BJP may preach Hindi – at its own peril

Is the BJP leadership away with the fairies? It seems to be totally out of touch with reality. It will soon turn into a basket case if it continues to unleash stress all across the nation.

The latest language row is one such crazy idea. One BJP leader from the cow belt has even gone ahead and asked those who cannot speak Hindi to get out of the country. This controversy has been festering for very long. On the 13th September 1949, the Constituent Assembly of India met in the Constitution Hall, New Delhi, at Nine of the Clock. Dr Rajendra Prasad, the President, was in the Chair. R V Dhulekar, a member from the United Provinces, broadly present-day Uttar Pradesh, proposed an amendment to the language issue taken up. For him making Hindi the National Language was not a concession to it but a "consummation of a historic process" and a result of an historical process which had been going on for centuries.

In defence of his foolish argument, Dhulekar continued "Swami Ramdas wrote in Hindi, Tulsi Das wrote in Hindi, then again the modern Saint, Swami Dayanand wrote in Hindi. He was a Gujarati but he wrote in Hindi...Nagatna Gandhi also..spoke in Hindi". He went on to add, like the present day leadership, that if you don't accept Hindi as the national language, you may belong to another nation.

If you are nationally minded, you must be speaking only Hindi. He continued blissfully to claim that as Vedas, mantras, Ramayana and Mahabharata were all in Hindi one should have learned only Hindi. Was Hindi the original language they had been written in? Did the Alwars write in Hindi or the Kavitraya?

Hindi is not the be-all and end-all of the existence of our country. So let the Hindi belt not make a fetish of it as it may defeat the very purpose of India. First it was about food. Next it was about clothing. Then came the citizenship issue and then the national registry. The BJP has succeeded in uniting a section of the Hindus to its political benefit. That's alright because all these years someone else wooed the minorities and practised appeasement politics to remain in power.

The BJP leadership should keep in mind that our States have been formed on linguistic basis. We have a vast diversity united only by our cultural identity and the way of living. Attempting to impose Hindi as Dhulekar held then and as some characters prefer to do now will shrink the BJP to the Indo-Gangetic plains. Do they seek it? For someone Hindi's pedigree may be great, but for me my 'Amma Bhasha' or "Matru Bhasha" pedigree is the best. Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali…all are national languages for Indians. All these languages derive their origin from Samskrit (yes, not Sanskrit).

To impose Hindi is a precipitative policy. It is part of the larger precipitative politics in the country. Still, if the BJP leadership feels proud of only Hindi and seeks to impose it, it may do so at its own peril. Let there be no mistake, even our Gods do not speak Hindi.