What MNS-Shiv Sena protests don't see: The Hindi in Hindutva

Indian Express

19 hours ago

After weeks of twists and turns, the Maharashtra government has suspended its proposed policy of introducing Hindi as a compulsory language from the first standard in state schools. This may appear to be merely a state-level issue. Opposition to it may seem like a seasonal bout of opportunistic politics. It is neither. The pro-Hindi policy of the state government has been in line with the BJP's longstanding ambition to have Hindi (shuddh Hindi, not Hindustani) as the national language — a policy that dovetails with its penchant for enforcing uniformity in every respect and implementing a one nation, one language policy. The recent troubles over education policy in Maharashtra, therefore, need to be understood in a larger context, beyond pedagogic wisdom, state-level party politics and Marathi pride. These troubles amplify the debate over what we mean by the Indian nation, and in turn, the deeper, routine practices of majoritarianism.
When the Maharashtra government kept insisting on introducing Hindi in the first standard, only two responses against it seem to have mobilised public opinion in the state. One somewhat apolitical response has been about the wisdom of introducing three languages when a child begins her education. This argument is confined to the child's capacity to grasp multiple languages at an early age and the question of burden. The other response, predictably, was triggered by the pro-Marathi sentiment. This helped the estranged Thackeray cousins to share the same ideological ground after a long time. Sections of the media, and intellectuals who have always romanticised the idea that a strong pro-Marathi lobby would help the language, have naturally been excited over this second development concerning Marathi pride, so quick on the heels of Marathi being declared a classical language by the Narendra Modi government.
But there is not much awareness of the larger ideological implications of the pro-Hindi policy. This is not restricted to Maharashtra alone. Many administrators and policymakers have always remained somewhat narrow in their approach to the language question — looking at it only in terms of convenience, and therefore, reducing it to the question of official language or link language. For many of us, diversity is always a clumsy inconvenience.
The question of language, however, has always spilled over beyond administrative convenience to the realm of unity and nationhood. Thus, even within Congress, there always was a strong Hindi lobby that believed a common language was necessary for a nation and that Hindi could naturally claim that status. There were even some from the south in this lobby, and though they were not necessarily inclined to surrender their own linguistic traditions, they supported the idea of a national language — rashtrabhasha. That is why we had rashtrabhasha samitis pushing for Hindi education through voluntary efforts.
This idea that Hindi would gradually evolve to become a national language often overlapped with the imagination that a nation requires one common language. Among north India's Hindi lobby, this overlap was more pronounced. But that overlap was not exclusive to Hindi-speaking pro-Hindi activists. Where does this craving for a national language come from?
During much of the time when India's national struggle was shaping up in the early 20th century, the more prominent model of nationalism in Europe often privileged uniformity over anything else. This had a deep influence on many Indian social and political activists and thinkers. But the Hindutva nationalism of V D Savarkar and the RSS most enthusiastically adopted the idea of uniformity. Many in Congress were attracted to it, but believed that such uniformity was either culturally inherent in India's practices or that it would evolve over time through persuasion and practice. Thus, two different models of uniformity operated in actual politics as India became independent. The more predominant one was uniformity through mutual exchange, give-and-take, and historical sharing, while the Hindutva vision believed in the primacy and urgency of uniformity over anything else. This applied to the language question, too.
Debates over Hindutva have often remained confined to the question of religion. But Hindutva as an ideology and politics should be understood not merely in terms of the Hindu-Muslim question. True, the practical politics of Hindutva obsessively revolves around, and is based on, deep Islamophobia, coupled with anti-minority sentiments and Hindu supremacy. But at the root of it is a more general imagination that democracy means a free play for the majority community. In the case of the language question, too, it would be a mistake to ignore this foundational belief that has shaped Hindutva. It is often argued that a certain percentage of people in India speak Hindi. It is another matter that this 'number' is derived historically through amalgamating speakers of many other languages and claiming those languages as variants of Hindi — that is exactly how 'majorities' are constructed, whether based on religion, language or culture. In the majoritarian project, some traits of one section of society are posited as common to most. It is then argued that all those who manifest those traits constitute one community, enjoying large numbers.
More recently, the systematic push in favour of making Hindi the official language unofficially has been evident. While sometimes, the majoritarians hope for assimilation (samrasata), they don't have the political patience to wait for that to happen. Majoritarian projects, when out of power, speak of assimilation in order to save themselves from state action, but when in power, exercise the same state power to enforce uniformity. Since the BJP knows that its coalition partners have nowhere to go, it nudges them to support the idea of uniformity on the question of language. A large electoral majority in Maharashtra has encouraged the BJP-led government to adopt the policy of enforcing Hindi while its domesticated allies in Andhra Pradesh talk of willingly adopting Hindi.
In withdrawing its controversial decision in Maharashtra, the BJP may have accepted a tactical retreat temporarily, but it knows that the Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena neither comprehend nor want to counter the majoritarian project. With a soon-to-be-formed 'expert committee', the state government will subsequently find ways of continuing with a majoritarian politics of enforced uniformity. Just like in Maharashtra, the BJP's pro-Hindi policy will receive only limited opposition elsewhere, be it in West Bengal or Tamil Nadu. That response will be in terms of regional identity, language protectionism and an anti-Hindi stance. Recent history shows that Hindutva has the capacity to absorb such regionalist tendencies at state level.
Thus, Maharashtra's protests against Hindi imposition will only produce a Marathi pride that is oblivious of the larger majoritarian project. That project will mostly go unchallenged as anti-Hindi politics will neither protect our linguistic diversity nor sensitise the public about the dangers of imposing uniformity. The day when votaries of regional languages appreciate the link between making one language 'national' and making one culture national, we shall have a better handle to understand the politics of nationalism masquerading as the politics of a national language.
The writer, based in Pune, taught Political Science