2. There is however, no gainsaying the fact that we in India have a great cultural and ethnic treasure in our many local languages, mostly derived from Sanskrit. However, it may be noted that no one today calls for any single regional language to be imposed as a National Language on the other regions without they too agreeing to learn and communicate in the language of another region (a uniformly applied 3 Language – 3 script formula which has proven non-workable).

But given the multiplicity of languages and the predominance of Hindustani, a sort of mixed heritage language based mainly on Hindi, but having elements of Urdu, some English and of many other Indian languages to some extent or the other, that has established its sway and hold across India especially over these post Independence decades. The so called ‘Bollywood’ movies and the Military have been a catalyst for this spread.

This language could have its script based on the English, actually Roman Script. This script would also, have the advantage of recognition of the scripts of many other languages that use Roman letters across the World.

Infact during the language crisis in the 1950’s and 1960’s, one of the 300 amendments suggested to the Language bill was that Hindi be written in Roman script instead of the Devanagari script. Obviously this was not accepted then. This requires reconsideration today. This one script then will easily allow us to write / read both ‘INGLISH’ and ‘HINDUSTANI’ allowing us to communicate as both National and Global citizens.

Now before you purists and Jingoists respond, ‘No Way’, please first look at what is around you and see the advantages

Advantages

• The Military, which recruits soldiers from all across the Country, has shown us the way. All Military Jawans, whichever part of India they come from, are taught in Hindustani with the ‘INGLISH’ / ROMAN script. This has proven to be the quickest and most effective way to bring everyone on to a common platform and also, to allow the familiarity of the Alphabet to grow into a better knowledge of English to enable them to further expand their education and skills to be useful in a globalized world. There are now tens of millions of such soldiers and ex-soldiers across the Country all familiar with Roman Hindustani even as they also, learn ‘INGLISH’.
• All people familiar with ‘INGLISH’ will find it no problem to read the script and pronounce the words even if the local spoken language is different. They will also, have no difficulty in recognizing common words on Milestones, Name Boards, Destination Boards on Buses, Direction Boards, Buildings etc. There are many more millions of such people.
• In order to make the pronunciation standardized and easy, we could look at the accent and diacritical marks / ‘Matras’ as in English, Turkish and even Indonesian / Malaysian languages, though only if deemed necessary.
• For better working communications in the local language, especially for inter-state employees or migrants it may be good to offer short spoken local language courses in each State.

This in no way takes away anything from any of the Regional languages as it allows for both the Mother Tongue as the Local language, and Sanskrit as the National language, to be taught with the same phonetic script of the Mother Tongue. This will give a boost to the Mother Tongue and allow local communication in it and also, to establish spoken communication across the Country in Sanskrit as our National language. Sanskrit being the root language of almost all the local languages, this will even help us to better understand other local languages.

To be willing to learn from others, to adopt, adapt and improve on whatever we see as good practices elsewhere is only being smart. We Indians are generally recognized as smart people; hopefully we will so act in this matter too. Of course even indecision, will not be able to stop the slow but steady spread of ‘INGLISH’ and of ‘HINDUSTANI’ across the Country, but it would be better to allow it to do so in a quicker, conscious and planned manner.

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