If there is one unambiguous objective of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which swept General Election 2014 with a huge majority and rules at the Centre and in 19 states across the country, it is a determined bid to impose Hindi as the lingua franca of the nation. The party’s leadership seems oblivious of India of the 1960s when Parliament declared Hindi the national language and riots and widespread agitations broke out down south — Tamil Nadu in particular — resulting in loss of life and property until English was declared the associate national language.
However it’s important to note that this time round the imposition of Hindi is not being attempted through parliamentary legislation, but indirectly. For instance, prime minister Narendra Modi’s much-hyped monthly radio broadcast is entirely in Hindi with the PM seemingly heedless that half the country doesn’t understand a word of what he’s on about. Last September, although the prime minister is well-acquainted with English, when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly, he chose to declaim entirely in Hindi, when India also applied to declare Hindi a UN recognised language. On February 4, when he launched the BJP’s campaign for the Karnataka legislative assembly elections by addressing a huge rally in Bangalore, he again spoke in full-throated Hindi, unmindful of the reality that very few people rounded up for the grand oration knew what he was talking about.
Unwittingly, the BJP’s grand strategy of dividing the electorate along religious lines to consolidate the Hindu vote bank is being cancelled by the party’s clumsy agenda of imposing Hindi as the language of politics, business and diplomatic discourse, arousing hitherto dormant fears of Hindi imperialism in peninsular India.