The perils of imposing a language

The Tamil Nadu Government’s use of the Tamil letter ‘Roo’ instead of the Indian currency symbol in the promotional logo of the state Budget has caused a nationwide stir. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the use of Tamil to denote the national currency was “more than mere symbolism”, and that “it signals a dangerous mindset that weakens Indian unity and promotes secessionist sentiments under the pretence of regional pride”.

State BJP president K Annamalai called it a ‘stupid’ move because of the DMK’s rejection of a symbol that had been designed by a Tamil designer at IIT-Guwahati who also happens to be the son of a former DMK legislator.

‘Roo’ is commonly used for the rupee in Tamil. Its use by the DMK seemed intended to symbolise Stalin’s pushback against the National Education Policy (NEP) over the three-language formula, seen as a move for a backdoor imposition of Hindi in the state. If the BJP is accusing Chief Minister MK Stalin of resorting to linguistic chauvinism to divert attention from the alleged failures of his government a year ahead of the Assembly elections, it can also be argued that in the high noon of Hindu pride, the DMK leader is not the only politician in the country to fall back on identity. The outrage over the DMK’s actions seems disproportionate and selective. When will communal slurs and hate speech be described as a threat to India’s unity?

Of course, it is clear that Stalin is gearing up for a battle to secure a second term. Tamil Nadu has a penchant for changing its government every five years. Only Jayalalithaa was able to break the one-term jinx, leading the AIADMK to power for a second term in 2016. The DMK would be nervous, especially with the newbie Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam led by actor Vijay bringing a fresh element to old equations.

Instead of waiting for the BJP or other Opposition parties to set the agenda, the DMK has reached into its own arsenal and come up with language and delimitation. Mozhi prachnai (language issue) and thokuthi prachnai (delimitation issue) are now corner-shop buzzwords in the state. It is an earlier-than-usual buildup to the elections. The tall order, though, is to keep these issues going for another year. The opposition AIADMK and Vijay have no option but to support the DMK’s stand on both issues. Indeed, the AIADMK, which could find itself in alliance with the BJP for the elections if the stars align, claims to be the first to have opposed the NEP in 2020, when the party was in power.

The nearly 100-year-old history of political resistance to Hindi in Tamil Nadu is well known. The puzzle really is why the BJP rekindled an issue that had lain dormant, by making the disbursal of Central education funds conditional on the state government adopting the NEP’s three-language formula. For the BJP, which has dropped plenty of hints about its desire to ‘Hindi-ise’ India — renaming the Indian Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code in Hindi in the name of decolonisation is one example — the dilemma is that backing down now would seem like political weakness.

True, the NEP does not stipulate that the third language has to be Hindi. In practical terms, though, it would be Hindi. State schools would find it difficult, financially and logistically, to hire teachers for an array of third languages. And teaching Hindi would become the default option if only because — and here is the irony — Hindi teachers may be easier to find and hire in Tamil Nadu than say teachers for Malayalam or Kannada or even Telugu.

This is why Andhra Pradesh Deputy CM Pawan Kalyan is posing the wrong question. “Why do they dub Tamil films in Hindi for financial gains?” asked the newest ambassador for Hindi and Hindutva in the South, accusing the DMK of ‘hypocrisy’. The short answer is that Tamil Nadu is not against Hindi. The opposition is to the imposition of Hindi.

Surprising as it may sound, lakhs of people in Tamil Nadu learn Hindi voluntarily. No political party or leader is stopping them.

The other side of the coin is that lakhs of north Indians arrive in Tamil Nadu seeking employment, speaking no language other than Hindi. Forget that under the three-language formula, they did not learn Tamil in their schools in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar. They are not being forced to learn Tamil to find employment in Tamil Nadu. Nor is there a diktat against speaking in Hindi in the state. Some may learn a little Tamil to get by. Their Tamil employers or colleagues or customers may try and close the communication gap with whatever Hindi they know.

A visit to any Chennai restaurant would be instructive — a north Indian waiter and a Tamil customer conversing in each other’s language to ensure the food order is not lost in translation. It may not be the perfect jugalbandi, but it gets the job done. In the same vein, the long-standing collaboration between the Hindi and Tamil film industries is not hypocrisy, as Kalyan terms it, but an example of a voluntary, organic coming together of people for economic or social reasons.

Imposing a language, on the other hand, backdoor or otherwise, has never ended well. If Tamil Nadu’s anti-Hindi movements of the past are not lesson enough on this, India’s neighbourhood offers even more stark lessons about how the politics of national unity through a single language can go badly wrong. Pakistan practically lost its eastern part the day Urdu was declared the national language, just months after celebrating its creation in 1947. What began as a movement against Urdu culminated in the 1971 partition of the country, with India providing the final push. The ‘Sinhala Only’ legislation was the tipping point in the rift between Sinhalese and Tamils that led to a 30-year-long civil war.

Describing the DMK, which remains engaged with the Centre on all issues, including the NEP, as ‘secessionist’ for its use of ‘Roo’ betrays the BJP’s centralising impulse and its view of regional parties in opposition to it. It also shows a dangerous disregard for history.