‘Hindi imperialism’: How `battle over languages’ has stirred up hornet’s nest in South India

Mumbai: The battle over language imposition is, in a very literal sense, a war of words. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government pushes hard to make Hindi the dominant language across India, many states, especially in the south, have accused it of ‘Hindi imposition’ and ‘Hindi imperialism’. MK Stalin, chief minister of Tamil Nadu, is leading the charge, with Karnataka and Telangana raising the pitch too. Stalin asserted that Tamil Nadu is “ready for another language war”.

His remarks come in the wake of growing concerns over the Centre’s three-language policy – the use of Hindi, English, and the local language of the state in education and for official matters. Stalin’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) has consistently opposed the policy, accusing the Modi government of foisting Hindi on Tamil Nadu. Stalin made it clear that he would continue with Tamil and English and referred to the agitation of 1965, during which the Dravidian movement successfully resisted the imposition of Hindi.

Stalin claimed that forced adoption of the language had “destroyed 25 native North Indian languages in 100 years”. “The push for a monolithic Hindi identity is what kills ancient languages. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were never ‘Hindi heartlands’... their real languages are now relics of the past,” he said.

The present standoff is over the three-language formula for school education under the National Education Policy (NEP). So, it was Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan who responded to Stalin’s remarks by saying that unless Tamil Nadu implemented the NEP and adopted a three-language policy, the Central Government would not provide the Rs 2,150 crore it was due under the Samagra Shiksha fund.

Incidentally, it’s not just Tamil Nadu that is upset over the Centre’s language policies. Punjab‘s former deputy chief minister, Sukhbir Singh Badal, lashed out at the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE's) decision to drop Punjabi from the 2025-26 curriculum. “Punjabi is our mother tongue, spoken and read across various states and many countries worldwide. This attack on our mother tongue will not be tolerated,” he said.

The Telangana government, on its part, ordered that Telugu would be mandatory for all schools, including those affiliated with the Centre-administered CBSE.

Losing diversity

India is among the world’s most linguistically diverse countries, and language has long been a flashpoint. The saffron right’s agenda is to culturally homogenise the country, and the push for Hindi is part of it. This is being done in various ways, from making Hindi mandatory in schools across the country to conducting matters of government only in the language. You would have noticed that Modi’s speeches are almost exclusively in Hindi, and the vast majority of Cabinet papers are now in that language.

However, India has thousands of languages and dialects, and many believe the imposition of Hindi is dangerously divisive. That is because language is crucial to identity. It’s the thread that connects people of a region or culture. It is well understood, therefore, that the support for a multiplicity of languages is among the key factors that have united India through history.

So, when the language of another region is sought to be forced on people, it is seen as hegemony – in this case, the north’s over the south’s – and it leads to a backlash.

Let’s look at the Census numbers. As per the last one, conducted in 2011, 44% of Indians speak Hindi. However, 53 native languages, many of which are completely different from Hindi and are spoken by millions, are classified as Hindi. If we were to remove these, it would shrink the number of Hindi speakers to about 27%. So, almost three-quarters of the country is not fluent in Hindi.

Being multilingual is part of the Indian identity. Very few Indians would be monolingual, and, often, the languages the multilingual among us speak do not include Hindi.

Language and identity

Language is political, and this is not the first time it has created a flashpoint between the Union and the states. Especially in Tamil Nadu, it was the language movement that shaped identity.

The first clash occurred as far back as 1937 when, after the Congress formed the provincial government, the then Premier of Madras, C Rajagopalachari, made the teaching of Hindi compulsory in schools.

Hindi was – and is – regarded as an Aryan language, that of the Brahmins, and a tool to suppress the Tamil identity. EV Ramasamy Naicker, better known as ‘Periyar, ’ led a pitched battle against Hindi, Brahmin domination, and Brahminical values.

The three-year-long agitation involved fasts, marches, and picketing. The subsequent government crackdown led to hundreds of arrests, including of women and children. The government resigned in 1939, and the British withdrew the mandatory teaching of Hindi in 1940.

After Independence, the language issue came alive again as the adoption of an official language became a hotly-debated issue.

The DMK led the opposition to Hindi imposition even then. To allay these fears, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru enacted the Official Languages Act (1963) to ensure the use of English beyond 1965. Still, there were doubts whether it would be honoured by future governments. As January 26, 1965, approached, the anti-Hindi movement again gathered steam in the Madras state. On January 25 that year, agitating students and Congress members clashed, and it blew up into a full-scale riot in Madurai. Riots raged across the state for two months, killing 70.

To calm the fires, then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri promised that English would continue as the official language for as long as the non-Hindi states wanted.

These events changed the political landscape. The DMK won the 1967 Assembly election, and the Congress has never won a majority on its own again in Tamil Nadu.

The Official Languages Act was eventually amended in 1967 by the Indira Gandhi government to guarantee the indefinite use of Hindi and English as official – not national – languages. This institutionalized the policy of bilingualism in India.

Incidentally, we still don’t have a national language. What we have is languages formally recognised in the Constitution – initially 14 and ultimately 22 in all.

As you can tell, language has been important for Indians, and there have been several instances of unrest sparked by linguistic identity.

Rocky road ahead

Today, there is a danger of further unrest caused by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) Hindu nationalist agenda, which includes the use of Hindi across the country. The Central Government has been accused of weakening the states by excessive centralisation through various means, and this includes the use of Hindi. For example, in March 2017, milestones on national highways in Tamil Nadu changed from English to Hindi. At the time, Stalin had said, “This is bringing Hindi hegemony through the backdoor in Tamil Nadu.”

Education is one of the major arenas the Modi government wants to dominate. However, it is part of the concurrent list, so states have a substantial say in education policies.

Would Hindi as the language of instruction affect educational outcomes in regions with other local languages? I couldn’t find any research on this, but we do have some insights from other countries. For example, there is a study in Cameroon on the change of medium of instruction for primary-grade students from English to the local language. There was a substantial gain in learning outcomes as measured by standardized test scores. Not only learning outcomes but even the likelihood of attending and staying in school increased.

Of course, at its core, the standoff is over identity. BJP supporters want Hindi to be declared the national language. But they are not necessarily supported even by Hindus from non-Hindi-speaking states. In the 2021 West Bengal Assembly election, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee appealed to preserve Bengali culture, identity, and language. Central BJP leaders, meanwhile, made their speeches in Hindi. This made them seem to be outsiders. Trinamool won, and the BJP lost.

Non-Hindi-speaking states refer to the Centre’s language policy as Hindi imperialism and an attempt to transform India from a union of diverse states to a monocultural nation in which Hindi speakers are first-class citizens while the rest come second. Imposing Hindi, therefore, is a threat to the unity of India.

In the pluralistic society that is India, linguistic diversity should be valued rather than laid siege to.

(Ashraf Engineer has been a journalist for almost three decades, leading newsrooms and initiatives across print, digital, and audio. He is the founder of the All Indians Matter platform, a home for conversations with and about India on issues that matter, and the host of the podcast by the same name.)