Since childhood, we have heard that Hindi is our National Language. It is only recently after the Abu Azmi slapgate case last October that I came to know that it was a myth, thanks to the internet. Let us clear the confusion right away.
Article 343 of the Constitution declares Hindi in Devanāgari script as the official language of the Union of India (Central Government). English remains the other official language. It is the authoritative, legislative and judicial language. In fact, one could say that English is the official language of India for all practical purposes.
Then what is the difference between national and official language? The national language defines the people of the nation, culture and history. The official language is used for official communication. While the national language can become the official language by default, an official language has to be approved by law to become the national language. Official language is a language standard used only in Government documents. By no means is it an indication to external world that “India speaks Hindi”. Since there is no single language that can be used everywhere in our country, there is no legally defined national language. Calling Hindi as our national language is like calling India a “Hindu nation”. In fact the number of Hindi speakers is far less than the number of Hindus. As of now India has 22 official languages according to the Constitution. These 22 languages were chosen considering the population and region of the concerned communities.
As the Constitution of India came into existence on January 26, 1950, it stated that Hindi and English would be the “official languages” of the Central government of India till 1965 (for a period of 15 years). Subsequently, Hindi was expected to become the sole “national and official language” of India. This applied to Central as well as State governments. Hindi and English became the “official languages” in every department controlled by the Central government.
As January 26, 1965 neared, some communities in the non-Hindi regions, particularly the Tamils, started voicing their apprehensions openly. The idea of making Hindi the sole national language was blasphemous to the students as it involved the simultaneous and complete withdrawal of English, even as a medium for competitive examinations for jobs and education! This meant that the northern region would bag government jobs and dominate the field of education, given the proficiency in Hindi of North Indians. Since government jobs were the most sought after in the pre-liberalisation era, the measure was seen as an indirect attempt to deny jobs to the English-educated South Indians. The non-Hindi-speaking people from South India feared that they would be discriminated against in government employment and in other possible ways.
There were many anti-Hindi protests from 1940s to the first half of the 1960s in the form of public meetings, marches, hunger strikes and demonstrations before schools and Central government offices; black flag demonstrations greeted Central government ministers. Most of these were organized by the local political parties and the public fully supported them. There were hundreds of such protests from Tamilnadu and thousands were jailed. Several hundreds were injured when police used lathi-charge to disperse the peaceful protesters. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then PM, even though supportive of the pro-Hindi group, came up with a set of compromises that denied Hindi the “sole national language” status, realising the seriousness of the issue.
Now, when somebody hails Hindi for being the “National Language” you may kindly enlighten that person with some facts.
मराठी माणूस.
Kiranomics 
hurray,
so all the recognised languages in india are equally weighed…….
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True, hindi is not the sole “national language”
It does not have that constitutional status
but hindi is the language spoken in most parts of India and by greater number of people than any other language.
All languages should be respected equally, and any offcial communication can be carried out in any language recognised by our contituiton for the purpose. hindi is one of them.
MLAs MPs in hindi speaking areas are not, and should not, be forced to take oaths in Hindi. Then what infernal impudence made MNS presume that they can impose marathi on Abu Azmi?? I am no admirer of Abu Azmi, or SP for that matter, but what MNS did in Mah assembly is unconstitutional in every sense. The very idea of setting up this hindi-marathi stir was to create polarisation among natives and non-natives….its disheartening to see that educated and well informed people have fallen for this propoganda.
Going by your MNS’ logic, it would be right to slap a MP from maharastra for taking oath in marathi in the parliament (as it is in Delhi, a hindi speaking belt)
Kiran: hindi is not officially recognised as the sole national language is a known fact. This aint no “eureka” thing that have been discovered after this controversey. somehow the post feels incomplete. I am sure that merely stating plain facts without any purpose would not have been your intention. Looking forward to opinion/analysis on this issue
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“Going by your MNS’ logic, ..”
Dear Vivek, it is not MY MNS.
This may not be a “eureka” thing for a well informed person like you, but to a majority of Indians it is a revelation.
You are smart enough to guess my intention. Though this article is complete in itself, it is a prelude to some more articles, but not immediately.
Thanks for your comment anyway. Don’t forget to vote and rate this article.
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Sorry to say but in India Hindi is not given even official status practically.
As per article 341 , all document should be prepared in Hindi as wel as in english for any central government job. but small point i want to remind you that being western expressway a central government entity , all boards are in marathi devnagri.
BEST bus service being highly aided by national government , have all notice and information in marathi or english.
All government office here have same problem (even railways)
sorry to say but this is not the case in maharashtra only, Southern states are following same rule, and Maharashtra is the new joiner of this group.
i know you will not understand as you have to be acceptive towards common nation principal rather than thinking that divided country by small meaningless things like language , state , hero etc…
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@prashantsengar
Right, maharashtra is a late joiner of this group. Better late than never.
“..being western expressway a central government entity , all boards are in marathi devnagri.
BEST bus service being highly aided by national government , have all notice and information in marathi or english.”
You seem to think only about funding. Location also matters.
“All government office here have same problem (even railways)”
yes, the problem is that marathi shares its script with hindi.
Dude, some more things matter to us, apart from your money.
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Yahi to problem hai , that due to legalized money laundry (taxation system) , you can speak of all these bullshit.
