On the occasion of Hindi Diwas on September 14, Home Minister Amit Shah had spoken about increasing usage of Hindi as a prime medium of communication all over India. He categorically emphasized that India has a rich multi-lingual heritage & none of the Indian languages is any way less than any other advanced language of the globe in their strength & capacity. However, the multi-province Union of India needs a common language that would keep all the Indian States united & the common language would act as a common factor of unison amongst all. Amit Shah stated that this was the reason why our Constitution makers kept Hindi as one of our official languages beside English. Home Minister’s pitch for Hindi kick-started a Nation-wide discussion. Mainstream & Social Media are being stormed with arguments & counter-arguments for & against Hindi. India, in spite of being a country celebrating plurality & a large variety of socio-cultural & linguistic expressions, observed ‘Unity in diversity’ as its core spirit all through. Even then, that the Home Minister pitched for Hindi as a common language across all Indian States, had raised many questions, doubts, supports as well as severe protests against NDA Government’s probable future plan of declaring Hindi as India’s National language. What else may the real reason be behind Shah’s taking the platform of “Hindi Diwas Celebration” to project Hindi as a common language all on a sudden? They guessed.
The real reason, relevance & significance of Shah’s pitch for Hindi may be found if the focal point of discussion shifts on to another aspect of contemporary politics in India, which is pathbreaking & unique. Assam, in the recent past, has accelerated the momentum of its provincial politics amounting to implicate secessionism in the name of Assamese sentiment. It needs to be noted that Shah raised the issue of a language of unison at the very moment when Assam is showcasing height of provincialism as per Assam Accord & preparing to send the people who got excluded from their NRC Final List, to detention camps.
It may be pertinent to put a brief overview of Assam NRC to help realize the probable relationship of Home Minister’s Hindi Pitch with Assam NRC Final List.
Assam NRC has been done based on Assam Accord that was made a part of the Constitution in 1985 by Rajiv Gandhi. Assamese, irrespective of their political inclinations, had lingering demand for making Assam infiltration-free & having the State meant for only the Bhumiputras of Assam who spoke Assamese language & observed Assamese culture. They had strong protest against migration of Bangladeshis into Assam across Assam-Bangladesh border. Assam Accord provided Constitutional validity to all such demands of the Assamese. Based on Assam Accord, NRC was done in which, there are several evidences, names of genuine Citizens have been excluded from the Final List. Many names got excluded in spite of having relevant documents, as reported. Questions are being raised whether such deletions were done deliberately & vindictively due to hyper-provincialism of the Assamese people & their strong apathy specifically towards Bangalis who migrated to Assam from adjacent Bangladesh. ‘Bongal Khedao’ had all along been their violent movement till Assam Accord became a part of the Constitution of India. Observing the situation on the ground, hypotheses are coming up that Assamese people are perhaps more allergic about Hindu Bangalis as perhaps they feel cultural as well as intellectual threat from them. Hindu Bangalis obtained a significant portion of the white collar jobs of Assam by their eligibility factor, a fact that perhaps aggrieved Assamese people. They seemed to feel defeated in the competition.
Observations are also there by many eminent people on the ground that Assamese don’t have similar apathy against Bangladeshi Muslims though Muslims are also migrating to Assam in huge number & mainly working as farmers, labourers etc. They’re not thwarting significant competition to the Assamese people in the white-collar job sector, neither do they possess any significant socio-cultural or intellectual heritage that might make Assamese feel competitive. Muslims, instead, are rooted to their religious origin more which Assamese don’t perhaps object much about. Hindu Bangalis, on the contrary, with their rich lingo-cultural heritage & intellectual ability, are perhaps being perceived as threats to the Assamese people.
Out of 19 lacs excluded names in the NRC Final List, 12 lacs are those of Hindu Bangalis & around 5 lacs of Muslims though data shows, as mentioned in certain National News Channels too, that demographic growth percentage of Muslims in Assam has been much more than that of Hindus & there is no conclusive reason to believe that Bangladeshi Muslims are not infiltrating into Assam. These data are being represented to indirectly support the hypothesis about Assamese’ selective dislike towards Hindu Bangali. Assam is building detention camps for them.
The provincial intolerance in Assam is supposed to embarrass BJP top leadership. Assam Accord was included in the Constitution by Rajiv Gandhi. However, it’s implementation in the form of NRC has been done in BJP-era. Thus for the purpose of respecting Constitutional as well as democratic demand of Assam, BJP had to take part in endorsing Assamese provincialism which indeed conflicted against the spirit of collective Indian Nationalism. This indeed is much embarrassing for a Nationalist party like BJP.
Home Minister pitched for Hindi as ‘the language of unison’ when Assam is displaying their provincial intolerance at the fullest. Hence, it legitimately appears that pitching for a common language, Home Minister, in fact, gave an alert message to Assam & all other States against nurturing too much of provincialism. Amit Shah’s statement unambiguously expressed that India at this moment is in dire need of a common factor that can unite the whole country. And that common factor can indeed be a universal language. It would be highly relevant to mention here that Amit Shah himself being a Gujrati, advocated for Hindi without demeaning any other Indian language. He picked up Hindi perhaps on the consideration that if multi-lingual India is compelled to choose any one of her languages as a common language, then it’s reasonable & legitimate to be ‘the mother-tongue of the maximum number of Indians’, which Hindi indeed is. It must be noted that he chose Hindi without any personal bias. It appears that he’s in search of an effective way to facilitate National integration. Question may arise whether the Home Minister indirectly admitted lack of strong unity between individual provinces. It would be relevant to mention here that RSS Chief Sri Mohan’ji Bhagwat too, in his speech of RSS Tritiya Varsh, emphasized on maintaining our plurality, yet building up empathetic attitude towards each other admitting the existing differences.
However, the final outcome of Assam NRC has conclusively proven that the Assamese at least failed to assimilate the idea of ‘Unity in Diversity’. In fact, Assam NRC & the attitude of the Assamese are in direct conflict with the very core values of India. Assam has clearly shown that India at the earliest, requires a tangible medium of commonality to facilitate National integration. Home Minister’s appeal for a language of unison, hence, appears highly relevant & timely approach for the Nation. Opposing this might amount to opposing National integration. Anti-Hindi spree must not end up supplying fuel to provincialism that basically implicates secessionism. And every responsible citizen of India is expected to remain conscious not to yield any benefit to the secessionist forces operative within India.