Context:-

  • On 14th September 2019, which is a Hindi Diwas, the present Union Home minster Amit Shah said that ‘One Nation, One Language‘ is needed to strengthen the unity of the country. He opined that Hindi should be made the national language of India.
  • The debate on Hindi as the national language is not new. From the 1960s, there have been attempts to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking states. And there were widespread protests against the imposition of Hindi.
  • In the last few years, several ministers termed Hindi as ‘Rastra Basha’, which means National language.
  • In June 2017, the Central government announced that passports would now be in both Hindi and English. The President of India approved several recommendations of Parliamentary committee on official languages. Issuing government circulars in Hindi, making Hindi compulsory in CBSE schools are some among them.
  • Till now, there is no National language for India. And there are 2 official languages – English and Hindi.
  • In 2019, the Center’s push for the Hindi language through 3-language formula in the New National Education Policy’s draft created controversy.

Yes, Hindi should be the national language of India:

  • Hindi is spoken by more than half of India. As no single language is spoken by entire India, it is much better to make the majoritarian language as the national language.
  • English is not native to India, but Hindi is.
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No, Hindi should not be the national language of India:

  • Almost half of India’s mother tongue is not Hindi. There are 22 officially recognized regional languages in India. Making majoritarian language as the national language is unconstitutional.
  • English is an international language and is spoken by most of the Indians. So, if Hindi is made as the national language, people who cannot speak Hindi will be at disadvantage in many things such as getting government jobs, understanding circulars etc.
  • There are widespread protests against the imposition of Hindi because non-Hindi speaking states are much more comfortable with English than Hindi.
  • Several Indian languages already dying because of the increasing usage of English. If Hindi is also made compulsory, the importance of the mother tongue will be reduced further.
  • Some people are arguing that English is not born in India and hence we should avoid using it. This statement lacks logic because all the technological innovations we are now using were born in different parts of the world. We cannot reject things just because they are not Indian.

Conclusion:-

Non-Hindi speaking states at least accepted Hindi as another official language besides English. But attempts to replace English with Hindi and trying to make it as the sole official language will threaten the unity of India. Imposing majoritarian ideals on others is against the fundamental rights of our constitution.

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23 Comments

  • ken, Sep 14, 2021 @ 9:00 pm Reply

    Equal Education policy needed for India:
    If English medium education is better in India then why not translate all English curriculum and Sanskrit literature in regional languages and provide equal education/information to all? Don’t people read PM’s Mann kī Bāt in all regional languages on websites? Don’t they teach the Bible in all Indian languages? Sanskrit scholars provide Vedic knowledge to westerners in English via translation and transliteration but not the same way to fellow Indians who protect languages and culture in Indic scripts.Gujarat has given great political leaders as well as simple script to the nation and yet Hindi is taught in a complex printing ink wasting script despite it’s simplification into Gujanāgari script.
    If pundits were happy with the complex printing ink wasting Devanagari script they may not have created various scripts under different rulers for vernacular languages to divide the country. Nowadays Devanagari Lipi Parishad prefers a single Devanagari script despite it’s simplification into Gujanāgarī script for all Indian languages to slowly eliminate vernacular scripts the way they did with Maharashtra’s MODI script.
    Westerners learn Sanskrit in English via translation and transliteration and challenge Indians but Indians are not allowed to learn Sanskrit the same way in vernacular languages.Why not make the same efforts in teaching mother language as you do for Sanskrit? How modern Sanskrit is going to be better than Vedic Sanskrit in providing knowledge? Does the government spend an equal amount of money on the promotion of all state languages.
    https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/rs-643-84-cr-spent-on-promotion-of-sanskrit-in-3-years-govt-data/story-8LLLjyebUs8RbaL2J1LS9H.html India needs to create more jobs for Indic translators to provide equal education and information to all in Indic languages.
    Also India has more English speakers than Great Britain and yet Indian English doesn’t have itś own Indian English dictionary with pronunciation key to challenge IPA with highly phonetic Indic alphabets.
    Please request NCERT to add regional languages along with Hindi and Urdu.

