India’s war over words

In India, by contrast, a political dispute over language is making waves. The spat, between the federal government in New Delhi and the opposition-ruled southern state of Tamil Nadu, underscores that linguistic grievances still have the power to move emotions—and potentially votes.

Since last month, the government of Tamil Nadu, population 77 million, has been in a war of words with New Delhi over the state’s refusal to implement a national education policy that mandates that children must learn three languages, two of which must be native to India.

Students in Tamil Nadu’s state-run schools are only required to learn two languages: Tamil and English. The state’s chief minister, M.K. Stalin, says adopting the national policy would push the state “backward by 2,000 years." (Yes, Mr. Stalin is named for the Soviet dictator, who died four days after his Indian namesake’s birth.) Another prominent party leader says Tamil Nadu is resisting “imperial arrogance and cultural oppression." In response, the federal government is withholding some federal funding from the state, citing its unwillingness to comply with the policy.

At the heart of the conflict is the state’s resistance to the “imposition" of the Hindi language. Politicians like Mr. Stalin believe the federal government’s three-language policy will smuggle in the teaching of Hindi, long a flashpoint in Tamil Nadu politics. Decades ago, violent protests in the state forced the federal government to shelve plans to make Hindi the sole official language of India by 1965.

In 1960, American journalist Selig Harrison observed that “the North-South cleavage" was “the fundamental challenge to would-be unifiers of India throughout history." During India’s fight for independence from Britain, Mohandas Gandhi promoted the idea of making a form of Hindi the national language. After independence, the county’s leaders realized that made little sense.

The current brouhaha misses how much has changed since the heyday of anti-Hindi agitations in the 1950s and ’60s. Hindi has grown both more pervasive and less threatening to non-Hindi-speaking states. According to the most recent census, taken in 2011, roughly 43% of Indians speak Hindi as their native tongue, and another 13% as a second or third language. Only 8% of Indians claim Bengali, the second-most-spoken native language, as their mother tongue.

Hindi’s demographic heft gives it many advantages. It dominates in entertainment—from Bollywood to YouTube. In politics, the road to national power passes through large Hindi-speaking states like Uttar Pradesh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a native Gujarati speaker, but his fluency in Hindi enabled him to win three consecutive parliamentary elections from Uttar Pradesh. A non-Hindi-speaking politician may dominate in a particular state but would struggle to communicate with voters in the Hindi heartland.

Hindi will have even more advantages if after the next census, expected next year, India redraws its parliamentary constituencies to reflect changes in the population. The Indian government has frozen each state’s parliamentary representation for more than 50 years, during which time the population of Hindi-speaking states has grown much faster than the more-educated south, largely due to higher birth rates.

The freeze could end as soon as next year. The Carnegie Endowment estimates that if parliamentary seats are reapportioned using 2026 population estimates, the Hindi-speaking states and federally administered territories would gain at least 33 seats in the 543-seat Parliament. The five southern states would lose 26 seats. Should that happen, it would make the current kerfuffle over Hindi look like a picnic.

Despite its advantages, Hindi’s appeal remains limited, making it less threatening to non-Hindi speakers. The states where Hindi dominates are much poorer. Per capita income in Tamil Nadu ($3,600) is nearly 3.5 times that of Uttar Pradesh. About 1 in 5 Tamils speak English. Less than 2% speak Hindi. Each year, tens of millions of people from the Hindi belt head to southern and western India seeking jobs; traffic is much lighter in the other direction.

If the threat of Hindi imperialism has diminished over time, English deserves much of the credit. It acts as both a unifying language for elites and a means of upward mobility for the middle class. Hardly anyone in India claims English as his mother tongue, but at least 130 million Indians speak it, which makes it the country’s second-most-spoken language.

English makes the north-south division manageable. The poor and populous Hindi-speaking states may be politically dominant, but they haven’t become overbearing. A smart kid from a non-Hindi-speaking background can excel in English and math and get a well-paid job in the private sector or emigrate. Unless you want to be a national politician or a Bollywood star—and sometimes not even then—not knowing Hindi isn’t debilitating. By contrast, you can’t expect to be a successful scientist, lawyer, accountant or public intellectual in India without a good grasp of English.

India shouldn’t take managing one of the most linguistically diverse countries on earth—17 languages are printed on each currency bill—for granted, but English thus far has helped keep the precarious balance between language groups. And knowing English, whether you live in the U.S. or India, is a stepping stone to success.