A few days ago an undergraduate student friend of mine and myself debated over the national language of India. DOES INDIA HAVE A NATIONAL LANGUAGE?
Many of my fellow South Indian friends as well as the other non-perfect hindi speakers would have had the "wonderful" experience of being ridiculed at some point of their life, by a fellow "educated" hindi speaking Indian for not being able to articulate in the language that they deem to be INDIA'S NATIONAL LANGUAGE. wake up call to all of you!
Articles 343 - 351 of the Indian Constitution deal with the official language of our nation and it clearly states that Hindi and English shall be the recognised "official" languages of our country and official does not mean national. It merely entails to the use of the language for any official government purpose. Hence, it is equally foolish to say that every Indian should know Hindi because it is his national language as it is to say that every Indian should know English because it is his national language.
A recent judgment delivered by a bench headed by Chief Justice S J Mukhopadhaya in the Gujarat High Court that India does not have a national language reaffirms this. The court furthermore stated that it maybe true that a majority people use the Devangari script and speak Hindi, but it still is only the official language of the country. The petitioner was Suresh Kachchadia (PIL in 2009).
Well, but that still leaves us with some food for thought.
WHAT THEN, is India's national language? :p
JAI HIND!
hindi n english being the official language... y do shud v b havin a national language ?? i dnt think thers ne point in having one.
ReplyDeleteit is not the need for an official language that i sought to highlight.. i am sorry if that is what i conveyed. It is only the over-emphasizing of one language over the other by some of the illiterate yet ironically literate people around me.
ReplyDeleteIndia does not have a National language according to the constitution. Hindi is the Official Language of the Union. At least one of them, the other being English. It just means that all official communique will be in Hindi.
ReplyDeleteThe simple answer to your question is that India cannot have a national language. We are just too diverse a country to have a single language to represent us all.
Also, with tensions over the spread of Hindi in southern states like Tamil Nadu, any movement to push Hindi as a national language will never gain enough momentum to succeed.
For the moment, we can watch Shah Rukh Khan movies, where he spreads his arms as if trying to fly(or maybe he's just high) and listen to his jabbering in our "national" language and just be happy we understand him!