  • Rohan K, Dec 26, 2020 @ 4:44 pm Reply

    Diversity is what makes India notable and different from other countries all over the world. We as Indians enjoy celebrating Baisakhi as much as we enjoy celebrating Onam. But, from the start of the 21st Century we remain divided mostly because of the inter-state conflicts. Much of it very much linking to our linguistic cultures. Making Hindi the official language of India, is absolutely not looking down upon our sister languages. But is just to provide us all with a laminar understanding of “Yes, we are one!!” and not turbulent assumption that ” Since our native languages are not in the discussion, they are not important.” If we all see USA, UK, China etc Showcase as better coutries, exemplary for unity, just because they voice their opinions in a language understood by all and spoken by all. Since, Hindi is the majority spoken language in our India, Govt. selected Hindi as national language. If majority were to be Bhojpuri/Marathi/Malayalum etc the govt. would have proposed our other sister language as the National language. Its all about our perspective and not feelings and emotions. In addition to that, the whole world now subconsciously accept Hindi as our National language. So the govt. is just making sure it is official.

  • Preeti Rawat, Jan 25, 2020 @ 6:06 pm Reply

    As per my views hindi should be the national language of India because most of the indian people speak in hindi and they all are comfortable with this language. It is easily understood by the all as compare to other languages . If we talk about majority , so we are Indian and we have to provide majority to our mother tongue because when we born and start speak we use hindi not english . Therefore as per my views hindi should be the national language of India.

    • muthuraman, Sep 3, 2020 @ 12:45 pm Reply

      This view is perfectly correct from a hindiites point of view, but not from others, especially from south and northeast. This view gives undue advantage who speak/understand Hindi but a disadvantage to others, because, even if it is learnt, it will never be as easy as the native speaker, thus leaving the non-native speaker feeling inferior in his own country!

  • P. Kolandasamy, Puducherry, Nov 19, 2019 @ 8:46 pm Reply

    English is an international language and is spoken by most of the Indians. So, if Hindi is made as the national language, people who cannot speak Hindi will be at disadvantage in many things such as getting government jobs, understanding circulars etc. Yes one should not impose any language , as we are known for our diverse culture religion language and taste.

  • ASHOK KUMAR, Nov 3, 2019 @ 6:53 am Reply

    In my opinion, we should make hindi more effective because more than half country speak hindi and 90% indian easily understand in hindi….

    • Muthuraman, Aug 24, 2020 @ 2:35 pm Reply

      Hindi alphabet can have have 3 x 3 ,72 ,086 letters ! A very huge burden to put on our children’s heads .

    • Namrata Bachani, Sep 22, 2020 @ 1:24 pm Reply

      Hindi is spoken by only 40% of the indians…and so what if people can understand hindi…for a proper conversation…it is necessary that the other person should also know how to speak in hindi! And that’s what happened in Sri Lanka…they made Sinhalese as the national language and there was a great revolt for it by the native and indian Tamils living there…for not making Tamil as the national language.

  • Anirudh, Oct 14, 2019 @ 3:50 pm Reply

    The whole issue of opposition to Hindi as national language, especially in the south comes due to these reasons :
    1. North Indians, esp. Hindi speaking people will start to look down upon south indians with some kind of superiority complex. Some of them already do this.
    2. There will be simply no incentive for Hindi speaking people to learn south indian languages. Their track record of learning south indian languages is already terrible.
    3. South Indian languages will not flourish and will be swamped with Hindi in all walks of life.
    Hindi cannot be the national language unless the above 3 issues are handled properly.

    • PolemicalChacha, Oct 16, 2019 @ 2:26 am Reply

      Do you wish to propose that the whole nation ought to speak a language which is confined to a specific region? Do you believe Tamil or Kannada has the potential to become the langauge of our whole nation? Should then all regional dialect speaker such as those who speak Assamese or Bangla should try to demand and enforce their langauge on all citizens of our nation? Hindi is the language of the majority, understood by majority. A single language will definitely advance an ease of communication among all people and regions. A sense of unity among cirizens is a direct result of a single langauge, among other factors. Various parts of northern India has several regional dialects too and so does east and west. What is the reason that southerners have issues with Hindi specifically? There is no sound basis to your conclusion that various regional dialects will cease to flourish if there is a uniform offical language. Introduction and use of english by southerners have not eradicated or weakened the use of their languages, in fact, speaking english has been immensely beneficial to their cultural, social, and economical development. Your claim that people from north will start to look down upon people from south because of their lack of understanding Hindi is absurd because then every language speaker ought to look down upon those who do not understand their native langauge. South Indians seem pretty harsh towards people from North so much so that they cheerfully accept a foreign langauge than a language which is spoken by the majority of our nation. It is truly disheartening to see people reject Hindi as they fail to discard their prejudices towards people from northern India. If in the future Hindi becomes the dominant world langauge, will then people accept it as their sole national language, and disregard the fear of being contemned by Northerns or anybody else?

