Short note on language policy of …

India is one of the multilingual nations of the world because of its linguistic, cultural, ethnic, religious diversity being very strong and wide spread.

During the last thousand years, India was conquered and invaded by many empires and also divided into many smaller kingdoms. This resulted in spreading of various languages without any particular language becoming dominant. Thus, after attaining independence from the British, the Indian leaders acknowledged the opportunity to unite the many regions of the country with a common, universal language. This resulted in Constitution of India not giving the status of national language to any one language. However, it identified Hindi as the official language. This was due to Hindi being spoken by 40% of the Indian population while the rest spoke the other 21 languages recognized as Scheduled languages by the Constitution of India.

Moreover, the Constitution tried to eradicate the English language with a view to wipe out all the memories of colonial rule, so that India could have its own voice. But, many non- Hindi speaking States demanded that the use of English to continue. (For instance: In Tamil Nadu, this movement took a violent form.) Thus, our leaders while choosing Hindi adopted a very cautious attitude and responded by agreeing to continue the use of English along with Hindi for official purposes.

Therefore, the flexibility shown by Indian political leaders to promote the regional languages helped in maintaining the federal character of the nation. Hence, it is very important that we take pride while using Hindi language as well one's own mother tongue.