Question

debate on English and regional language in India

Answer 1

 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s fascination with Hindi as India’s “official” language has irked several non-Hindi speaking states. Even though the idea of a standard national language is not new and has been toyed with by several countries in the past, India’s lack of homogeneity in this regard has been its greatest achievement. There are international lessons that can be drawn that show the superimposition of one regional language over the other as being counterproductive to national coherence: an obvious example can be found in India’s immediate neighborhood, Pakistan.

In November 1954, Pakistani leaders envisaged an ingenious plan to unite the country’s disparate territories on India’s Eastern and Western frontiers. The Western part, current day Pakistan, was a concoction of the Punjabi-dominated Punjab Province, the Sindhi-dominated Sindh, the Baloch territory of Baluchistan, and the unruly North-West Frontier Province, dominated by the Pathan (Pashtun). Meanwhile, the Eastern part, present day Bangladesh, was a predominantly ethnic Bengali territory. Even though all territories were overwhelmingly Muslim, their peoples were fiercely diverse.

Facing challenges in managing such a diverse swath of territory in a country that was built on the basis of religion, the Pakistani leadership of the time vehemently believed that religion was perhaps the only factor that united the new country. With this belief, under Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra, then army chief General Ayub Khan (a Pashtun) and minister of the Interior, Ishkandar Mirza (a Bengali) devised a plan to achieve collectivity in East and West Pakistan. The plan, called “The One Unit Program” was to be the blueprint of modern Pakistan. It sought to bring about unity among all citizens irrespective of their ethnicity. Based on the plan, Western Pakistan, with all its diversity, would be called West Pakistan, while the Bengali land in the east was to be called East Pakistan. Both regions were to be governed independently from two capital cities, Lahore (West Pakistan) and Dhaka (East Pakistan), which were to have equal elected assemblies, with the federal government positioned at a new national capital, Islamabad.