Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said that Hindi should be made compulsory until Class 10 in the northeastern states. The proposal has upset political parties and student bodies in the region who believe that indigenous languages should be protected
After Tamil Nadu, the Northeast states are complaining about “Hindi imposition”. The Centre has proposed to make Hindi a compulsory language in schools across the northeastern states and this has not gone down well with political parties and student activists in the region. But why?
Amit Shah’s announcement
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who had presided over the Parliamentary Official Language Committee in New Delhi, on 7 April, had said that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not local languages.
Describing Hindi as the “language of India”, he had said that “now the time has come to make the official language an important part of the unity of the country”.
Shah had announced that Hindi would be made compulsory in all the eight northeastern states up to Class 10. “Twenty-two thousand Hindi teachers have been recruited in the eight states of the Northeast,” Shah said. “Nine tribal communities of the Northeast have converted their dialects’ scripts to Devanagari.”
‘It’s an imposition’
The decision has upset the people in the region and many groups including the North East Students’ Organisation (NESO) believe that making Hindi compulsory in schools would be an imposition by the Centre. The NESO is the largest students body in the Northeast comprising the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), Naga Students’ Federation, All Manipur Students’ Union, and All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union.
Dr Samujjal Bhattacharjya, advisor NESO, tweeted, “We strongly oppose the Centre’s decision to make Hindi compulsory until Class 10… This will threaten the future of indigenous languages in the Northeast.”
NESO was written a letter to Amit Shah asking him to “withdraw” the move to make Hindi compulsory in schools in the region and instead “focus” on the development of indigenous languages. “The Neso is of the view that indigenous languages should be made compulsory in their native states till the 10th standard and Hindi should remain as an optional or elective subject,” the letter said.
Protests expected
AASU has warned of a protest if the Centre goes ahead with its proposal to make Hindi compulsory in schools in Assam. “If anyone wants to learn Hindi, he or she can learn it but if the government tries to make it compulsory, there will be protests,” said AASU president Dipanka Kumar Nath.
According to Nath, the proposal was driven by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s “political interest”. The party, he said, was trying to “impress” the Hindi belt of the northern states, reports Scroll.in.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is believed to be close to the central leadership. He has backed Shah’s announcement. Image Courtesy: amitshah.co.in
Assam, Nagaland government in a spot
The call to make Hindi compulsory in schools puts the Assam government in a tight spot. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that there is no official order from Delhi on the matter.
“Forget about making it compulsory, we have not received any official order from Centre for making Hindi an optional subject also. However, learning Hindi can’t be termed as a threat to society as learning a language will only open more doors of opportunities,” he added.
Backing the decision to introduce Hindi, he said that the home minister had not asked anyone to give up on learning Assamese.
The Nagaland government, which is headed by the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), an ally of the BJP, has also maintained a similar stance. The state government statement quoting principal director (school education) Shanavas C said the Union ministry of education “has not issued any instructions for making Hindi compulsory…”
What opposition parties are saying
The Centre’s move has been strongly criticised by opposition parties in Assam, Meghalaya, and Manipur.
Leader of Opposition in Assam assembly Debabrata Saikia said that Shah’s statement smacked of the “dictatorial attitude of the Central government” and any decision to make Hindi mandatory will place people from the northeastern states in a disadvantageous position vis-a-vis those whose mother tongue is Hindi in terms of education or job prospects.
“Education is a state subject. The Centre has no business interfering in it. It goes against our federal spirit… Our Constitution does not allow favouring of one region or language at the expense of another,” the Congress MLA added.
The Assam Congress chief slammed the BJP-ruled government in the state. In a tweet, he said that the state government is “running for H… Hindu, Hindutva, Hindi, Himanta”.
Meghalaya’s suspended Congress legislator Ampareen Lyngdoh said that the state cannot follow the “government diktat”. “We cannot allow it [making Hindi compulsory] because Khasi and Garo are the two major languages in the state,” she added.
The Congress in Manipur said that the imposition of Hindi would “disturb the culture and traditions’ of the state. “This is cultural terrorism imposed by the BJP government. We are against this move,” said Manipur Pradesh Congress Committee chief Keisham Meghachandra.
Local languages face the threat of extinction
There has been an increasing fear in the Northeast that those who speak local languages will become a minority in the region.
In Assam, those who report Assamese as their mother tongue are already below 50 per cent. The percentage of Assamese speakers fell marginally from 48.80 per cent in 2001 to 48.38 per cent in 2011. During the same period, the number of Hindi speakers rose from 5.89 per cent in 2001 to 6.73 per cent in 2011, reports Scroll.in.
The Assamese believe that the large-scale influx of migrants from Bangladesh is a threat to their identity, a fear that has been further fuelled by the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019, which facilitates citizenship for undocumented, non-Muslim migrants from the country.
Indigenous and tribal languages of the Northeast face the risk of extinction. Of the 300 languages in the region, 70 to 80 are in the endangered category. There are around 40 endangered languages in Arunachal Pradesh and 15 to 20 in Assam.
With inputs from agencies
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