From the archive, 6 January 1958: Debate rages over official language in India

http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2014/jan/06/india-hindi-english-official-language

Version 0 of 1.

Bombay, January 5

The anti-Hindi agitation in the South is going full swing. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which believes the South is oppressed by the North, has taken up the cudgels on behalf of English.

The Madras demonstrations which ended in riots were held in protest against Mr Nehru's "unwarranted, uncharitable, and insulting remarks about eminent sons of South India for expressing their views on problems of the day." Curiously enough, these eminent sons of the South are two full-blooded Brahmins - Mr Rajagopalachari and Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar. Until yesterday the Kazhagam was opposing them furiously, but on the issue of English versus Hindi Kazhagam and Brahmins are all Southerners together.

Mr Nehru is on a bed of thistles indeed. The other day he let go at the protagonists of English with a touch of anger and called their efforts to preserve English "hysterical." Soon, however, he realised that he had made a political error, while it is all right for regional leaders to lose their balance, the nation expects Mr Nehru to be above factional and regional emotions.

This is why, at his press conference he tried hard to mend the humpty-dumpty of southern pride by saying that he wanted to enforce no solution on the national language unless it had the support of the majority in the South and the North (as easy a matter to get as co-existence between fox and hound) and that it need not matter whether the solution arrived at was logical or not, so long as it pleased.

Mr Nehru cannot handle this problem too gingerly; the linguistic reorganisation of the states was, by comparison, child's play, for it never involved pitting a whole people against another and, with the single exception of Bombay, was merely a matter of finding a formula to give people their due. The selection of any language barring English inevitably means enforcing on whole regions the mother tongue of others.

Mr Nehru has already left the door open for prudent retreat by saying that there was no hurry and that one must be flexible; it is quite likely that in the end he will, as he has so often done, muddle through thanks to his genius for graceful surrender.

Such genius is urgently required, for not only has the Kazhagam declared itself prepared on the language issue to fight in support of the hated Brahmins but the Governments of Madras, Mysore, and Andhra have issued an official resolution refusing to accept Hindi as the national language and demanding the retention of English.

The Madras Government has sent a letter to Delhi declaring that the Language Commission's proposals were "totally unacceptable." Its objections to relinquishing English were set out in a memorandum. This cannot be ignored, since it was prepared in consultation with all the parties in the Legislature and is likely to be acceptable throughout the South and perhaps even in Bengal, where Hindi is not popular.

The memorandum demands the establishment of bilingualism (Hindi and English) to solve the problem of the national language. It also asks that public service examinations should be in the regional languages, that there should be simultaneous translation from Hindi into English and vice versa in Parliament, that college education in Madras should be in Tamil and that court language should be the regional language.

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.