The Hindu Huddle 2025: ‘India's strength is in its linguistic diversity'

The Hindu

10-05-2025

India, which has had a certain civilisational unity despite having no dominant language, can continue to be a thriving democratic, plural society and a strong nation with its multiplicity of languages that have long histories and are deeply rooted, A.R. Venkatachalapathy, historian, author and professor at Madras Institute of Development Studies, has said.
Rather than forge unity, any attempt to impose a single language often ends up weakening its identity, he added, while speaking at a session on 'Vox populi: language and identity wars shaping our culture' at The Hindu Huddle on Saturday.
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Opening his remarks about language being central to cultural identity for over a millennium, he said many social movements are deeply rooted in language. Even the Bhakti movement was strongly rooted in language, as it was a protest against the hegemony of Sanskrit and Brahminical rituals in many parts of the country. While the Dravidian languages remained linguistically distinct from Sanskrit and others part of the Indo-European language family, culturally, the regional languages grew with devotional movements, which developed all over India around the turn of the second millennium in opposition to Sanskrit, Mr. Venkatachalapathy said.
Historically, Indian nationalism during the struggle for independence became stronger and evolved into a mass phenomenon when the regional languages developed, and the message of the nation was propagated through various regional languages. Talking about the debates in the constituent assembly, he said the people who were committed to the cause of the nation refused to give an unfair advantage to Hindi by making it the only official language.
To a question on the purity of languages, he said languages evolved organically and did not exist in isolation. 'In the last 100 years, Tamil, Malayalam etc. have become largely secularised. From languages heavily influenced by the religious idiom, they have become extremely secular. Tamil is no longer indebted to Shivite religion, it's a democratic language with various religious and regional influences. We cannot artificially preserve languages in a pure form,' he said.
Laxmikant Deshmukh, chairperson of the language consultation committee, Maharashtra, said it was irrational on the part of the State government to 'impose Hindi as a third compulsory language from the Class I', as it went against the National Education Policy- 2020, which stipulated the introduction of a third language only from Class VI.
Outlining the linguistic history of Maharashtra, which envisaged making Marathi the 'language of knowledge' over the years, he said Marathas, familiar with Hindustani (Dakhini, which was a mix of Hindi and Urdu) from the time the Hyderabad Nizam had ruled a part of the present State, had no qualms about speaking Hindi. 'But the attempts at cultural dominance are worrisome,' he said.
Mr. Deshmukh said one language and one religion wouldn't work in India in the long-term because the Hindu religion is diverse across regions. Varghese K. George, The Hindu's Resident Editor for Delhi, moderated the session.
The Hindu Huddle 2025 is presented by Sami-Sabinsa Group
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