Opinion The paradox of Hindi: Official but not yet ‘national’, and a language of the marginalised

On the other hand, there is a strong argument that Hindi has finally arrived as the unquestionable hegemonic national as well as official language. The rise of Hindutva as the dominant narrative of Indian politics and the electoral success of the BJP in recent years validates this line of thinking. The old secular assertion that the RSS-BJP would like to establish a Hindu Rashtra based on the ideal of one nation, one language and one religion — Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan — is also being evoked by a section of political commentators to make sense of the official position of the government, especially with regard to the statement made by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in the assembly about Urdu.

The case of Hindi, thus, becomes very curious. Hindi is often used as one of the key elements of Indian/Hindu identity to discredit Urdu. Hindi is no more the only marker to officially create Indianness in overtly Hindu terms — mostly for the non-Hindi cultures. Hindi is also problematised by a section of English-speaking secular elites as an inseparable constituent of the Hindutva project.

The postcolonial story of Hindi is very useful to make sense of these conflicting claims. For the sake of analysis, we can discuss two paradoxical imaginations of Hindi that have evolved in post-1947 India: Hindi’s ever conflicting status as the Rajbhasha (official language of India) and Hindi’s acceptance as a popular language for communication and expression.

Let us first look at the official trajectory of Hindi as Rajbhasha. There was a strong impulse to replace English as the official language at the time of independence. However, it was not an easy task for practical reasons. English had been the language of administration for over a century and it was unthinkable to give it up entirely at that time. The Partition on religious grounds had already intensified the Urdu-Hindi divide, especially in the northern states. Hence, it was not clear which would be the ideal language to replace English — Hindi, Hindustani or Sanskrit. The famous Munshi-Ayyangar formula was adopted to deal with these issues. It was proposed that English would continue as the official language along with Hindi for 15 years. Parliament was empowered to discuss and settle this question in future.

The reorganisation of the state and the rise of anti-Hindi agitations posed a new set of challenges for the Jawaharlal Nehru government. To deal with this question, the Committee of Parliament on Official Language, also known as the Pant Committee, was constituted in September, 1957. This Committee recommended that English should be continued as the official language even after the time frame of 15 years. The Official Language Act 1963 is relevant in this regard. This law established two broad principles. First, both English and Hindi would be recognised as “official languages.” Second — and perhaps more importantly — the relative incapability of Hindi and/or other Indian languages in comparison to English was also accepted as policy consideration. It was expected that the government would initiate programmes to develop the capacity of Hindi for making it a functional and effective official language. In other words, the Hindi-versus-English controversy was systematically replaced by a new official obligation: The empowerment of Hindi as an official language. The Official Language Rules 1976 reiterated this commitment. In the same year, the Committee of Parliament on Official Language was constituted. This Committee is a permanent body that submits its report to the President even now.

There is another imagination of Hindi which does not rely entirely on its official status. Hindi has emerged as a language of the most marginalised communities in India. Hindi has helped these groups to overcome the hegemony of English elites, who have been enjoying a privileged status for a long time. It has given confidence to subaltern communities to articulate their political anxieties and transform them into political demands. Hindi has played an instrumental role in establishing the Dalit-Bahujan discourse in the country. The Hindi-non-Hindi distinction does not become a conflicting issue in this case.

The emergence of Hindi as an Islamic language is another important development. The north Indian Muslim middle classes use Hindi for religious mobilisation. Notice boards in mosques, signposts and even the epitaphs in Muslim graveyards are now written in Devanagari script. One finds the Hindi versions of the Quran and popular religious texts such as Fazael-e Amal and Bahishti Zewar in every Sunni mosque. Hindi translations of all the known commentaries of the Quran written by Indian ulama are easily available. The so-called Hindi-Urdu divide does not exist at the bottom level of society. That was one of the reasons why Hindi emerged as the language of the anti-CAA protest. This Hindi does not bother about its name. There is virtually no interest in calling it Hindi, Urdu in Nagari, or Hindustani.

The two imaginations of Hindi — an official, yet-to-be-functional national language of the state and a popular, democratic, and confident language of people — need to be taken very seriously while exploring the complex ways in which language politics is imposed on us.

The writer is an Associate Professor at CSDS