India is a country rich in diversity and culture. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, every state has different people, different cultures and different languages. Despite all the differences, all the citizens of India collectively called the Indians and that’s what adds to the beauty of India and its people.
The Constitution of India allows everyone to follow their customs and culture freely. No one can impose their rituals on someone else and neither can stop anyone from following their traditions.
From north to south and east to west, we have different kinds of people speaking a different language. In fact, at every kilometre, we can find a person speaking different language, as it is said “Languages in India changes at every kilometre like the water” Locally and regionally, if we start to count, we would have more than 50-60 languages and local dialects in our country.
What Is an Official Language According to the Indian Constitution?
When India became independent and our constitution was written, the major population of the country was of poor people. They had no availability of education, learning skills or travelling even between different states. They were not able to face the challenge of learning a new language.
Hence, keeping everyone in mind, it was decided that we can’t announce any one language as the official language. And 22 languages of India were decided as the official languages.
Debate over Making Hindi the National Language
We are aware that not everyone in India speaks or understands Hindi. People living in northern India are still okay with Hindi, as they understand it at least a little bit. But for the south Indian people who were Tamil, Telugu or Malayalam speaking, Hindi is not common.
People in South India face a lot of difficulty when they come to north India for education and work. Understanding or speaking in Hindi is not fine with them.
This was the debate held when the idea of making Hindi the national language of India popped. Some were in favour of it while some were against this idea. Some were asking to make Hindustani the national language and some were in favour of announcing Sanskrit as the national language of India.
The reaction you had at the mention of Sanskrit was the same as the South Indians had for Hindi. The way Sanskrit feels alienated to you, even though it is the oldest language, Hindi was uncommon for the South Indians and for some people of other regions as well.
As a conclusion, 14 languages were included as official in the constitution. Along with that Hindi was made the official language of union in the devanagari script but with numerals in international script, as written in article 343 of Indian Constitution. Nowhere in the constitution, it is written that Hindi is the national language of India. In fact, there is no national language of India.
With time, there were additions to the list of official languages and currently the Constitution declares 22 official languages of India.
Unsurity about English as an Official Language
At the time, the constitution was being written, as Hindi was spoken by only 40% of the population, both Hindi and English were declared to be used for official purposes.
But it also mentioned that English would be there for the next 15 years such that, in the meantime, the Government should promote Hindi as the only official language and 15 years, it would be in the Union Government’s hand to either continue with English as the official language or not.
When this period of 15 years expired, a rule was passed announcing Hindi as the only language for official purposes. This was not taken by the people easily. Major protests began in 1965 against the order.
Why Is It Difficult to Have One National Language?
National language marks the unity of a nation. But for a country like India, where there are a large number of languages, it is not easy to declare any language as the national language.
There is no common language in India. The language spoken in the South is not understandable by the people in the north and those which are spoken in the north are not understandable in the South. In fact sometimes not even the people of neighbouring states understand each other’s languages.
This language difference is the only barrier in the way of declaring one national language of India.
Will This Fight over Languages Ever End?
No way. A country where one day everyone lives in harmony, and the other day, fights over the choice of clothes worn by the people of a particular religion, can never settle on such a huge and sensitive topic. Everyone is proud of his/her language but doesn't care about the other. It just shows the narrow mentality of the majority of Indians.
Everyone will definitely have problems with some language for sure. No one can learn all the Indian languages of course. And hence where there is a problem, there is a fight. So such topics would always be brought up by the political parties to fulfil their agendas and we Indians will keep fighting with each other listening to these politicians.
End Note
No matter, whatever is the national or official language, every language is a symbol of the culture of our country and hence it is our duty to respect the language and our constitution.
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