By Satya Sagar
Over four decades ago, as a South Indian growing up in the ‘Hindi heartland’ of Madhya Pradesh, I learned something that blew my mind – that Hindi was in fact the language of a minority of people in northern India.
As a ‘Madrasi’ child, everything I heard around me sounded like ‘Hindi,’ and little did I guess that there was more to this story than the simplistic idea that everyone from Rajasthan to Bihar via Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh spoke ‘Hindi.’
This deep insight about Hindi came from my guru and mentor Trilochan Singh (aka Trilochan Shastri), who was not just a major poet in Hindi, Awadhi, and Urdu but also a linguist of great repute, having compiled an entire Hindi-Bangla dictionary at the Benares Hindu University in the sixties. He was a master of no less than at least seven Indian languages and very familiar with a dozen more.
As a young student just out of school I used to visit Trilochan ji every evening and he explained to me that Hindi was an infant language. A mere fledgling when compared to over a dozen other tongues in vogue in northern India for centuries – from Awadhi (in which Tulsi’s Ramcharitra Manas was composed) and Bhojpuri (Kabir’s mother tongue) to Maithili (the language of Vidyapati’s 14th-century love poems) and Braj Bhasha (Mirabai and Amir Khusro’s poetry and bhajans).
Modern Standard Hindi formally took shape only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It emerged through deliberate standardization efforts by scholars, writers, and nationalists seeking a unified language for India’s independence movement. While drawing from Khari Boli dialect and ancient Sanskrit vocabulary, today’s Devanagari-written Hindi was also consciously developed to distinguish itself from Urdu through vocabulary choices and script.
As Prof. Alok Rai has explained in his brilliant book ‘Hindi Nationalism’, the creation of a ‘pure’ Hindi and a ‘pure’ Urdu by religious fanatics on both sides was the original Partition of the subcontinent that took place much before the physical division of India and Pakistan in 1947. (And ironically, in both countries these ‘national’ languages are not particularly popular even today and have to be imposed on linguistically diverse populations by the state machinery).
The first Hindi-advocacy organization (Hindi Sahitya Sammelan) wasn’t established until 1893, and Hindi only became India’s official language post-independence in 1947. This modern standard form differs significantly from the diverse historical languages of North India, making standardized Hindi essentially a product of recent ‘nation-building’ efforts. And let me make it very clear that here the problem is not with the concept of ‘nation-building’ per se but about whose idea of ‘nation’ is being foisted over everyone else’s.
Within north India it is clear that the imposition of Hindi has stunted the development of regional languages, depriving them of the institutional support needed to thrive. For example, Maithili, spoken by over 34 million people in Bihar and Nepal, was denied recognition as an independent language for decades, being classified as a ‘dialect’ of Hindi. Similarly, Bhojpuri, spoken by over 50 million people, has been relegated to the status of a “folk language,” with little support for its literary or educational development.
Within the so-called ‘Hindi belt’ itself, the state-sponsored promotion of Hindi has also created a linguistic hierarchy, with Hindi speakers often looking down on speakers of other Indian languages as “provincial” or “backward.” This attitude is reminiscent of the way the despicable caste system works and is deeply harmful to the social fabric of the nation. By privileging Hindi over other languages, a form of cultural imperialism is perpetuated, that alienates non-Hindi speakers and undermines their sense of identity and belonging.
The result has been a cultural and linguistic homogenization that impoverishes both India’s heritage as well as local populations and the correlation is not accidental at all. A simple statistical analysis will show that the parts of India where Hindi has been successfully imposed also have the highest rates of poverty, illiteracy, attacks on women and communalism.
Again, while Hindi is often portrayed as the “link language” of India, this narrative overlooks the fact that many Indian languages are older, richer, and more historically significant. Languages like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi, and Odia have literary traditions that date back centuries, if not millennia. Tamil, for instance, is one of the oldest living languages in the world, with a literary history spanning over 2,000 years. The Sangam literature of Tamil Nadu is a testament to the sophistication and depth of this language.
Similarly, Bengali has produced Nobel laureates like Rabindranath Tagore, whose works have left an indelible mark on world literature. However, let me point out that producing great literature is not necessary to justify preserving one’s mother tongue, just as one’s mother need not be a genius or celebrity for us to love her.
Linguistically, in terms of vocabulary, grammar, and creative output, many Indian languages surpass Hindi easily. The literacy rates in mother tongues like Tamil, Malayalam, Bangla, Khasi, Manipuri, Mizo and Kannada are higher than in Hindi-speaking states, reflecting the strong educational and cultural foundations of these languages. The vibrant translation and publishing industries in these languages further demonstrate their vitality and relevance. For instance, the Tamil publishing industry produces thousands of books annually, while Malayalam and Bengali cinema and literature have gained international acclaim.
The simple fact is that India is a land of unparalleled linguistic diversity, home to over 19,500 languages and dialects, as recorded by the People’s Linguistic Survey of India. This diversity is not just a statistic; it is the very fabric of India’s cultural, historical, and social identity. By promoting Hindi as a ‘national’ language, its proponents ignore the fact that a vast majority of Indians do not speak Hindi as their first language. Forcing Hindi on these populations is not just impractical; it is an affront to their linguistic and cultural identities.
There is no doubt that the current attempt by the Modi regime through the New Education Policy, which makes Hindi a compulsory language to be taught in schools nationally, is nothing more than a continuation of similar efforts at ‘linguistic colonialism’ over the last 75 years of the Indian Republic. The foisting of the language of the urban, upper castes of some parts of India over the entire country has been opposed for long by the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu since the days of Periyar and continues to be resisted, very rightly, even today. There are strong sentiments against imposition of Hindi in neighbouring Karnataka too.
The warning is clear: Hindi cannot be pushed down the throats of India’s diverse cultures without serious consequences. The people of India will not stand by as their languages, traditions, and histories are marginalized in the name of a biased idea of national unity.
And it does not matter how many times the Hindi-wallahs took a dip in the Ganges during Mahakumbh. Some sins cannot be washed away but many sinners can be.
Satya Sagar is a journalist and public health worker and can be reached at sagarnama@gmail.com
27 February 2025
Source: countercurrents.org