Hindi Zealotry
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: June 21, 2014 -

In the face of strong opposition from several regional political parties including its own allies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi led NDA Government on Friday tries its level best to defuse the mounting anger over its pro-Hindi stand by coming out with a clarification saying that the directive issued for use of Hindi on social media is only for Hindi-speaking States.

While this clarification is nothing but a damage control measure, it has also shown the partisan attitude of the newly installed Government.

As the matter of fact, the circular issued by Avadesh Kumar Mishra, Director of Official Language Department of the Home Ministry on May 27 last, which has sparked the current political storm attempt to impose Hindi, was a point-blank directive to all ministries and departments, public sector undertakings and banks for giving prominence to Hindi on official accounts in social media.

It stated, "...all officers and employees who operate official accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Google, Youtube should use Hindi and English languages. Prominence should be given to Hindi."

Close behind the first circular, another circular issued by the same Director announced prize money of Rs. 2,000 to two employees who do their official work mostly in Hindi, while Rs. 1,200 and Rs. 600 for the second and third position holders respectively.

So, it was a clear case of an attempt to prioritise a language spoken by only 40 percent of the people in a country that has 22 officially recognised languages, apart from numerous yet to be recognised languages and dialects.

Even if the attempt to push for greater use of Hindi by all Government ministries and departments, public sector undertakings and banks on their official accounts in social media could be partly read and understood as a move to break away from the Anglophone power elite in New Delhi or the dominance of English-speaking caucus on social media platforms such as Twitter, it was unfortunate that Prime Minister Narendra Modi led NDA Government over looked the sensitive nature of the issue that had even triggered bloody riots in the mid-1960s, specially in the southern States of the country.

Riding on the wave of anti-Hindi sentiment, DMK had even dethroned the ruling Congress and captured power in Tamil Nadu in 1967.

India is vast multi-cultural democratic society, where the theory of ‘one nation, one language’ could never ever work.

This is a fact that the NDA Government at New Delhi, which has been able to storm back to power after a decade riding on the strong anti-Congress wave, should not forgot any point of time.

Trying to push such time-tested unpopular policies and then backing off in the face of mounting criticism, that too, after revealing its own partisan attitude towards the Hindi and non-Hindi speaking States, could very well become its own death knell.

Now is the time of the new Government to concentrate on sensible and practicable developmental works for the welfare of the people instead of trying to promote its own Hindutva ideology that could come very costly.