Our National Language
Hindi is our national language and English has been retained as Associate National Language, due to its insistent and persistent demand from South India where the people in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, do not properly understand Hindi and they do not want that Hindi should be imposed on them, which is a language of the North and not of the South. In the beginning it was planned to retain English for ten years a lingua franca—language used for general communication in the country—but now it has been declared as Associated National Language and is being retained indefinitely until Hindi does indeed become the true National Language.
Hindi is the National Language adopted by the Constituent Assembly soon after the achievement of independence in 1947. But millions in India still do not know Hindi. It is because it has been made difficult by the introduction of Sanskrit terms in it. The conception of Mahatma Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose of Hindi as a national language was that of Hindustani—a mixture of Hindi and Urdu. But over the years we have not been able to give the status of National Language to Hindi. Learning of Hindi continues to be a wasteful exercise as all the knowledge of Science and Technology, business and administration is available in English. Hindi has not been able to replace English even after more than fifty years of our independence. English is gaining more and more importance even in Northern India especially in Principal cities like Delhi. Speaking of Hindi in public places, offices, schools and colleges is considered to be a sign of low-status. There is a need to discourage this trend but for that the status of Hindi has lobe raised. Hindi has to be given its due honour then only can we retain its National Character. In the first instance we can restrict the use of English in correspondence, speech and records in Government offices, courts and parliamentary affairs. Instead it is observed that English has almost totally replaced Hindi in offices, courts and parliament. There is no doubt that the international importance of English compels us to learn it vigorously for the international interaction but it has to stop somewhere. Care has to be taken that our future generations would also learn Hindi as it is felt that if the present trend continues going within a next hundred years Hindi will be quite Greek to our people and only burned within the confines of libraries and museums.
As such we have to take steps to save our National Language from extinction. There are schools where Hindi is not taught at all. Every parent takes it a pride to let his child start speaking English before Hindi. We will have to make Hindi simpler and free it from difficult sanskritised versions. Some incentives to students standing out exclusively in Hindi have also to be introduced otherwise we will have to see a bad day for the land of Hindi, that is, Hindustan.
