English was to linger for 15 years, during which time a complete transition to Hindi was envisioned-which, of course, did not happen. Opposition, especially from the south, was sharp, with the result that Hindi was made India’s official, but not national, language. The price of linguistic self-expression was accepting the union’s common language.Īll this, of course, was easier said than done. And while linguistic states could be formed, their official language should not be the state’s dominant language. “Since Indians wish to unite and develop a common culture," he would write, “it is the bounden duty of all Indians to own up Hindi as their language." Without this, we would be left “a 100 per cent Maharashtrian, a 100 per cent Tamil or a 100 per cent Gujarati" but never truly Indian.īut then compromises would have to be made by everyone: The Hindi-heartland states were intimidating behemoths, which would have to consent to being divided into smaller units (something that did eventually, and reluctantly, happen decades later). And as Mahatma Gandhi himself stated in 1946, “only the language which the people of a country will themselves adopt can become national". It was a point well received: As another member argued, preserving English would only please “the ghost" of Lord Macaulay. Allowing English to dominate, he felt, would create an elite class and separate them from “a large mass of our people not knowing English". But “no nation can become great on the basis of a foreign language". Jawaharlal Nehru, for instance, agreed that “English had done us a lot of good" and helped bring together nationalists from across divides. It was a proposition vociferously debated in the constituent assembly. One of the recommendations of the commission to achieve this was the adoption of a national language.
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