      • Muthuraman, Aug 24, 2020 @ 2:29 pm Reply

        Hindi native and english foreign is a treacherous propaganda to promote it in spite of traditionally older richer and more Indian sounding languages . For. example hindi can not stand anywhere near Tamil in terms of antiquity , literary richness and. phonologic sweetness !

      • Balaji Karunakaran, Aug 25, 2020 @ 8:39 pm Reply

        Age of Hindi is just less than 500 years and Tamil is 5000 years old. Learning Hindi has no advantages. Whereas English is global language and only Hindi speaking people dream of making Hindi as global language. You might have not heard of protest in Tamilnadu for imposing Hindi after Independence. If Hindi speaking people stand by the constitution draft after freedom and accept English as the linking language then things may go on as usual.
        Indian Union is a federation of linguistical states.
        If there can be many languages there will be one nation and if there has to be one language then there would be many nation
        Choice is with those who support Hindi as national language.

  • Swaraj Sundriyal, Sep 29, 2019 @ 9:07 am Reply

    Hindi as we all know is spoken by majority of indians .Making hindi the national language will not have any adverse impact on other languages,If something which has had a negative impact on other indian languages is the english language which has created a sense of inferior complexibility among people who don’t speak english,Unlike english hindi is a language which is of indian origin and has more potential than english in reaching common masses,

  • PolemicalChacha, Sep 18, 2019 @ 6:26 pm Reply

    I don’t understand the immense importance people or a group of people give to a language. Tamilians think that they speak the language of Gods and so did those who spoke Sanskrit or Greek or Latin for that matter. Hindi may or may not be the language of Gods but at least a single language in a nation that every citizen knows and speaks will help in strengthening the roots of our country and also an ease of communication between all groups. I speak a dialect which have persisted for centuries even though we have accepted Hindi as our official language. All languages share a similar underlying structure, it’s the idea of identifying with people of a group who speak a single language leads to complexities. All states have the right and they should preserve their dialects or languages but also at the same time restrain themselves from open hostilities toward other languages. Tamil or Kannada etc., like it or not are regional languages and I think as a citizen of a country and not of a region, it is our responsibility and duty to be able to speak the language thay everybody understands. All the regional language speakers are happy to accept English language but not Hindi. Why? Partly because they now think that Hindi is not the language of the Gods and partly because Hindi is still not used and popular enough the way English is, which is exactly what the government is trying to do: to make Hindi a part of our national identity and to spread it globally.

    • Muthuraman, Aug 24, 2020 @ 2:47 pm Reply

      Hindi is already killing 50 off Indian languages like Braj Bhasha , bhojpuri , magadhi ,Mythili , Avadhi etc. These languages are traditionally Indian older and richer than hindi . Treating them as dialects of hindi is like considering Babar as grand son of Akbar . If allowed this way it will reduce all tradionally Indian languges as hindi dialects and drive away from school curriculum . This is great injustice !

  • yaswanth, Sep 17, 2019 @ 9:24 pm Reply

    Imposing hindi as a national language is not correct because india is diverse with many regional languages.

    • Dhritiman Sanyal, Nov 12, 2019 @ 11:16 pm Reply

      Hindi by feelings it is our language rather than English, so it easily adopt in mind.
      Being an Indian after going out of country we never tell that we have any particular national language also.

  • B Venkatraman, Sep 15, 2019 @ 11:06 am Reply

    Hindi can never be the sole official language of a diverse country like India just because it is widely spoken. What about the majority of people who don’t have Hindi as mother tongue? English along with Hindi should be two official languages of the country. Period.

    • Ekta, Sep 19, 2019 @ 6:32 pm Reply

      What about the majority of those who don’t know English and speak Hindi. Most of them come from poor section of our society. If you persist to teach them English why cant non Hindi speaking states learn Hindi?

      • Urvashi, Jul 22, 2020 @ 9:24 pm Reply

        The problem is that you are teaching them Hindi for the sake of teaching them hindi, but if the poorer section learns English, they will be connected to the entire world, not just India.

        • Ajay, Jul 23, 2020 @ 1:09 am Reply

          But how can we implement such thing in a country like india where everything changes in terms of language with in 100 km.

      • muthuraman, Sep 3, 2020 @ 1:12 pm Reply

        Non-Hindi people learn English for its sheer utility! Is there any such thing about Hindi?

  • abhishek, Jul 10, 2017 @ 8:40 pm Reply

    one should not impose any language , as we are known for our diverse culture religion language and taste.

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