THAROOR OPPOSES HINDI
I had heard Shashi Tharoor
first during my Staff College in
1996. He was in UN then and it was
rumoured that he charged a lot to talk; even at Staff College. He talked of UN
role and what remained with me was his English Accent. His conversation and
statement even though reasonable are still dominated by Style and substance
gets subsumed in that dominant style much like the writings of Salman Rushdie
and Sunil Khilnani. However his achievement in Politics is winning two consecutive
Lok Sabha polls from Trivandrum despite being a newcomer and outsider.
He continues to make
headlines with his books , lectures and past. Congress has few good speakers
and he is one of them. With his liberal views, UN experience and being an
elected leader from South he is in
Congress frontline.This perhaps may have injected some additional ambition in him
when he stood up in Lok Sabha and opposed Sushma Swaraj’s plan to make Hindi as
one of the official languages in UN.
Sushma Swaraj being the External affairs Minister was
replying to a question on attempts of India in making Hindi one of the official languages in UN. She explained
that it was difficult to make Hindi as one of the official Languages as India
requires support of two thirds of the 193 Nations. It was not only the support
but the financial burden which the Nation supporting have to confirm and which
they find difficult as there are many
countries who are not resourceful. However; she said that India was trying with
smaller countries like Fiji, Mauratius where there are sizeable number of
Indians. Shri Tharoor opposed this by saying that making Hindi as an official
language would serve no purpose as it was spoken only in India and was not even
the National Language but an official language . Putting Hindi in UN may pose
problem for the future Prime Ministers and Foreign Minister who may be Tamil
speaking. Sushma termed his statement as ‘ignorant’ and stated that Hindi was
spoken by many people of Indian origin in other Nations.
What surprised me was Tharoor’s intervention on Language
issue when it was already a settled
matter in Parliament that English shall remain in use till the time people are
not ready for Hindi. For a seemingly
mature person like Tharoor it was an immature utterance aimed at
enlarging his area of acceptance, among Dravidian States.
Perhaps it is therefore apt here to recall the view and
interpretation of H M Seervai; the
Constitutional expert. Below are extracts from his book ‘Commentary on Constitutional Law Of India’ in 3 Volumes. On
the debate before Independence on Continuation of English and opting for Hindi he wrote “
Administration at Higher levels, higher education, the legislature,the Law
Courts, and the professions, all used English , and the question was which
Language shall take place of English and when ? Till the Partition of India
Hindustani in both Devnagri and Persian script held the field. With the
Partition of India the cause of
Hindustani was lost , though Mahatma Gandhi held that the Indian National
Congress ought to stand for a broad outlook and should stand firm on language which was
spoken by the largest group of people”.
On Gandhi’s views on National Language he writes, “
Mahatma Gandhi raised the question of a National Language. He described it at
times as ‘Hindi ‘and at times as’ Hindustani’ , buthe understood by both a
Language which was neither Sanskritised
Hindi nor Persianised Urdu, but a happy blend of both, written either in
Devnagri or the Persian script.”
He held the view that language is accepted if it concerns
with work/job/economy and also is linked
to culture. He writes that Language take time to evolve hinting at exercising
caution. To quote him, “ Article 351 no doubt suggests that a language can be built
by resorting to Sanskrit lexicons and substituting a Sanskrit word for an English equivalent . But Languages
cannot be made to order and unless the words used “come home to men’s business
and bosoms they will secure no hold on the minds or the hearts of men…” In the
atmosphere prevalent at that time it was
not possible to learn the lesson furnished by Europe ,namely that a ruling language can be displaced by a native Language only
when it has reached sufficient development and receives general acceptance. For
centuries Latin was the universal language of intellectual life in Europe .
Later French became the Lingua Franca of Europe , but it was gradually
displaced in Germany and Russia as soon as German and Russian became well
developed Languages”
In his chapter on Language he writes that since it was
agreed on the assurance of Nehru to postpone the implementation of Hindi by 15
years and to continue with English in Courts, Higher Administration ,Science
and Higher education the status of Hindi was ‘class of its own’ and so was of
English.
From the above it is clear that Congress and Gandhi wanted a Language spoken
by many to be the National Language. However since there was opposition to it
the matter was postponed. He also brings out one interesting issue that
Languages develop and grow and replace the dominant Languages as in Europe.
Perhaps not at that time but now was the appropriate time for Hindi to go to UN
as the number of Hindi speaking people have increased and so has the Language
Culturally. Tharoor should have kept quiet rather than making an unnecessary
political statement that seems to have run its course and its original perpetrators
have also diluted their stance and adopted other methods of staying afloat.
