Hindi vs Native Languages Debate Reveals India’s Hidden Crisis of Multilingualism

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin’s recent remarks are not an attack on Hindi but a reminder to the “Hindi” people that the Hindi being propagated as the national language has smothered scores of languages in the region we now know as the Hindi region.
| Photo Credit: SAMRAJ M

The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M.K. Stalin, has escalated the war on the national duplicity regarding language, which goes by the name of “three-language formula”. He has refused to give up the two-language formula, which has been in practice in his State for decades. It requires English to be taught with Tamil as the home language. To the suggestion that the Tamil people would be benefiting from learning a third language, especially Hindi, as it would enable them to access the lingual diversity of India, he says: Thank you very much. We learn the languages sincerely and honestly without using any formula. Our history tells you that this two-language formula has helped us materially as we are economically better off than the “Hindi” regions like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. We do not have to go looking for livelihood in other States like the people from the “Hindi” regions who abound in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, etc. as their own States cannot feed them.

In 2022, the Higher Education Minister of Tamil Nadu asked about the language of those selling pani puri in Coimbatore. It hurt the Hindi-speaking people as he was clearly indicating that these people have to come to Tamil Nadu to earn their livelihood. Learning Hindi takes you this far, he suggested—and he was not wrong. Hindiwalas took offence but they had no answer to him.

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What he meant was that it was more necessary for people of the Hindi region to learn Tamil or Kannada as they have their livelihood in the regions of these languages and not vice versa. So, what you need to do is to master the language of the land of opportunity. Hindiwalas instead want the people of these lands to learn Hindi to make life easy for them. We can see people engaged in hawking or plumbing or security work learning local languages. But the people engaged in white collar jobs, even after spending years in South Indian cities, seldom feel the need to learn their language. They think their English is sufficient to pull them through.

Decline of multilingualism

If we leave aside this material aspect and think about our multilingual ability, people from South India are way ahead of the “Hindi” speaking people. People from Uttar Pradesh or Bihar are mostly monolingual if you leave aside their use of their home tongues like Awadhi or Bhojpuri. They do not feel the need to learn any other Indian language. English, again, is a compulsion they cannot avoid. We need to ask how is it that even decades of the use of the three-language formula has kept them impoverished lingually. Is there a desire in these lands to learn other Indian languages? Do you see any Tamil or Assamese teachers in a school in Uttar Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh?

It was assumed that the three-language formula would serve as an instrument to bring people from different linguistic regions closer to each other. But we see that it was never used for this purpose in the “Hindi” regions. They never introduced Marathi or Bangla or Kannada. So what is the Indianness “Hindi” people keep talking about? They think that Indianness is defined by Hindi as it is spoken by the largest number of people. But that too is factually wrong.

Chief Minister Stalin has reminded the “Hindi” people that the Hindi being propagated as the national language has smothered scores of languages in the region we now know as the Hindi region. It is riding on their backs.

I, as a teacher of Hindi, know that the students in my class do not have Hindi as their first or home language. They use either Braj, Maithili, Marwari, or Haryanvi in their homes. For them, Hindi is a language to be learnt. And it is not easy for them. The number of students failing the Hindi examination in Uttar Pradesh is telling. The pedagogy employed in our schools, which completely cuts off Hindi from their home languages, is flawed. The quest for “Shuddha” (pure) Hindi purged of all local influences is another reason. The joyless Hindi burdened with the task of nation-building scares the children.

Not an attack on Hindi

Some of our friends were dismayed by Stalin’s comment on the adverse impact of Hindi on languages like Braj or Maithili. They advised him not to attack Hindi. But he was not doing that. I would like to quote the linguist Ayesha Kidwai to help us understand what was the meaning of the comment by Stalin:

“What Stalin is saying is a fact. Because our Census groups together 50 speech varieties under Hindi, and because State policy on education is informed by that grouping, once a child goes to school and is taught only standard Hindi, there is definitely attrition of the other language(s) (s)he is a speaker of. While such languages need not necessarily immediately die out, the domain of their usage shrinks day by day, often being restricted just to usage at home, until they begin to be perceived by speakers themselves to have little utility, and they stop speaking it to their children. We have seen this process iterate over and over again for the last century and a half in India and there is no denying it. Linguists call it language shift.”

In response to Stalin, it has been said that what has emerged as Hindi is a natural process of standardisation. But Prof. Kidwai tells us that standardisation should not lead to the death of the proximate languages:

“…[L]anguage standardisation is by no means this process of extermination of different varieties (unless you are French in the 19th century). Rather, languages standardise by codification in the form of development of text conventions, grammars, dictionaries, spelling books, and the development of genres of literature and art. Many of the languages clubbed under Hindi actually already have undergone these processes to a great extent, and not become more like Hindi in the slightest. Remember Braj Bhasha—called a bhasha not boli, because of its prestigious literary tradition—and ask whether it is taught in schools and whether there is great new writing in Braj, or new movies or music in the language. Or whether Braj speakers, who should range across the Indian states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh all identify themselves to Census enumerators as ‘Hindi speakers’.”

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Those who advise Stalin to let Hindi be taught as part of the three-language formula have never thought about why a language like Braj is not taught in our schools. Why is it that the Hindiwalas cannot read the texts by Tulsidas or Surdas or Keshav? They are part of our syllabus across India, but their serious readers are to be found in Europe!

What is needed is an honest review of the practice of the three-language formula. Not to use it as an empty slogan, which helps Hindiwalas live in their own world of illusion.

Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University and writes literary and cultural criticism.