Dealing with language fears

In a big and polyglossic country like India, language policy and language education are important and sensitive issues.

- SATADAL BHATTACHARJEE

In the recent past, the issue of learning or not learning three languages under the National Education Policy has become the center of a stormy debate in the country. The debate and the cacophony linger on, because the complex issue, having political dimensions, is not going to get a solution very easily.

In this context it is necessary to identify the root of the disputes around the matter. The unwillingness of the state of Tamil Nadu to implement the three-language formula springs from a quite reasonable apprehension that this will ultimately decimate English to a position of irrelevance as a pan-Indian official language. At the base of such apprehension is a lack of trust in the outlook of people who, being in power at the Centre, frame and implement linguistic policies according to their own vision and predilection.

People in Tamil Nadu may not be wrong in believing that the option of learning a third language may pave the way for eventual establishment of Hindi as the most dominant language for southerners too. Since the administrative machinery of the Union seems often to be very ardently focussed on opening opportunities to sway the sceptre of the Hindi language up and down the country, it may be feared by many that the three-language formula may with time turn into an effective tool in non-Hindi states for replacing other languages in the public sphere with Hindi.

That the policy-makers operating from Delhi are as a general trend inclined towards promoting or facilitating the hegemony of the Hindi language is evident from various facts. Nowadays, even the names or captions of new central statutes framed in English are phrased in Hindi. It is difficult to understand why a law officially written and published in English should have its name in Hindi and only in Hindi.