To be able to view this emotion laden matter in an objective and dispassionate way we need to remember the following and understand their implications.

• Our Country is as big as all of the European Countries put together and so comparisons with any one European Country and its language policy is invidious. History tells us that Greek, Latin, German and French each had their period of sway across all of Europe. However, today English is being recognized as the leading language for communication and science, Pan Europe and even Globally and citizens of all Countries seek to learn it.
• Hindustani (a vernacular offspring of Hindi and Urdu with words from many other languages thrown in) with script using the Roman / English alphabet is already the most common language of communication across the Country. We should recognize that many of our present languages are but developments from the vernacular version of the earlier spoken language (Sanskrit, Pali, Prakriti and so on). Even the present scripts of our languages are very different from the historic script versions. So this proposal is not without precedent. Though this was a very practical proposal, the jingoistic Hindi purists, seeing this as a threat to the primacy of Hindi, vehemently objected and had their way. It is surprising that they did not see the conflict in demanding that Hindi be imposed on speakers of other languages in the Country, many of such languages being classical languages in their own right.
• The attention of such Hindi purists should be drawn to the fact that India is vastly larger and more diverse than just North India and also, that recent linguistic research has found that Hindi arose only in the 13th. Century CE, during the Delhi Sultanate, from a corrupted (Apabhramsa) Surasena language from around the Mathura region and Khariboli spoken in the Delhi region, mixed with words from Persian and other local Prakrit languages, unlike the really classical languages of India that mostly derived from Sanskrit. Hindi evolved into its present form only after John Gilchrist wrote the first English- Hindoostanee dictionary, in 1786, using Roman, Nagari and Arabic script, to help the migrants communicate with the people in Delhi. This helped popularize Hindustani as the language of the British administration in India, and led to the popularization of the Devnagari script over the till then used, Kaithri, Mahajani and Landa scripts, the Roman script also began to be used for Hindustani. Addition of Arabic and Turkic words soon led to the development of Urdu, with the Persian script. The other, really classical languages of India, were very much older than Hindi, around 2500 BCE, and mostly derived from Sanskrit, but with their own script, as Sanskrit then was still a mostly oral language. Even Tamil is said to have about 41 percent of its vocabulary from Sanskrit though many Tamilians would like to disagree, while Telugu, another ancient language has about 70 percent, ofcourse in the past many decades Hindi has been considerably sanskritized, while Tamil was deliberately de-sanskritized.

At the census, to arrive at the National language for India, soon after attaining our Independence the finding was that the language spoken most people in India was not Hindi but ‘Telugu’, a language that grew out of Sanskrit over 2500 years ago and is well recognized as the most versatile and pleasing language with the second best script in the world. But our then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru and many other Leaders from the so called ‘Cow-belt’ of India, all non-Telugu speaking persons with a strong bias towards Hindi, arranged to have the figures ‘doctored’ by including various similar dialects under Hindi to be able to declare ‘Hindi and its dialects’, as the most spoken language in India and hence, designate it as the National language for India.

The purists of language should recall how the purists of dance (Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, Kathakali, Odissi, Manipuri, etc) or music (Hindustani, Carnatic etc) had also, led futile protests against the common man’s attraction for the ‘Bollywood’ style through which he / she could express their feelings in dance or music. Finally the protests died out as the purists noted that this in no way prevented the expression and appreciation of the pure dance forms and expressions of music. Each encouraged the other and gave rise to fusion forms. Also, it was noted that what people earned in performing ‘Bollywood’ style allowed them to indulge in their passion for the purer styles and advance them. So too we can expect in the case of language.

Realistically at that time there was no practical way of enforcing any one language across India till enough time was allowed for the rest of the Country to learn it proficiently. Unfortunately Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru in his hurry did not allow for sufficient time for proper assimilation of Hindi in those parts of the Country where it was effectively a foreign language, thus leading to a rift across the Country and to antagonism and resentment against what was perceived by many as an attempt by the Hindi speaking people to dominate the rest.

In the old days, even as most people were literate in their local language, the Intelligentsia across the Country used Sanskrit as the link spoken language though it was written down in the local script. This was possible as languages in India are mainly phonetic and like using shorthand, it was possible to write the words spoken in one language in the script of another and properly reproduce the speech when necessary. It was the spoken language that was recognized as important for communication; the script was only a means of recording it. It is historically wrong and untenable to claim that Sanskrit was always written in the Devanagari script. Sanskrit is said to be a designed language with a scientifically studied and designed phonetic alphabet incorporating all the sounds/syllables that the human mouth and throat can produce and an extraordinarily concise grammar and root structure that enables a structured growth of vocabulary. It is today recognised as the only language that is a perfect interface between other languages and computer language. (See – Annexure’).

“The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either” – Sir William Jones (English scholar)

But the policy of the British rulers, seeking to break the Brahmanical structure of the Indian Society by banning all Sanskrit education and encourage only English and thus give importance to the English culture, reduced Sanskrit, which till then was the language of learning and communication across the country, even as it used the local phonetic language script, as now the language of only a few, mostly priests and language experts. Today, Sanskrit is being recognized as being an extraordinarily precise and well structured language with a flexible root structure having the potential to easily expand its vocabulary and with a rigour and depth of thought and consciousness not available in other languages.

History has over the centuries encouraged the extraordinary growth and spread of English (in India as English (Indian) or ‘INGLISH’ and its use, and of Hindustani, across the country. We need to recognize and act on this and not only bemoan the fact that none of the other languages have kept pace.

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