Union Home minister Amit Shah has stirred up language controversy that Hindi being an official language, it should be the medium for correspondence and discussions between states. This has evoked a vehement and justifiable strong reaction from southern states, particularly Tamil Nadu, which has always opposed the imposition of Hindi in non-Hindi speaking states, forming 56 percent of the population. Raking up such non-issues ahead of elections has become a regular phenomenon among politicians of this country, who shy away from discussing real issues. Shah who chairs the official language committee said 70 percent of the agenda of the Cabinet is prepared in Hindi. He also said Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided that the medium of running the government is the official language and this will increase the importance of Hindi. No one is against Indian languages and everyone should learn their mother tongue and perhaps one other language apart from English. Though three language formula has been implemented in most of the country, it is unfortunate, that schools in North India and in areas where Hindi is the mother tongue, do not offer a third language, that is from South or East India. Many schools in North India do not even teach proper English. Though schools are supposed to pursue three-language formula, they only teach only Hindi and perhaps some English.
This puts people in East and particularly South India at a disadvantage as they are by force made to learn Hindi apart from their mother tongue and English. Of course, the more languages one knew the better it is. Late Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao knew 14 languages. He could not only converse but also do scholarly and literary work in those languages. They included Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Marathi, French, Spanish, Kannada and Malayalam. Late Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa was conversant in several languages including Tamil, English and Hindi. It is difficult to find one such North Indian politician, who is conversant in any of the South Indian languages apart from Hindi and English. It is in the interest of the common man to learn more languages so that their job opportunity widens, and knowing English is even more important so that opportunity widens to the global level as the majority of the world population knows English. It is not only English and other Indian languages, attempts should be made to learn other foreign languages as well like French, German, Spanish, Chinese and Russian.
At a time when world has become one global village, our politicians rake up such non-issues for some short-term electoral gains without realising the consequences and the damage that they are doing to the youth by restricting their job opportunities. When jobs are scarce, particularly after the Covid, stirring up language issue, which was broadly settled in 1965 after the anti-Hindi agitation, is unwarranted and may unnecessarily rake up agitation and narrow the already depleting job opportunities. Not knowing English is also a disadvantage in pursuing technical education, particularly in Medicine, Engineering, Science and Economics.
