Question

Describe the linguistic policy of India.

Answer 1

India is a land of diverse people with many languages spoken in different villages,towns and states.Indian Constitution did not give the status of national language to any one language.Hindi was identified as the official language.But Hindi is the mother tongue of only about 40% of Indians.Therefore there were many safeguards to protect other languages.Besides Hindi there are 21 other languages recognized as Scheduled languages by the Constitution of India.A candidate in an examination conducted for the national government positions may opt to take the examination in any of these languages.States too have their own official languages.Much of the government work takes place in the official language of the concerned state.The newly elected members of state assemblies can take oath in any of the recognized languages.The lndian leaders adopted a very cautious attitude in spreading the use of the Hindi language.According to the Constitution the use of the English for official purposes was to stop in 1965.Many non Hindi speaking states demanded that the use of English should continue.In Tamil Nadu this movement took a militant form.The central government responded by agreeing to continue the use of English along with Hindi for official purposes.Many critics think that this solution favoured the English speaking  elite.Promotion of Hindi continues to be the official policy of Government of India.Promotion does not mean that the central government can impose Hindi on states where people speak a different language.The flexibility shown by Indian political leaders to promote the regional languages has helped in maintaining the federal character of Indian nation.It is important to take pride in the Hindi language as well one's own mother tongue.