Ajay Devgn in a tweet to fellow actor Sudeep declared that Hindi ‘was and always be the national language’. He has been corrected by many, but why is there so much confusion over the status of the language?
What is India’s “national language”? The age-old debate has come to the fore yet again as Bollywood actor Ajay Devgn and his Kannada counterpart Kiccha Sudeep argued over the status of Hindi on Twitter.
The spat
At the trailer launch of the film R: The Deadliest Gangster Ever, Sudeep reportedly corrected someone on the use of the term “pan-India” regarding the reach of Kannada movies.
Reacting to a comment on the blockbuster movie K.G.F: Chapter 2, which has been well-received across the country, Sudeep said, “Everyone says that a Kannada film was made on a pan-India level but a small correction is that Hindi is not a national language anymore.”
He took a swipe at Bollywood saying that Hindi movies that are released in Telugu and Tamil struggle to find success on the same scale. “Today we are making films that are going everywhere,” he added.
Sudeep’s comments did not go down well with Devgn, who took to Twitter and wrote in Hindi, that it “was and always be the national language”. He further asked the Kannada actor why his films were dubbed in Hindi if it wasn’t the national language.
Responding to the dig, Sudeep said that he could read Devgn’s Hindi because he respected and had learnt the language, but asked what would have been the response if he had tweeted in Kannada. “Don’t we too belong to India, sir?” he asked.
The status of Hindi in India
The exchange throws light on the confusion over Hindi in India. But is Devgn right?
No, he is not, because India does not have a national language. Hindi, is the most popular language in the country, but it does not have the status of the national language. However, it is India’s official language.
National language vs official language
The Constitution is largely silent on the issue of the national language.
The Constitution listed fourteen languages — Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu — in the Eighth Schedule in 1950. Since the list has been expanded thrice to include Sindhi, then to include Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali, and for the third time to bring in four more languages – Bodo, Santhali, Maithili and Dogri. Now the total number of languages is 22.
However, under Article 343 of the Official Languages Act, Hindi in Devanagari script and English were designated as the “official languages” — that is, languages used for official correspondence.
The Constitution does not make a mention of national language. But Hindi is India’s official language. AFP
The popularity of Hindi
That said the language is widely spoken across the country. The number of people who identify Hindi as their native language has gone up over the years.
According to the 2001 Census, 52 crore out of 121 crore people identified Hindi as their language. About 32 crore people declared Hindi as their mother tongue.
This means that Hindi is the language of less than 44 per cent Indians and the mother tongue of over 25 per cent of the people in India.
However, between 2001 and 2011, Hindi grew at a rate of 25 per cent to add close to 100 million new speakers. Among the 10 largest languages in India, Hindi is the only one that saw the proportion of its speakers rise during this decade, according to a report in Scroll.in. Between 1971 and 2011, Hindi native speakers went up from 37 per cent to 44 per cent of India.
What courts have said about Hindi
In 2010, a Gujarat court brought up the status of Hindi. “Normally, in India, majority of the people have accepted Hindi as a national language and many people speak Hindi and write in Devanagari script but there is nothing on record to suggest that any provision has been made or order issued declaring Hindi as a national language of the country.”
A resident of Hyderabad moved Supreme Court in February 2022 to challenge a Bombay High Court order that referred to Hindi as the “national language” while denying him bail, Bar and Bench reported.
In his bail application, the accused had claimed that the police informed him about the reasons for his arrest and about his statutory rights in Hindi, which he does not understand.
“The applicant was communicated about his right in Hindi, which is National Language,” Justice Sambre said in his order while rejecting the bail plea, according to Live Law.
However, the confusion still prevails as evident by Devgn’s tweet. It’s a subject that continues to divide the country.
Actors defend Sudeep
Jumping into the debate, actor and former Lok Sabha member Ramya wrote on Twitter, “No, Hindi is not our national language … Your ignorance is baffling. And it’s great that films like KGF, Pushpa and RRR have done so well in the Hindi belt … art has no language barrier. Please enjoy our films as much as we enjoy yours.”
Actor Sonu Sood decided to take the middle ground. “I don’t think Hindi can be called just the national language. India has one language, which is entertainment,” he told The Indian Express.
Politicians join the argument
Karnataka leaders have united against Devgn and slammed him for the Hindi claim.
Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah said, “Hindi was never & will never be our National Language. It is the duty of every Indian to respect linguistic diversity of our country. Each language has its own rich history for its people to be proud of. I am proud to be a Kannadiga”
Former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy also took to Twitter to condemn the “insolence” of Devgn in his tweet. He said the actor was speaking like a spokesperson for “autocratic BJP and its Hindi nationalism”.
States in southern India have accused th government of imposing Hindi. They believe that the government is forcing Hindi, an Indo-Aryan language on the Dravidian-speaking people.
With inputs from agencies
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