Shunpiking/Mac-talla is posting below the text of a presentation by the South Asia Research Institute (SARI) at the First World Punjabi Conference held in Prince George, British Columbia from August 5-7, 2000.

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Language is a cognitive tool available to all its speakers, regardless of their social status, and it is not part of the superstructure on an economic base. Hence language remains a necessary component of the definition of a nation, and it develops along with a nation’s economy and culture. If a nation is free and independent, so is its economy and its culture, and its language will flourish. The fortunes of a language begin to languish if a nation is colonized, oppressed, or dominated by another country.

The British, for example, prohibited the Irish from speaking their native tongue and imposed English on them, as they have also done on Scotland and Wales. In Czarist Russia, the aristocracy preferred to use French as a mark of their high culture and let common people learn Russian or other languages. In some countries, a foreign ruling class may not let the oppressed people read and write in their own script. But from a linguistic point of view, all languages have equal worth. All are logical, cognitively complex and capable of expressing any thoughts and concepts a people wish to express. Provided enough resources are devoted to their cultivation, creation of new lexical items among other things, all languages are capable of meeting the requirements of modern life. This does not mean that the ‘same" concept has the same connotations — i.e. associations, feelings, value judgements — in different languages because every people have their own development, their way of life, their traditions and cultures. As a result, the issue of the languages we speak and our right to our languages and to the resources required for their cultivation and development is of utmost importance to us.

On the world scale, it is said there are speakers of between 4,000 and 5,000 languages. In fact, it must be more than that given the large number of linguistic groups in South Asia, China and Russia alone. In the United States some 760 linguistic groups have been identified. Nonetheless, of the world’s 4,000 to 5,000 linguistic groups mentioned above, less than five per cent live in a country where their mother tongues are official languages Put the other way, over 95 per cent of them live in countries where their mother tongues are not officiallanguages. Over 95 per cent of the world’s linguistic groups thus belong to linguistic minorities. In this use of the term "linguistic minorities," the term minority is defined in terms of power not numbers. They are a linguistic minority in relationship to the official language, not in terms of the numbers of people who speak that language. By definition then, official monolingualism means that, in the majority of cases, linguistic minorities experience violations of their linguistic human rights.

The problem gets compounded by the fact that the majority of world’s states are de facto multilingual but have a declared policy of an official language which is used to put other languages in a second class position. In Nigeria more than 500 languages are spoken; in India it is more than 1600. In some regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa, none of the indigenous languages are official. In contrast to the official status awarded to various European languages, some of the African languages are awarded the status of"national languages." In Latin America even this much is not done. The Maya people of Mesoamerica speak many different languages but none has any official status. The same is the case in Mexico where the speakers of indigenous languages are even a numerical majority but their languages are given no recognition whatsoever. This problem exists in all the other countries of the Americas as well where the indigenous peoples are still fighting the genocidal policy which seeks to extinguish them as peoples. In Canada no attention is paid to teach all Canadians the languages of the first nations. Even their own youth are under tremendous pressure to abandon their languages and cultures.

In Europe, only five states can reasonably be called monolingual: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Portugal and San Marino. In only nine European states or self-governing territories are all the languages which are spoken recognized as official. Besides the five mentioned above which are monolingual, three are officially bilingual— the Faroe islands, Greenland and the Republic of Ireland and Andorra is trilingual. Other European countries contain speakers of non-immigrant languages which are not official languages.

Of the 200 states in the world, besides those which are officially bi-lingual or multilingual, despite their de facto multilingualism, they are officially monolingual — i.e. they have only one official language. Canada has two official languages but both of these operate in a manner which gives more rights to one than the other, along with denigrating all others to second class status.

Clearly, the problem is not the existence of many languages and language speakers. That is a component part of the wealth of human civilization. The problem is that the killing of languages has occurred at an alarming rate from the time Europeans began"discovering" other continents and this makes the issue of language an issue of the status of the language speakers, not a problem of languages per se.

