The language debate over the National Education Policy rages on even as the Supreme Court had favoured “linguistic secularism” or the acceptance of the legitimate aspirations of the speakers of different languages in India in a 2014 judgment.
| Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma
The language debate over the National Education Policy rages on even as the Supreme Court had favoured “linguistic secularism” or the acceptance of the legitimate aspirations of the speakers of different languages in India in a 2014 judgment.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin has accused the Centre of imposing Hindi through the National Education Policy at the cost of “totally destroying Tamil Nadu’s progress in education”.
The apex court in U.P. Hindi Sahittya Sammelan vs State Of U.P. in September 2014 had observed that the mode of development or evolution of both law and language in the country were “organic”. Indian language laws, the court said, were “not rigid but accommodative – the object being to secure linguistic secularism”.
In a covering letter to the Law Minister on the 216th report of the Law Commission of India on the ‘Non-feasibility of Introduction of Hindi as a Compulsory Language in the Supreme Court of India’, then chairperson and former Supreme Court judge, Justice A.R. Lakshmanan, cautioned that “language is a highly emotional issue for the citizens of any nation. It has a great unifying force and is a powerful instrument for national integration. No language should be thrust on any section of the people against their will since it is likely to become counter-productive”.
The judgment referred to Constitutional expert H.M. Seervai’s commentary on the conflict which arose in the Constituent Assembly in 1949 over the question of Hindi as a ‘national language’. A compromise proposed in the Munshi-Ayyangar formula led to the inclusion of Article 343 in the Constitution declaring Hindi in the Devanagari script as the official language of the Union.
“Though Hindi was selected as the official language, it could not be described as the national language, for, it was not the language generally spoken in all parts of India, and though spoken by the largest single group of people, that group did not constitute the majority of people in India. Besides, there were regional languages such as Bengali in Bengal, Tamil in Madras, Marathi and Gujarati in the erstwhile State of Bombay which were spoken by large populations and it was claimed for those languages that they were more developed than Hindi. Hindi was therefore described as the official language,” the judgment quoted from Mr. Seervai commentary.
Former Supreme Court judge, Justice Krishna Iyer, in his remarks to the Law Commission in connection with the 216th report, wrote, “I am all for Hindi as a personal preference, but I am all against Hindi by compulsion… Linguistic militancy will alienate and divide but federal pluralism is democratic sensitivity.”
Article 351 however imposes a “duty” on the Union government to promote the spread of the Hindi language. However, the Allahabad High Court, in its 1982 reported judgment in Sunil K.R. Sahastrabudhey vs Director, IIT Kanpur, observed that “although Hindi is the national language of India and Article 351 lays down a duty on the Union to promote the spread of Hindi language to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India, there is no right conferred on any citizen to compel an institution to impart education in that particular language”.
Besides, Article 29(1) of the Constitution recognised that “every section of the society which has a distinct language script or culture of its own” has the fundamental right to conserve the same. “This is a right which is conferred on both majority and minority,” the top court had underscored.
The Supreme Court, while responding to whether a student or a parent or a citizen has a right to choose the medium of instruction at primary school level in State of Karnataka vs Associated Management of Primary & Secondary Schools, said the fundamental right to speech and expression under Article 19 included the freedom of a primary class student to choose the language of instruction. The court said the state cannot impose control over such a choice.
In this, the court had taken a leaf from the U.S. Supreme Court’s conclusion in Pierce v. Society of Sisters of Holy Names in 1924 that “a child is not a mere creature of the State. Those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right coupled with the high duty to recognise and prepare him for additional obligations”.
Published – March 16, 2025 07:08 pm IST