Key Metrics

India has 22 officially recognized major languages, each with its own script, another 600 or so other languages and over 19,500 distinct dialects across 28 States and 9 Union Territories. Though many Indians are multilingual from infancy, communicating across ALL languages and scripts is impossible.

Many countries across the world (UK, Germany, Russia, Japan, Spain, USA and the Scandinavian Countries, are encouraging the learning of Sanskrit in their Schools and Universities and are clamouring for Sanskrit teachers, because of the ancient knowledge within it. Sanskrit is the only language in which the meanings of the words do not drift with time. All this making it the perfect interface language between computers and human languages, and therefore allowing it many advantages in Artificial Intelligence work. Most languages have less than, or about one hundred thousand words. Over the centuries of worldwide colonization, English has gathered together a vocabulary of about one million words. The root structure of Sanskrit enables it to generate a near unlimited number of words.

It is estimated that all the books, in all the many languages that have been printed since the invention of the printing press, would not be more than 1.30 million. It is estimated that the number of books available in Sanskrit and available today are over 40 million of which 95 percent remain untranslated.

Background

As citizens of our Country, we are free to go wherever we please within it, but once we are out of our own State, or the State we were brought up in, we are handicapped. We can no longer freely communicate, either verbally or in writing, with those people now around us. We find ourselves Strangers within our own Country. This leads to divisiveness.

Perhaps some around us speak and understand English (Indian) or ‘INGLISH’ and moving within that restricted circle we find our self quite at home, but that circle intersects often with other local circles in which people do not speak ‘INGLISH’ and there once again we are Strangers or ‘Pardesis’ – and thus at a loss. If we know some Hindi or Hindustani (the pidgin or mixed version of Hindi, Urdu, English and some of the other Indian Languages) we might get by in many parts of the Country where the local Language is Hindi or its cousin or in other urban centres where some of the people are familiar with Hindi / Hindustani. But in other areas, mostly rural, we will again find ourselves at a loss.

Not only that we can’t communicate, except for a few commonly recognized words aided by sign language, but we also, cannot read or make sense of the Milestones, Name Boards, Destination Boards on Buses, Direction Boards, Buildings etc and hence, cannot know where to go and to whom for help, and even when we do find someone, we are unable to communicate satisfactorily and are therefore again handicapped. Of course, our Smart Phone and its location and translation capability, especially in this day of AI, do help but nothing beats knowing the language to directly communicate in, as tone, facial and body language count (see Burkha & Communication).

So, as it is no one’s stand that everyone should know all the languages of the Country and yet, as we do need to be able to at least communicate with one another, we need to find a solution to this problem of communicating well with each other across the Country and even Globally.

Many suggestions have been made and we can take a look at some of the main ones and try to understand why, even after over 78 years of independence, we still haven’t found a satisfactory solution.

What needed consideration was to;

1. Select the language of our Constitution, English, as the Official language of the Nation. In fact, as more Indians speak English, than in any other Nation and as we have our own style of speaking it and a modified vocabulary, perhaps it would be better to call it English (Indian) or ‘INGLISH’.
Select the language of our Constitution, English as the Official language ,… Hindustani …as the Link language… , the Mother Tongue/Local language as the Working Language, … Sanskrit as the National Language.
2. Recognizing that language is for better and easier communication and that often such communication is better undertaken in the popular vernacular form, perhaps with the vocabulary including words mixed in from many sources, that has already established itself as a reasonably functional and practical medium of communication and take the best of whatever is found acceptable to best serve the needs of our citizens in their lives within the Country i.e. Hindustani, as popularized by Bollywood Cinema and the Military, as the Link language for the Country.
3. Select an Indian language as the National language. This could be Sanskrit, our ancient language of all Vedic literature, or any other acceptable Indian language, or perhaps the language most spoken across the country. However, being only one out of the 22 officially recognized languages, the most spoken Language will evidently not be any language spoken by the majority of the people of the Country but only by more people than any of the other languages. Make it compulsory for all the other Citizens to learn this selected Language even if the script selected is radically different from that of their own Language. However, will such a policy be equitable and acceptable to all? Obviously, the other language speakers, who too associate their identity and community rights with their own language, are not going to love this idea, but may only grudgingly give it a try as long as they are not disadvantaged till, they too can develop an adequate proficiency in the selected language. This was the basis of the 3-language formula which has proved ineffective. Sanskrit has the advantage of being the language of ancient India, earlier than 3000 BCE and being connected to all local languages and hence, has the best claim to be our National Language.
4. Accord due recognition and importance to the Mother Tongue/Local language and encourage its learning. Not realizing that the advantage of the mother tongue accrues with the child picking up speaking from childhood and only learning the script there after. Other languages could also have a similar advantage if they too are spoken and learnt in childhood. (two to seven years) and the script learnt thereafter. Everyone in India is rightfully proud of his/her mother tongue, but unfortunately is also, jingoistic about its importance in comparison to other languages, refusing to accept that speakers of other languages could be equally right in calling for recognition of the importance of their language. The Mother Tongue/Local Language should be recognized as the Working Language.
5. The first leaders of our Nation at the time of our Independence, dominated by Jawaharlal Nehru, did not agree with the proposal for retaining English as the National language, as they felt it offended their sentiments. They settled for practical reasons, to allow it to continue as the Official language. They also, did not accept the call by many, for Hindustani with the Roman Script as our National Language but only as also an Official language..
1. a) The proposal they decided on, was calling for a census to determine the most spoken language as the National Language and accepting English as a Pan Indian link language till the selected Indian Language could be developed into a Pan Indian language. In their fervent enthusiasm they thought this would take only 15 years. They, as a compromise measure, also, decided to keep the mother tongue or local language as the third language wherever it was not already the local language.
2. b) For the National Language they considered Sanskrit, but dropped the idea as they decided, the National language should be the language spoken by the most people in the Country and even though Sanskrit was the root language for all Indian languages, it was no longer the most spoken.

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