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South India took the country forward. Language of the failing Hindi belt can’t be imposed on it
In many ways, MK Stalin‘s letter articulated what many South Indians feel but don’t necessarily say. For how long will South India be kept back by the failures of the Hindi belt?
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It may have been the most unusual letter ever written by a chief minister in India. Firstly, it was an open letter addressed to all Indians. Secondly, it went out on X and received (when I last looked) over 15,000 likes.
The letter was from MK Stalin, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, and it was addressed to “My dear sisters and brothers from other states.”
“Ever wondered how many Indian languages Hindi has swallowed?” it began. And it went on to list these: Bhojpuri, Maithili, Garhwali, and Kumaoni, among others. Stalin listed 19 languages, saying these and “many more are now gasping for survival”.
Stalin arrived at his point in the second paragraph. “The push for a monolithic Hindi identity is what kills ancient mother tongues. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were never just “Hindi heartlands”. Their real languages are now relics of the past.”
Anyone with a sense of history knew where this was leading: “Tamil Nadu resists because we know where this ends…”.
The North-South balance
Around the same time that Stalin was penning his attack on a “monolithic Hindi identity”, Amit Shah was in Chennai assuring the people of Tamil Nadu that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will ensure that the state would not lose a single parliamentary seat in the planned delimitation exercise, which would change the composition of the Lok Sabha.Shah may well be right but he did not guarantee that the proportion of seats allocated to Tamil Nadu in a post-delimitation Lok Sabha would not be reduced. When the present allocation of seats was agreed on, population rates in India were different. Now, the rapid population growth in North India means that a constituency in UP may have 3 million residents while one in Tamil Nadu could have around 1.8 million.
If the new Lok Sabha is designed to keep population numbers in mind, then Tamil Nadu may not lose seats but states like UP will gain many more. If the size of the Lok Sabha is increased to 753 seats, for example, UP, which already sends the most MPs to Parliament, will see its share go up from 80 to 128 seats.
It is clear what this will do to the North-South political balance. With the so-called Hindi heartland states getting a higher proportion of the new seats, national politics will be dominated by the North—and, of course, by the parties that rule it. Their concerns will be passed off as India’s concerns and the South’s influence on national affairs will be severely reduced.
You can see why the BJP does not think this is a bad idea. Any exercise that increases the number of seats in the North will massively benefit the BJP. That it has still to make significant gains in many non–Hindi heartland states will matter less and less. All that the party would need to do to rule India is win enough seats in the Hindi heartland.
That is why Stalin and other South Indian leaders are upset about Hindi, about the heartland, and about the future that the BJP envisages for India.
Also read: Digital guardians of Kannada are waging a new language war in Karnataka against Hindi imposition
What the South says
The southern politicians argue that the South is being penalised for its success. Southern states are usually economically far more successful than many North Indian states. The literacy rate in UP is around 68 per cent. In Kerala, it is 94 per cent. So it is with economic growth.Many years ago, long before social media was invented, TV Mohandas Pai would calculate the growth rates of South Indian states. They were on par, he said, with many of the so-called Asian Tigers, Far Eastern countries like Singapore. Even today, if you take much of the Hindi belt out of the calculation, India seems to have fared much better economically than the overall rate suggests.
It is the same with population. The reason that the disparity in the sizes of Lok Sabha constituencies between the South and the North is growing is because the South has managed to control its population. In many non-Hindi heartland states, birth rates are now lower than death rates. But four states skewer the all–India rates. The fears that we expressed about the uncontrolled growth of our population in the 1960s and the ‘70s have proven to be groundless largely because of our success in controlling population growth outside the Hindi belt.
In many ways, Stalin‘s letter articulated what many South Indians feel but don’t necessarily say. For how long will South India be kept back by the failures of the Hindi belt? Does it make sense that the political future of India will be decided, when the Lok Sabha is reconstituted, by the very states that have lagged behind on so many indices: literacy, population, economic growth, etc?
Yes, say South Indians, we are a democracy but we are also a federal nation. For India to progress, a balance must be reached between pure numerical strength and the rights of the states. Keep penalising states that have taken India forward and we will never become the great nation we hope to be.
The Hindi debate—and Stalin’s letter—emerge out of this kind of resentment. Many of us forget now that the Dravidian movement had a strong secessionist component in its early years. It was brought into the national mainstream by the vision of our great national leaders who recognised that Tamil cultural pride and Southern regional sentiment were to be respected. In 1967, Indira Gandhi’s government amended the Official Languages Act to guarantee the virtually indefinite use of Hindi and English as national languages following a bloody anti-Hindi agitation in Madras (as it then was) in 1965.
History tells us that Stalin is right in the claims he makes in his letter. Hindi is a relatively new language and Sanskritised Hindi is a language largely made up by bureaucrats, politicians, pedants, and Akashvani.
Hindi is not the only “national” language as its advocates sometimes falsely claim. Not only is English a useful link language but it has also given India huge advantages over many other Asian countries in such global businesses as software.
And what the Hindi-imposers forget is that the use of Hindi is growing all over India, anyway. But its spread is not because of politicians or Hindi belt chauvinists. Hindi has travelled all over India (yes, even to Tamil Nadu) slowly but firmly because of the film industry and its offshoots—TV, streaming, music, etc.
That is how it will continue to spread, regardless of what its aggressive proponents want.
It is instructive that many of the people who demand that South Indians must speak Hindi are simultaneously totally dismissive of Bollywood (Urduwood, as they sneeringly refer to it). A few years ago, they even ran a politically charged campaign against the Hindi film industry. Moreover, it is instructive that many who condemn those using English as a link language and call them “colonial slaves” also simultaneously venerate VD Sarkar’s apology letters to his colonial masters.
The truth is that India functions best without political and sectarian agendas. When you seek to create a wedge between communities (such as Hindus and Muslims), you damage the principles this country was founded on. And when you demand that the language and the ways of the fumbling, failing Hindi belt must be imposed on South India, you threaten the very future of our country.
Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)
