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Business News/ Opinion / Headlong, with Hindi: lost in translation
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Headlong, with Hindi: lost in translation

The controversy over the use of Hindi is unnecessary and ill-informed

Illustration: Jayachandran/MintPremium
Illustration: Jayachandran/Mint

Call it a blast from the past. A government in New Delhi issues a diktat ordering states to use Hindi in their official communication. States in peninsular India—especially Tamil Nadu—protest against this “linguistic imperialism" of the North. The Union government arrives at a “compromise formula" and an uneasy normalcy prevails. You could have said that India had rid itself of such apparitions a long time ago, that is until a month ago. The Narendra Modi government seems to have done the unthinkable by resurrecting this dead controversy. The facts, however, are more complicated.

On 10 March, the Hindi cell of the ministry of home affairs (MHA) brought out a circular that directed various Union ministries and Union government enterprises such as banks and public sector undertakings to give priority to the use of Hindi on their official accounts on various social media such as Twitter, Facebook etc. The circular, which was passed on 27 May, after the new Bharatiya Janata Party government was sworn in, made it amply clear that both Hindi and English may be used but Hindi should be used above/first. The circular was also directed at Union (not state) government employees of eight category A states—Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan (states in which Hindi is the major language).

The order was, as bureaucratic things go, as inane as a government order can get. Constitutionally too, the order did not seek to undo the linguistic equilibrium that prevails in India: states continue to use the local language in their official work or use English.

It is a mystery what the Union government thought would be the result of asking officials of eight states to use a particular language in their communication when it could and would be read by residents of any state. While this question was never raised in the ensuing “outrage" over the supposedly “majoritarian" move, a lot of criticism was targeted at the BJP government for not considering the effect on non-Hindi speaking states.

If one manages to cut through the cloud of hyperbole that makes for news and opinion these days, it would have been easy to realize that a) there was nothing earth-shatteringly new about the order: all Union government communication uses Hindi first and English below it; b) it was an unnecessary circular which raked up further unnecessary but predictable political reactions and debates.

Considering that the MHA has been tweeting incessantly in English, it can be safely assumed that this move will do nothing to either promote or impose Hindi. What it did do was give many politicians an issue to make national headlines: discrimination against non-Hindi speaking states. From there it was only a matter of few tweets and hashtags to make “imposition" of Hindi on multi-lingual India a display of “Hindi chauvinism".

As is the case with any cause taken up by social media, the debate died a swift, 140 character death.

It is worth pondering, however, what purpose a common language serves and if any language has a chance of becoming one. The answer to the latter question, currently, is no.

Hindi is probably the most commonly understood language across large swathes of this country. And while only 25-26% might call it their mother tongue, a huge number more might be comfortable using it. Inter-state migration has ensured that most Indians will end up learning one form of the language or the other at some point in their lives. That said, it is nobody’s contention that regional languages are irrelevant or, even more importantly, should be ignored or trampled upon. State governments are free to and do use their state’s official language in any communication. The Union government has no authority to tell them otherwise.

Are the fears of ‘Hindi imperialism’ real? Tell us at views@livemint.com

Follow Mint Opinion on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Mint_Opinion

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Published: 23 Jun 2014, 07:22 PM IST
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