February 9, 2024
Saket Gokhale’s Zero Hour mention on the attempts by the current government to impose the use of Hindi in various ways
Sir, there is a recent event from Meghalaya, which I wish to highlight in this august House. At the start of the current Budget Session of the Meghalaya Assembly, it was announced that the hon. Governor would deliver his Address to the House in Hindi. This was supported by the BJP in Meghalaya and the Meghalaya Leader of the BJP even incorrectly claimed saying, ‘Hindi is our national language; so, what is the problem?’ Let me highlight here that Hindi is not our national language. The official language of the State of Meghalaya is English. Meghalaya also has a proud linguistic culture that includes the native languages of Garo and Khasi. Despite repeated demands by the people of Meghalaya as well as my Party, Trinamool Congress, the Union Government has not yet included Garo and Khasi in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. Now, in this context, the hon. Governor of Meghalaya choosing to address the Assembly in Hindi, instead of the State’s official language English, is nothing but a brazen Hindi imposition and an attempt to undermine the linguistic pride of Meghalaya. Sir, we have recently seen the Government passed three new criminal laws in Parliament after suspending 146 MPs. For some strange reason, these laws have been given very complicated Hindi names like Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, etc. Let me remind the House here that outside of North India, Hindi is not the native language of crores of Indians. This is precisely why our Constitution chose to retain English as an official language along with Hindi. The imposition of Hindi by the Union Government has even led to an hon. Judge of the Madras High Court saying, ‘I do not know how to pronounce the names of these new criminal laws. I am going to keep calling them I.P.C. and Cr.P.C.’ Sir, Bangla, which is spoken in my State of West Bengal is India’s second most spoken language after Hindi. Similarly, languages from the South and the West like Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Telugu and Tulu have their own rich and cultural heritage and our people take pride in our languages. There is a reason that English has been retained as an official language in our Constitution along with Hindi. However, the attempts by the current Government to forcibly impose Hindi, which is barely spoken by 46 per cent of the population, on the rest of India is a matter of * Sir, there is absolutely no respect for local languages. Every new name that this Government gives is given in Hindi for some reason. Are languages of the West, the South and the East not important in this country and our regional languages have no meaning? Sir, I would, therefore, like to appeal that English as an official language must be used for Government Business that extends to all of India including non-Hindi speaking States. When our Constitution mandates both Hindi and English as official languages, the imposition of Hindi over English and vernacular languages by the Government is an affront to our federal structure and a shocking disregard of the States that do not speak Hindi. Thank you, Sir.