The Indian federal constitution provided for a multilingual formula for the newly independent country: one of eventually two languages for the central government or union and different languages for different constituent states. In 1949, the University Education Commission recommended a three-language formula, such as: a) the regional language, b) the link language, that is, Hindi, and c) English. For their part, Hindi enthusiasts believed that a bilingual formula would serve to diminish the importance of English. Hindi, being the official language of the union, must be taught compulsorily along withthe regional language and English would be automatically dropped. But the bilingual formula, the regional language and a second language, was interpreted differently by different states. Hindi-speaking states interpreted it to mean the compulsory teachingof Hindi, while non-Hindi speaking states took up their mother tongue and English as the second language. Finally, a resolution of Parliament in January 1968 insisted on the adoption of the three-language formula. It resolved, "whereas it is necessary forpromoting a sense of unity and facilitating communication between people in different parts of the country, effective steps should be taken for implementing fully in all states the three language formula evolved by the Government of India in consultation with the State Governments." The House further resolved "that arrangements should be made in accordance with that formula for the study of modern Indian language, preferably one of the southern languages, apart from Hindi and English in the Hindi speaking areas, and of Hindi along with regional languages and English in the non-Hindi speaking areas (Debates, 1967, p. 5420)

This gives an idea of the kinds of problems which arise but what is important to recognize is why these problems have been given rise to. It is suggested that because India is a multilingual state, this is the cause of the problems. A more warranted conclusion would be that the cause of the problems stems from the imposition of the British system of administration, institutions and jurisprudence. Since independence, instead of renovating everything so that it springs from the revolutionary traditions and psyche of the peoples of India, the Indian ruling classes seek to accommodate these institutions to the Indian psyche on one hand, and to accommodate the Indian psyche to these institutions on the other.

Let us take the example of the judiciary. Because the judiciary was based on the British common law system which evolved through case law and on the basis of the English historical development, psychology and conditions, it was totally foreign to the nations, nationalities and tribal peoples of India. It was not their indigenous system which was modernized and used to sort out problems of a juridical nature according to a rule of law established by the Indian peoples themselves, but an alien system which favoured an alien power. The same is the case with the institutions of governance. Besides other things, the development of these institutions was expressed in the English language. By imposing these institutions, the English language was also imposed as one of the main languages of communication in India and as the language of the courts. Problems today are wrongly blamed on the federal system per se, not on the nature of the power which exists over the peoples of India. For instance, in the federal system in India, state courts use the official language of the state but the Supreme Court of India which stands at the apex of the unified judicial system can use only the official language of the union. This makes it extremely difficult for the Supreme Court to receive and understand appeals from the lower courts when its language is different to that of the lower courts. Furthermore, only the judgements of the lower courts are translated and sent to the Supreme Court. In the absence of the translation of the entire court proceedings, it is not possible to transmit the content and the spirit of the case. Even the letter is often interpreted differently according to the psychology of the language and the case at hand.

It is a fact that this problem was predicted by B.R. Ambedkar, Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution. He argued in the Constituent Assembly that "linguistic diversity will make Indian administration impossible." (Munshi, 1996, p. 215) To deal with the problem he proposed that Hindi should be the language for both the union and the states. But the nations and nationalities of India who have extremely rich languages and cultures refused to accept this proposal. A condition for getting their acceptance of the Indian Union was respect for the languages and cultures of the Indian peoples. Today, instead of renovating the principles upon which India is founded, proposals seek to get rid of the anomalies. For instance, one proposal is to correct the problem by restructuring the Constitution so that the object of the Supreme Court be limited to the Law of the Constitution and its interpretation. The Supreme Court should concern itself only with federal law, while the High Courts of the states become the highest courts with no further right of appeal, it is suggested. This kind of reform will not sort the problem out because it misidentifies the problem.

Since the existence of many languages has been the fact of life throughout the Indian sub-continent since time immemorial, it stands to reason that it is not the existence of many languages per se which is the problem. In India, the language issue only became politicised under the British. It was in 1837 that the Governor General-in-Council empowered the provincial administrations under its Raj "to substitute the vernacular language of the country for the Persian in legal proceedings and proceedings relating to revenue"(Act No. XXIX of 1837, Adam, 1938, p. 192) Prior to this, Persian was considered the official language. To the extent that the introduction of the vernacular was a demand of the popular masses, spearheaded to a great degree by the Bhakti movement throughout India, it was a great impetus to all forms of literature and artistic expression. In Bengal, for instance, by the end of the nineteenth century, the unification of the Bengali community under one language and literary tradition was almost complete. But the British seized on the demand of the people for their languages and cultures. While the aim of this demand was to defend their national identities and oppose alien rule, the British used it to push their policy of divide and rule and for a time the people managed to resist. When in 1905, the British split the people of Bengal into two separate provinces, mass demonstrations forced them to rescind their decision in 1911. But, since then, the language issue has been intimately linked with politics.

