English is spoken with the same Indianness as any other language in India, filmmaker Hansal Mehta said on Monday, calling it the language of “aspiration, academia, commerce, and countless intimate conversations” in a long note shared weeks after Union home minister Amit Shah’s remark on the English-speaking populace of the country.
On June 19, Shah said those who speak in English in India will soon be ashamed. The remark was made during the launch of a book by former IAS officer Ashutosh Agnihotri.
“Hindi is beloved and widespread. Yes. But so are countless other languages that pulse through homes, songs, streets, and screens. English too in our context is no longer a foreign tongue. It’s the language of aspiration, of academia, of commerce, and of countless intimate conversations - spoken with the same Indianness as any other,” wrote Mehta on X.
Mehta added that language is more than just a means of communication. “It’s a vessel of memory, identity, and imagination. In India, every tongue - Hindi, Tamil, Bangla, Marathi, Malayalam, Gujarati, Urdu and even English holds its own rhythm, its own music. To believe that only one of them speaks to the masses is to forget how many Indias there truly are,” he wrote, slamming the push for Hindi as the country’s national language.
“When we reduce creative expression to a single language we risk trading depth for reach, texture for uniformity. Masses are not monoliths. India has never been one voice - it has always been a chorus. A beautiful, diverse chorus. Let’s not silence that chorus. Let us instead celebrate it. Let us instead embrace it. Let us instead express it,” concluded Mehta, upholding India’s linguistic diversity.
On the work front, the 57-year-old filmmaker’s last directorial venture was The Buckingham Murders, starring Kareena Kapoor Khan.