Defining lessons from the anti-Hindi agitation

The agitation against it lasted for three years and the British government decided to withdraw the order in the erstwhile Madras Presidency.  The second agitation started when the 15-year period was coming to an end (The Constitution in 1950 spelt out English and Hindi as official languages for a period of fifteen years).  

Prime Minister Nehru passed the Official Languages Act in 1963, to guarantee the continuance of English even after 1965. The student agitation followed even after this assurance and brought the Congress government down in the Assembly election in 1967, as the imposition of Hindi became a major election issue. 

The DMK government under CN Annadurai was mainly responsible for prevailing upon the union government under Indira Gandhi for passing an amendment to the Official Languages Act, which finally decided for the continuance of both English and Hindi indefinitely. 

In the 1968 anti-Hindi agitation, the state government scrapped the three language formula and decided firmly on bilingualism. But every now and then, TN feels an encroachment to this guarantee. Language policy of a country all over the world evolved with its birth and independence.  In the 19th Century, the predominant idea was ‘one language one nation ideology’.  

With the emergence of nation-states in the 20th Century and through the liberation wars, many countries went in for bilingualism.  After the Second World War, many countries became bilingual and multilingual.    

Even the so-called mono cultural countries embraced bilingualism.  Most of the former colonies in Asia and Africa followed a language policy that retained the language of the colonisers as well as developing the language of the region, states and provinces.  The globalisation era has completely integrated the economies of the world in a way that several countries adopted multilingualism.   

India’s rich diversity is revealed through so many languages.  The fundamental rights of the Constitution give every citizen a guarantee to protect one’s own language and script and the Official Languages Act has settled the language issue for ever (bilingualism).  

In order to keep the ‘federal’ structure in tact,it is ‘English or Hindi’ at the national level and it is the states that should take the Constitutional guarantee more seriously by protecting its own language at the state level (it may be more than one).