Evidently the top leadership of the BJP/NDA government at the Centre doesn’t comprise students of history. If it did the BJP would cease and desist from brazen attempts to ram Hindi — the lingua franca of the most economically backward and lawless states of India — down the reluctant throats of hundreds of millions of citizens, especially of the southern states of the country. If they were well read in the history of Asia they would be aware that attempts to impose the majority language on unwilling minorities, usually provokes violent reaction, often culminating in civil war.
A major cause of the prolonged civil war (1983-2009) that devastated neighbouring Sri Lanka was imposition of Sinhala as the country’s official national language. The strife bled Sri Lanka dry, and left it in the dire economic straits that the serendipitous island nation is in today. It’s also useful to remember that dismemberment of Pakistan into two countries in 1971 when Bangladesh declared itself independent, was the fallout of imposition of Urdu as the national language in post-independence Pakistan. But why look that far? In 1965 when Hindi was declared the sole national and official language of India, riots erupted in several southern states and there was real possibility of Tamil Nadu seceding from the Indian Union.
Unmindful of all this, BJP leaders including the prime minister, deliver lengthy speeches in Hindi to blank-faced audiences in southern states without line-by-line translators and television subtitles. Moreover timorous English language television channels permit long diatribes by Hindi speakers on their talk shows and panel discussions.
The other day your correspondent was blown away by a prolonged interview between a Hindi-speaking interlocutor and Harish Salve — who is making quite a mark as a top-rank English fluent King’s Counsel in the UK — conducted entirely in Hindi. This coup, repeated several times on NDTV, has the finger prints of business tycoon Gautam Adani who recently acquired the channel. It’s hardly a secret that Adani is enamoured with the BJP leadership. Creeping Hindi imperialism is being imposed with aplomb. Meanwhile Down South, anger and resentment is ballooning.
