MUMBAI, INDIA — Hindi is the most widely spoken language in India, with most of its speakers concentrated in the northern regions. But this year, states in southern and western India have consistently swiped left on the language, joked one comedian to a packed auditorium in Mumbai in late July. The audience, predominantly Marathi-speaking, understood the reference to dating apps and erupted in laughter.
The debate around language and Indian identity has sunk deep into everyday conversation. Over the past year, state after state in this vast country has declared that they would prioritize their local languages over teaching Hindi to primary and secondary school students, much to the consternation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which has insisted that Hindi be compulsory for primary school students across the country. Modi has pushed for a Hindu nation, and his party believes that an ideal Indian should be Hindu and able to speak Hindi. Critics condemn the move as a threat to India’s linguistic diversity.
The latest state to join the bandwagon against the Hindi movement is the southern state of Karnataka, where Kannada is the most widely spoken language. In early August, a high-level commission recommended that Kannada or the child’s mother tongue be taught along with English. Currently, most public schools teach English, Hindi and other local mother tongues.
About 780 languages and dialects are spoken in this country of 1.4 billion people, according to the People’s Linguistic Survey of India. English has been used as a bridge language for official and administrative purposes since India’s independence in 1947.
“This recent debate is not a question of teaching Hindi in schools,” says Akshya Saxena, a Vanderbilt University professor who studies Indian languages. It is about figuring out a national identity.
“As you can see, this battle is being fought between political parties,” she says. “No parent, student or teacher is talking about this.”
Hindi and the Indian identity
According to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, the ideal Indian citizen is a Hindi-speaking Hindu, says Dhirendra Jha, who has researched and written several books on Hindu supremacist ideology in India.
The roots of that ideology go back to the early 20th century, before India broke free from British colonial rule. Despite the linguistic diversity on the subcontinent, the predominant anti-colonial party, the Indian National Congress Party, proposed Hindi as a national language because it was the dominant tongue of the party’s leaders. That effort led to backlash from political leaders across the board, including within the party.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organization of Modi’s BJP, which opposed the Congress party, pushed for Hindi as a national language. The RSS needed a link language to propagate its ideology. The group adopted Hindi, Jha says, and it stuck.
“Language is culture, it is history, it is an identity,” Saxena says.
The debate around which languages to prioritize was lengthy. Authors of the constitution ultimately decided to accommodate all the major languages, but Hindi and English were adopted as official languages at the national level. Each state, they decided, would also have its own official language.
Now, Jha says, the situation is a “hornet’s nest.”
Saxena says the BJP mistakenly views the Hindi language as a monolith, but in reality, Hindi dialects bleed into one another.
“It is not about imposing Hindi,” she says. “It is about imposing one particular kind of Hindi.”
The version favored by the BJP draws on Sanskrit words and eliminates Persian, Arabic and Urdu influences, Saxena says.
Imposing what the party considers to be “pure” Hindi is a religious and political project, she says. It’s not even a version of the language that people speak on the streets.
Where it all began
In February, Indian education minister Dharmendra Pradhan said that the southern state of Tamil Nadu would not receive an allocated 2,000 crore Indian rupees (US$227 million) in federal funds for primary and secondary education if it did not teach Hindi in its schools.
Pradhan went on to say the National Education Policy of 2020 mandates Hindi teaching in schools. But a close reading of the policy shows it simply recommends students learn three languages, of which at least two should be “native to India.” The minister later clarified that the NEP does not impose Hindi, after all. But the cat was out of the bag.
Salem Dharanidharan, the national spokesperson for the DMK party, which governs Tamil Nadu, called it “blackmail” and said his party would resist the imposition. Tamil Nadu, where Modi’s party has never held power, has historically been at the forefront of the battle against Hindi.
“The NEP is just that: a policy. It can only make recommendations,” says Alok Prasanna Kumar, lawyer and former Karnataka team lead at the think tank Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy in Karnataka. “Moreover, it doesn’t mandate the teaching of any one language, let alone Hindi.”
Tamil Nadu has not changed its policy and no penalties have been levied on them yet.
Both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are governed by parties that oppose Modi’s BJP. But the opposition to what is being called “Hindi imposition” is strongest in the state of Maharashtra, which is governed by a BJP-led coalition.
The Maharashtra situation
In April, state leaders in Maharashtra said Hindi would be made the compulsory third language in all public schools.
“There should be a single language for communication across the country,” said Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
Almost immediately, opposition parties aggressively pushed back, calling the policy an attack on the Marathi language. They argued that while they’re Hindu, they don’t feel the need to learn Hindi to prove their patriotism.
The pressure forced the government to withdraw the policy.
But in June, the Maharashtra government declared that Hindi would not be compulsory but would be “generally” taught from classes one to five. Opposition parties said it was a way to introduce Hindi in schools via a backdoor after the state’s initial backtrack.
“Language is the final frontier,” Jha says. “While Hindu dominance is easier to spread across the country, imposing a language on diverse populations can be where the Hindu supremacist leaders see the toughest resistance.”
They might even lose the battle, he adds.
In early July, opposition parties led by Shiva Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena said they would take to the streets to protest the policy. Before they could, the state withdrew it.
“We will shut down schools,” said Raj Thackeray, the MNS leader, “if Hindi is imposed.”
