Of late, there have been concerted efforts from a section of the society to promote Hindi throughout India in a bid to unite the country and free it from the clutches of a foreign language, namely English.
"Hindi has the potential to unite the country," Rashtriya Swayam Sevak (RSS) organ 'Panchjanya' recently opined in an editorial on September 10 coinciding with the Hindi Diwas.
"Hindi's ability to unite India is a threat to all those forces which want the country to remain enslaved to English. Hindi is not against India's regional languages. This is a myth being perpetuated," the editorial said.
Language has always been a sensitive issue in India. Tamil Nadu witnessed violent agitations in 1965 over the official status of Hindi in the state and the Indian Republic. As the day of switching over to Hindi as sole official language i.e. 26 January 1965 approached, the anti-Hindi movement gained momentum in Tamil Nadu, with students leading from the front.
Riots continued for over two months and were marked by acts of violence, arson, self-immolation, looting, police firing and lathi charges, to the extent that the then Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri had to intervene and give assurances that English would continue to be used as the official language as long the non-Hindi speaking states wished. Thanks to his intervention, the riots subsided, as did the student agitation.
It is important that in order to make India a unified nation, we broke the linguistic barrier, but this could not be done all at once. It is a pity that even after 68 years of Independence, a foreign language like English remains the lingua franca for north and south Indians. Recently, I met a Tamilian young man in New Delhi who had come to the national capital for a job interview while having supper at a restaurant. As I did not know Tamil and he was ignorant of Hindi, we had to communicate in English, an embarrassing situation for both of us. The big question is – how long are we going to endure this linguistic limitation?
It is a pity that even after 68 years of Independence, a foreign language like English remains the lingua franca for north and south Indians.
If it is not possible and desirable to adopt one language for the whole of India at the moment, we should at least adopt one script i.e. Devanagari that is used for over 120 languages in India. In this manner, a Tamilian and Punjabi would be able to learn each other's languages in just one script with ease, breaking the linguistic wall that has worked as an impediment towards national integration.
"We have to adopt one language, one script, one literature, one ideal and one nation," Indian freedom fighter Shaheed Bhagat Singh wrote in an article for Punjab Hindi Sahitya Sammelan in 1923, elucidating why Punjabi should be taught in Devanagari script.
It is to be noted that, out of India's 22 official major languages, 13 use Devanagari or Nagari script including Hindi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Nepali, Bodo, Sindhi and Maithili among other languages and dialects, making it one of the most used and adopted writing systems in the world.
History
'Devanagari' is a compound word with two roots: Deva means 'deity', and nagari means 'city'. Together it implies a script that is religious as well as urbane or sophisticated. Having roots in the ancient Brahmi script family, it is an abugida (alphasyllabary) alphabet of India and Nepal, written from left to right and has a strong preference for symmetrical rounded shapes within squared outlines, and is recognizable by a horizontal line that runs along the top of full letters. It is also used for classical Sanskrit scripts.
Interestingly, the Devanagari script is not that different from other Indic scripts such as Bangla, Oriya or Gurmukhi, for a closer examination reveals they are very similar except for angles and structural emphasis. Many more languages throughout India use local variants of the Devanagari script.
Here's a look at 13 major languages out of 22 listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India that use the Devanagari script.
Here's a look at nine official Indian languages that don't use Devanagari script.