Politics Of Language: Will We Be Able To Save Our Lingual Diversity?

Moder Gorob, Moder Asha, 
Amori Bangla Bhasha, 
Ma go tomar kole, Tomar bole, 
Kotoy Shanti Bhalobasha. 

These lines of poet Atul Prasad Sen that got reverberated in the air throughout the language movement of Bangladesh that turned out to be a struggle for independence from Pakistan roughly can be translated as “our pride lies in our language”. Not only in Bangladesh, but across the globe, several movements became militant in their efforts to preserve their language, one of the central constituents of identity. The formation of nation-states in Europe also had the assumptions of lingual unity.  

John E Joseph in his chapter titled Language, Politics and the Nation-State rightly states that in the case of nation-state, the people are “assumed to be ethnically and culturally unified, with the principal cultural manifestations of their unity being shared religion and language”. This logic of religious and linguistic unity however didn’t work in case of India. The Constitution drafting committee under the chairmanship of Dr BR Ambedkar imagined a different India — a diverse and multidimensional one that accommodates people of every cultural and lingual identity.  

However, regular political conflicts and the efforts to impose a singular language on the country has questioned the viability of that dream. In 1956, when the State Reorganisation Committee (SRC) created the state borders on the basis of language, it reflected their intent to recognise all the languages — not to subsume one at the cost of the others. Still, we witnessed agitation in South India against the imposition of Hindi. We experienced the loss of Adivasi Ol Chiki script and even saw the movement for its restoration. At a time when language determines the mobility, we look into the politics of language and how it shapes our struggles.  

In this series, we listen to the diversity of languages in Kerala from N S Madhavan. While he refers to the Hindi users in his state, he also cautions, “Rebottling the old nationalist narrative of Hin¬di as a unifying factor is anachronous.” 

The debates on whether Hindi is a national language took a vital turn in 2012 with Gujarat High Court’s verdict that termed it a “foreign language” for the Gujaratis. Recalling the judgement, Garga Chatterjee shared with us what she calls ‘Imperial Spectre’ of Hindi that is hanging on India. The dying declaration of Urdu, once identified as the language of tehzeeb, brings us to a time where Alama Iqbal’s prayer song Lab pe aati hai dua banke tamanna meri is vilified.

Through these articles and many more, we explore the contestations, the debates over language chauvinism. Can we celebrate the diversity? Or are you supposed to be submerged in the masculine flexing of lingual supremacy? Our ‘language of love’ needs the answer.