No body has problem if you show marathi on board but , on national highway if you don’t show hindi then it is totally narrow mind set.
if location matters so much , why not a separate maharashtra nation.
But you can’t as maharashtra has no advantage because apart from mumbai , nothing is in maharashtra which will feed the people out there,
i mean no mineral resources, no advantages in port (as kandla, vishakapatnam are better).
cotton and sugar are costlier than egypt and pakistan.
Boss if you want to thank any body then thank portugese who had given Mumbai in dowry to english, due to which it become our financial capital
if you wann seriously abolish english rule then why mumbai is still financial capital . just shift it to chennai or kolkata , the old financial capital
At last its all about money. Easy job is the main primary thing which people out there want . for which all this drama of MARTAHi manus is there. (Mi MARATHI in AUDI type public)
Nationalism is all about acceptance as you will finally wann pune public to be in pune and specifically in your area or village.
that’s why USA is USA, i mean its like being “KUWE KA MEDHAK”
but Remember if you wann grow money , you can’t ignore competition and that’s the reason of fall of communist
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Dear Prashant,
I will publish an elaborate post on that issue later, save your arguments for then.
For now, lets just stick to the topic or move on.
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Hi kiran! would appreciate a meaningful debate on this.
the very concept on india, a nation, a republic has it that people have right to reside in any part of the country, to practise any religion, to speak in any language.
there’s absolutely no problem in using marathi on best buses or for all official communication. after all hindi cannot be, and shoul not be forced on any region. my point is, why is marathi being forced on non-marathi speakers. abu-aazmi, then the recent vanalising of airtel outlet: how is it going to help marathi people, i fail to understand. it this practise is encouraged, the next day, i might be asked to learn marathi before i step into maharastra
@Kiran: please make clarify the following:
1)you have highlighted that the constitution has not granted the status of national language to hindi. I appreciate ur belief in the indian consitution.
but the same consitution says people are free to carry out official transaction in any of the listed language for the purpose. Now where does ur respect for constituion vanishes?
2)” some more things matter to us, apart from YOUR money.”
“YOUR money” what do you mean, please clarify. are non-maharastrian foreigners , so the question of your-and mine does not arises.
3) Where else in india have you seen the regional language been forced on non-natives, to the extent that public representatives are being assaulted in the house? do you think it’s justified?
4)who has asked mah native population not to patronise? then what are the extreme right-wing leaders trying to achieve by forcing everyone to learn marathi. why is it so important. next day if you get posted in banglore, how would feel if forced to learn kannad?
5)Airtel which not a state owned organsiation. what right has anyone got to force it to follow a particular language. where have you seen such incidences except for , maybe, taliban.
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“..your money” was a personal remark to prashant.
I would also like a meaningful discussion(not debate) on such topics later in this blog.
Meanwhile, hope you enjoy other articles..
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So
Why use english, why not just put all poster, all government work, whatever written in marathi,only in marathi
no other language, in fact not in english
it will be more better
People will have to learn marathi , for being in Mumbai or maharashtra
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What is the point of discussing on languages like this? I am working on language, well computational approach. It is so nice to see so many languages in one country. You can find so many similarities as well as dissimilarities. For me languages are nothing just a way of communication. We need to communicate with others, so it is good if there is a common language. Since most of the people in India are speaking Hindi, what is the problem if we accept it as our national language? And as most of the people of India are watching lots of Hindi movies, listening Hindi songs, I think it’s easy to learn the language for common people to without going through any proper education.
My point is, since we need a language to communicate with other people of India, why not we chose a language which is easy to learn? What do you say? 🙂
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Why not create a Federation For Simple National Language Script,India?
In the past India has spent so much time in creating new language scripts under different rulers.Now in the internet age some languages may disappear if they are not simplified or made translatable.
As you know that Gujarati Script is a simplified version of Devnagari script without horizontal lines. In fact it’s a developed Devnagari script where you write comparatively lesser times lifting the pen.
Sure,Hindi is spoken by more peoples in India but it’s not technical and very cluttered language with horizontal lines.It’s writings in newspapers look like an old Sanskrit language.If you look all Indian languages in Google Transliteration IME you will find Gujarati script very simple computer-usable language Script.Gujarati alphabet is very very easy for foreigners to learn and practice.
We all know that Devnagari is not the script of Hindi to begin with.Basically it is the script of Sanskrit,unquestionably the language of India,not any region.
Sanskrit language used horizontal lines for grammatical lengthy meaningful words.
Besides languages in a Devnagari script which Indian old or current languages or world languages use horizontal lines to make words more cluttered in appearance?Why draw lines if not needed?
As you know China has simplify it’s language to make it computer usable.Also most of European countries and other world countries use English Script for their national languages.
Think,Why most Hindi song lyrics are written in English but not in Hindi?
People don’t mind learning Hindi but India needs one easy Script for all languages and that’s Gujarati Script.But let the people of India decide what they want.
Please do express your opinion about this.
http://saralhindi.wordpress.com/
Thanks,
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Yes,Hindi is language spoken in most parts of India and by greater number of people than any other language.But Hindi can easily be learned in regional state language script or in a Roman Script.This way each state will have two language scripts formula like Hindi states have instead of three languages formula.In a internet age all Indian languages are convertible into each other’s script.
Why not learn Hindi in your state language script via language script converter?
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