India's Language War
ALTBACH, PHILIP G.
REBELLION IN THE SOUTH India's Language War By Philip G. Altbach MADRAS India is a patient country, but recent events have shown that this patience can be exhausted, even in the peaceful states...
...The regional tongues of the South are not related to Hindi in any way...
...They departed from their policy of quiet demonstrations when the girls of one college refused to join in the demonstration, venting their wrath by damaging the principal's rose garden, breaking street lamps, burning a school bus, and ripping up railroad tracks...
...The riots touched off last month by the adoption of Hindi as the country's official language reached nearly revolutionary proportions...
...Since most academic, scientific, government and commercial activity is carried on in English, even the so-called "Hindi fanatics" send their children to English-speaking schools...
...Although the agitation has now subsided, the disturbances which rocked the normally placid South have proved the depth of the feelings engendered by the language question among all sections of the population...
...Thus Madras state was to embrace the Tamil-speaking people in the South, Kerala state those who speak Malayan, etc...
...Other critics directed their fire at Hindi itself, declaring that it was not sufficiently advanced in development to become a national language and that such languages as Tamil, Bengali and Marathi are not only superior in this respect, but have a more extensive literature than Hindi...
...Underlying these fears is an unspoken antagonism toward the North, which has the advantage in population and in proximity to New Delhi...
...A key figure in the anti-Hindi movement has been the 86-year-old "grand old man" of South Indian politics, Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari, former Prime Minister of Madras and India's last Governor-General before Independence...
...And for about a year before January 26 it had little success in stirring the anti-Hindi resentment to the point of effective agitation...
...Although the agitations have subsided, at least temporarily, the general strike in Madras City showed that the protesters can count on substantial popular support, and the situation remains highly volatile...
...Damage to property, most of it belonging to the central government, reached $4 million...
...REBELLION IN THE SOUTH India's Language War By Philip G. Altbach MADRAS India is a patient country, but recent events have shown that this patience can be exhausted, even in the peaceful states of the South...
...They correctly charged, too, that the government had done little to prepare the South for the use of Hindi beyond placing Hindi signs at post offices and railroad stations, along with signs in English and the local languages...
...Several Congress Party members have proposed devising an amendment to the Constitution that would shift emphasis away from Hindi...
...The longrange implications of the language issue remain, therefore, of prime political importance...
...Recently the DM K had moderated its position, reportedly for tactical reasons...
...Its future success may well depend on its ability to transcend the divisions in reaching a viable policy on language...
...Even the provincial towns, usually placid and politically apathetic, have been beset by demonstrations...
...English has been the traditional "link" language, used throughout the country both in and out of government...
...If the Congress government does give in, further demonstrations this time in the North_are certain to result...
...translations would be expensive and often out of date by the time they were completed...
...The Congress party, which has been loathe to make decisions and even more hesitant to enforce them, is now confronted with the necessity of doing both...
...They were supported by local DM K and Communist leaders...
...He is in India studying the country's student movement...
...In Madras State, the Congress government is under severe pressure...
...Already two key ministers in Shastri's Cabinet, both from the South, have resigned...
...The death toll passed 60...
...It was further argued that for scientific and academic use, English remains the essential tongue...
...The party used the anti-Hindi demonstrations to its political advantage throughout South India...
...This fear runs through every level of society in the non-Hindi states...
...The Nehru government agreed and redrew the map: Each of the major linguistic groups was given a state whose boundaries enclosed the largest possible number speaking the same language...
...The scene is reminiscent of Ten Days That Shook the World, with armed police protecting central government buildings, from the tourist office to the Governor's mansion, and clusters of students eyeing them...
...It is the potential effect of "Hindi imperialism" that has generated fear in the South...
...But while a variety of factors have contributed to the unrest, the language issue remains the one around which the grievances in South India have now converged...
...At the same time, in the Hi North pressure is building up against any concession to the South...
...But the organizers of the agitation, students from the Tirupati arts college, were moved to action more out of dislike of their authoritarian principal than any other cause_including the anti-Hindi issue...
...The Madras Chief Minister has not dared to contradict his own party, though he has urged a more moderate stand by the central government...
...Most Indian political leaders are committed to replacing English eventually with some Indian language, but none has conceived of a workable transition...
...While Hindi is the mother tongue of the politically important Northern states, it is the language of only 40 per cent of India's population...
...Government servants and intellectuals, whose command of English is excellent, fear the loss of jobs or promotions because of their deficient knowledge of Hindi...
...The main opposition party in Madras, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) , has favored the division of the Indian Union by the establishment of a separate nation in the South...
...Businessmen see the loss of contracts and a decline of influence in New Delhi...
...If the issue is forced by the North, sentiment for a separate Southern nation, already strong, will grow...
...In recognizing the validity of political divisions based on the 14 major languages, the Nehru government actually was sowing the seeds of further controversy...
...The language issue, in short, served to bring 15 years of resentment to the surface, causing a major political crisis...
...What that policy will be has yet to be made clear, and there is no sign that any clarification is forthcoming...
...But Republic Day gave the DM K the immediate issue needed to advance its own cause...
...In the early '50s, a demand was voiced for the creation of new states according to linguistic boundaries to replace the old states devised by the British...
...Though now a leader of the conservative Swatantra party, he called an all-party anti-Hindi conference which led to the first demonstrations in Madras and elsewhere...
...This antagonism is reinforced by a feeling that North discriminates against South in many ways, such as withholding rice supplies or providing too few public works projects...
...The students demanded that all colleges in Tirupati suspend their classes, and this was done...
...In the shift to Hindi, there_fore, the North obviously gained an advantage_although in some respects the change is only a formality...
...As the incidents of protest multiplied, motives other than the language issue came into play...
...The Communists, relatively weak in the South except for their stronghold in Kerala, similarly took advantage of the agitation...
...Higher education is carried on entirely in English...
...The problem of an "official" Philip G. Altbach is a former national president of the Student Peace Union...
...If its present indecisive stand is not changed, more agitation is likely in the South where this could spell further electoral defeats for the party, already humiliated by the Communist victory in Kerala this month...
...Local squabbles and animosities also played a part in the demonstrations...
...Non-Hindi politicians and intellectuals argued futilely against the government's plans...
...Prime Minister Shastri's speeches have been conciliatory, and several government ministers have been dispatched to the South to "study" the situation...
...textbooks are in English...
...Students feel their job prospects, none too good to begin with, will be diminished by linguistic shortcomings...
...The Congress party itself is internally divided along linguistic, regional and ideological lines...
...They contended that a long transitional period would be required before any change of language could take place...
...Protesters burned themselves to death, South Vietnamese style...
...Madras, the stronghold of the anti-Hindi forces, impresses a visitor as a city under siege...
...But the Shastri government decided to abide by the date clearly established in the Constitution for officially changing from English to Hindi_January 26, 1965 (Republic Day...
...In the small university town of Tirupati, 90 miles north of Madras, students at first conducted orderly demonstrations and confined themselves to daubing "Hindi Down" in English, Tamil and Telegu on every available wall...
...As long as Nehru lived, however, the people of South India believed the central government would respect their wishes and not impose Hindi as the national tongue...
...Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri has emphasized that English is to remain an "associate" language for an indefinite period as long as it is needed...
...All of the political parties and the Students Action Committee (a coordinating council for students throughout the South) have called for an end to violence...
...language has plagued India continuously since Independence...
Vol. 48 • March 1965 • No. 6