In 1915 the Indian National Congress decided to mount a movement for provincial autonomy. The British linked this to their own demand to impose British institutions onto the Indian polity. "The provinces are the domain in which the earlier steps towards the progressive realization of responsible self-government should be taken," they wrote in 1918. (Mitra, 1923, p. 353) Accordingly, the Act of 1919 devolved greater responsibility upon its provincial government and associated greater number of Indian representatives in the provincial administration. But that did not satisfy the Congress. In order to associate the common people with this movement, inits Nagpur session of 1920, the Congress decided to redistribute its organizational units on the basis of the language areas. It was considered that the growth of democratic institutions necessitated the formation of homogenous units. The All Parties Congress held in 1928 therefore had as one of its basic demands the reconstitution of provinces along linguistic lines.It proposed the formation of separate provinces of Sind, Karnataka, Andhra and the resettling the boundaries of Assam and Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, the Central Province, Kerala and others on the basis of language. (Ibid.)

This language movement was subsequently eclipsed as a result of the division of the polity on a communal basis and the communal massacres which proceeded the formation of the Indian union and formal independence in 1947. Clearly, dividing the polity on the communal basis served the purposes of the British better than on a linguistic basis which had as an aim the creation of the conditions for the preservation of national identitiesas well. But the creation of states on a linguistic basis, instead of on a modern democratic basis, because a component part of the communal policy. In 1953, the state of Andhra was created for the Telegu-speaking people of the Madras Presidency. Following this, most of the states were recognized primarily on linguistic consideration. This is the manner in which the rights of the nations, nationalities and tribal peoples of India are denied.

Today, Article 345 of the Indian Constitution empowers the states to choose their respective official language. Since the 1960s, various states have passed Official Language Legislation declaring the use of certain languages for official purposes of the state, including legislation. The example of West Bengal shows the kinds of problems which ensue. West Bengal according to the 1981 census had a population of 54,485,560 of which the people of Bengali origin constituted 85.32 per cent while of the remaining 14.68 per cent at that time, 6.13 per cent spoke Hindi, Santali(3.35 per cent), Urdu (2.14 per cent) and Nepali (1.50 per cent). Among the linguistic minorities, 15.27 per cent used Bengali as a second language. The state of West Bengal also contains within it three subdivisions, namely Sadar, Kalimpong and Kurseong of the Darjeeling District where the Nepalis are the majority, not the Bengalis.

The southern languages of India for their part belong mostly to the Dravidian family and constitute the second largest language family representing about 25 per cent of the population of India. Four major national languages are included. According to 1986 figures: Telegu had about 65 million speakers, Tamil (53 million), Kannada (30 million) and Malayalam (29 million), spoken respectively in Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Kerala. Of these, Tamil has remained closer to the Dravidian character while the rest have had heavy lexical inroads from Sanskrit.

Tamil is more than 2,000 years old and has resisted the attempt to sanskritize it. If Hindi purism in language planning goes for Sanskrictic elements, Tamil purism prefers to purge them while showing an active preference for modern writing to follow common speech. As also took place in Bengal with the Bengali language, also in Tamilnadu the state took an active interest in developing and standardizing Tamil for administrative, educational and mass communication purposes and eliminating the use of English altogether. In this case, the Telegu minority in Tamilnadu which comprises about nine per cent often complains about state insensitivity to the federal authority.

Although this account of the complexity of the language issue by no means exhausts how this complexity poses itself in India, it is to acquaint our youth with some information about the nature of the problem and how it has been politicised so as to dividethe people and keep them subjugated under an alien power.

s Reading the Paper, "The Right to Our Language: Some Aspects of How the Problem Poses Itself" at the Second World Punjabi Conference held in Prince George, British Columbia July, 2003.