Andrews. They could hardly believe that the Pathshala which imparted
knowledge of Hindi to few hundred women was run by a teenager.
But the situation regarding Hindi had
changed in south India by the time same Durgabai reached the Constituent
Assembly. She felt that zealous propaganda in favour of Hindi by native Hindi
speakers alienated others. What the volunteers had achieved, misguided zealots
threatened to undo. Thus she says in her speech on September 14, 1949, “I am
shocked to see this agitation against that enthusiasm of ours with which we
took to Hindi in the early years of this century…....Sir, this overdone and
misused propaganda on their part is responsible and would be responsible for
losing the support of people who know and who are supporters on Hindi like me”.
The dilemma captured by G. Durgabati in her
speech has not lost relevance after 70 years. Non-Hindi speakers would be more
amenable to Hindi through voluntary efforts rather than enforcing the legal
status of the language. An increased literary and cultural interaction between
Hindi and other Indian languages would help the cause of Hindi. Prime
Minister’s Narendra Modi’s charisma has helped Hindi in an unobtrusive fashion.
The aim would be to reach maximum people in a language they can understand.
*****
*The writer is an independent researcher and columnist
based in New Delhi.
Views expressed in the article are his personal.