New Delhi, Sept. 10: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has accused the users and proponents of English in India of pursuing a policy of pitting one Indian language against another to deny Hindi its "rightful" status as the country's national language.
The Sangh said that if India were to become stronger, Hindi had to be strengthened.
An editorial in the September 4 edition of the Sangh's Hindi weekly, Panchjanya, published ahead of the ongoing World Hindi Conference in Bhopal, was titled "India's strength is Hindi".
Written by the editor, Hitesh Shankar, the article said the languages spoken and written in India were part of a "wholesome and healthy family" of which Hindi was the " agua" (leader or patriarch).
"There is no doubt that in their pursuit of a divide-and-rule policy, the British created a web around the English language to create disunity in the family of Indian languages," the article said.
"The idea of Hindi being opposed to the other Indian languages and of Hindi being imposed on the country is significant. How on earth can Hindi be an adversary of Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam or Bangla?"
It added: "Can the River Ganga ever be an enemy of the Yamuna, Cauvery, Godavari, Narmada and the Teesta? Hindi has incorporated several words from Gujarati, Bangla and Marathi in its stream of syntax and semantics. And the manner in which Hindi is spoken and understood the country over, it can give English a run for its money in news, advertising, trade and commerce, and politics."
The editorial went on: "English newspapers and TV channels are dwarfs before their Hindi counterparts. Even foreign business houses cannot enter the Indian market without using Hindi. English cannot shine in the political sphere."
Shankar posed a question and answered it himself.
"The point is, if Hindi is being celebrated in so grand a manner, where is the reason for worry? Where is English in all this? The answer is that English is concealed in the innards of the systems we inherited from the British.... The functioning of the Supreme Court, the communiqués from the bureaucracy --- English has infiltrated these areas so deeply that there is reason to worry."
He said the trigger behind the article was a Twitter trend titled "#StopHindiImposition" that began on August 15.
The hash tag creators, who identified themselves as residents of states such as Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, asked why the Independence Day speeches by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah had necessarily to be in Hindi and not in another Indian language.
"Such elements have to be identified to solve the issue. Because strengthening Hindi means strengthening India. Adopting a policy that will accord Hindi its rightful status in the country will infuse confidence in those who speak other Indian languages that were enfeebled by English. These languages will thrive under the shade of Hindi," Shankar's article said.
The BJP sounded a trifle defensive about Shankar's comments.
Party general secretary P. Murlidhar Rao, who is in charge of Tamil Nadu, a state that has historically spearheaded agitations against the "imposition" of Hindi, said nobody needed to be apprehensive about the language.
"India as a country and its people have become mature. This does not mean Hindi is the only Indian language. Today, the government is celebrating Hindi; tomorrow it could be Tamil," he said.
