The uniting power of Hindi

Indians display remarkable apathy to excesses by the state -except when at stake is their language

But let me make it clear to you that the state language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and no other language. Anyone who tries to mislead you is merely the enemy of Pakistan. Without one state language, no nation can remain tied up solidly together and function. Look at the history of other countries. Therefore, so far as the state language is concerned, Pakistan’s language should be Urdu.”
 
The speaker was Pakistan’s Governor General MA Jinnah, addressing half a million Bengalis in Dhaka on March 28, 1948.
 
This was, of course, arrogance — Jinnah was a south Bombay toff who himself spoke English and Gujarati and nothing else. And it was political suicide — the Bengalis, who were a majority in undivided Pakistan, did not accept that their language was inferior to Urdu. The roots of the break up of the country a quarter century after its formation are in this imposition of the northerner’s language on the rest of the population.
 
The anxiousness to unite through language and religion applies to us also. Like Jinnah, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) do not see all our languages as equal: Only Hindi is authentic. In the time of founder Hedgewar, the RSS concluded its daily activity with chorus verse in Marathi. As the group expanded, the anthem changed from Marathi to the Hindi-Sanskrit “Namaste sada vatsale matrubhumi” (it is this prayer, in which India is referred to as Hindubhumi, that the chant imposed today on all of us as a test appears —  Bharat Mata ki jai).
 
The Jana Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party carried the Hindi gene into politics, accompanied by a powerful dislike for English. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, the Sangh’s only intellectual — he was, of course, not particularly well read — wrote that “even at the risk of losing access to modern scientific knowledge we should free ourselves from the clutches of English.”
 
Upadhyaya felt that the southern resistance to Hindi was born chiefly of concerns related to disadvantages in Central government recruitment. This was not so at the time when he was writing this in the 1950s and it is not so today. People like Upadhyaya have no idea about why their linguistic imposition is resisted.
 
For those who follow such things, the BJP’s inability to let go of the Hindi issue shows itself with a boring regularity. Every second year in recent history there has been some mischief from them on this front. In 2017, Kannada activists blackened the signs on their Metro in Bengaluru, which were written in Hindi following a Central government order which was quietly withdrawn after the protest.
 
As Lenin said: “Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.” In 2019, the steel came from a united front of Tamilians and Malayalis leading to immediate tactical surrender from the BJP.
 
The BJP’s house Tamilians were wheeled out to defend the government and the thing was made out to be an innocent mistake but, of course, it was not.
 
The question to consider is this: How are some of us able to make the government retreat where the rest of us fail? On the issue of Hindi, there was a successful pushback from stakeholders who were united, and that is great.
 
But there are so many other things that the government does that are objectionable. This week marks a year since a group of lawyers and activists has been in jail in the Bhima Koregaon case, nine of whom I know personally.
 

Illustration by Binay Sinha

They are in jail for their work and their beliefs. I will not comment on the accusations against them but it is worth reading the material the state has put together, and the order written by Justice Muralidhar of Delhi High Court.
 
To return to our question: Why do so many protests against the excesses of the state result not in concessions but in apathy from the state and often even jail to the protestors?
 
India has possibly the weakest civil society of any civilised democracy. Not weak because of a lack of activism; weak despite the presence of many brave individuals and groups. But why?
 
The reason is that when the few fight for the marginalised and the weak, the many do not join them. The southern resistance to Hindi is not a disinterested resistance. They have a real stake and strong emotion invested in the matter and when faced with this the government has fled, even if temporarily.
 
However, if we look all the imposition of the other aspects of the BJP’s ideology, we do not see such civic success. Take the indefinite jailing of four million people we are currently carrying out over the National Citizens Register or the blinding of over 1,000 Kashmiris including babies by India’s paramilitary.
 
Take the public slaughter of humans after a deliberate and cold anti-beef push from this government or the capture of Adivasi land by the state and corporations. Take the immunity our soldiers are gifted for rape and murder in the Northeast and Kashmir.
 
What is being referred to is not confined to our present. The massacres of Punjabis in 1984 and Gujaratis in 2002 have still not ended in justice because of this lack of interest from the rest of us. Dalits marched alone to protest against the dilution of the atrocities act which protects them.

There is no real resistance from others on behalf of the direct stakeholders out of empathy or understanding. If there were, the state would crumble and fold on the issues listed above as it has on the matter of Hindi.
 
The conclusion we can draw is that Indians are only made upset by things that directly concern us. Even those of us who are not enthused by the excesses of government (and unfortunately there are many) are perfectly comfortable to look away or justify them in some way because we don’t unconditionally accept the idea of the rights of all. We are rarely if ever willing to stand up for others despite having, at least in theory, the freedom to do so and this alone explains why India lags the civilised nations on the issues related to rights.
 
The Americans have a phrase describing this sort of behaviour: “I got mine”.