Question of National Language

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The language question was one of the most emotionally charged and potentially divisive issues faced by independent India. Unlike ordinary policy disputes, it touched the core of regional identity, cultural pride, and economic opportunity, threatening at several points to fracture the fragile unity of a newly independent, multilingual nation. Crucially, the debate was never truly about adopting a single national language — that idea had already been rejected by the national leadership well before independence. The real controversy centred on choosing India’s official and link language for governance and inter-state communication, and on the pace at which English would be replaced. From the Constituent Assembly debates between Hindi and Hindustani, through the Official Language Commission of 1955, to the explosive anti-Hindi movement of 1965 in Tamil Nadu, the resolution of this issue stands as a significant example of India’s capacity to manage deep linguistic and regional anxieties through negotiation, compromise, and democratic accommodation rather than imposition. This article traces that journey in full, along with its long-term outcomes for Hindi, English, and India’s regional languages.

The Nature of the Controversy

The controversy over the language issue became most virulent when it took the form of opposition to Hindi, tending to create conflict between Hindi-speaking and non-Hindi-speaking regions of the country.
The dispute was not over the question of a national language — that is, one language which all Indians would eventually adopt — since the view that a single national language was essential to Indian national identity had already been overwhelmingly rejected by the secular majority of the national leadership.
- India was a multilingual country, and it had to remain so. The Indian national movement had carried on its ideological and political work through the various Indian regional languages.
- Its actual demand was for the replacement of English by the mother tongue as the medium for higher education, administration, and courts in each linguistic area.
Jawaharlal Nehru clearly articulated this view in 1937, describing India’s great provincial languages as ancient, richly inherited, and inextricably tied to the life, culture, and ideas of both the masses and the upper classes.
- He held it to be axiomatic that the masses could grow educationally and culturally only through the medium of their own language, and that India’s system of education and public work must therefore be based on the provincial languages.
The issue of a national language was effectively resolved when the constitution-makers accepted all major Indian languages as “languages of India.”
- But the matter could not end there, since the country’s official work could not be carried on in so many languages — there had to be one common language for the central government’s work and its communication with the state governments.
This raised the real question: what would be India’s official and link language? Only two candidates were realistically available — English and Hindi — and the Constituent Assembly debated the choice heatedly.
- In fact, the broad choice had already been made in the pre-independence period by the national movement’s leadership, which was convinced that English would not continue to be the all-India medium of communication in free India.
- Even while appreciating English as a world language giving Indians access to world science, culture, and modern Western ideas, Gandhiji was convinced that the genius of a people could not unfold, nor could their culture flower, in a foreign language.

Gandhiji’s View on the English Language

During the 1920s, Gandhiji acknowledged that English was “a language of international commerce,” “the language of diplomacy,” containing rich literary treasure, and offering an introduction to Western thought and culture.
However, he argued that English occupied “an unnatural place” in India due to the country’s unequal relations with Englishmen.
- He believed English “has sapped the energy of the nation” and “estranged them [educated Indians] from the masses,” and urged that the sooner educated India shook itself free from “the hypnotic spell of the foreign medium,” the better it would be for both the elite and the people.
In 1946, he wrote: “I love the English tongue in its own place, but I am its inveterate opponent if it usurps a place which does not belong to it.”
- He acknowledged English as “admittedly the world language” but insisted he would accord it only the place of a “second, optional language.”
Nehru echoed these sentiments in his 1937 article, “The Question of Language,” and also during the Constituent Assembly debates.

Leaders’ Support for Hindi

Hindi, or Hindustani, the other candidate for official/link language status, had already played this role during the nationalist struggle, especially in the phase of mass mobilisation.
- It had been accepted even by leaders from non-Hindi-speaking regions because it was considered the most widely spoken and understood language in the country.
- Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhiji, C. Rajagopalachari, Subhas Bose, and Sardar Patel were among Hindi’s enthusiastic supporters.
In its sessions and political work, the Congress had already substituted Hindi and the provincial languages in place of English.
- In 1925, the Congress amended its constitution to provide that Congress proceedings would be conducted, as far as possible, in Hindustani, with English or a provincial language used only if the speaker was unable to speak Hindustani or where necessary; provincial committee proceedings were to be conducted ordinarily in the language of the province concerned, with Hindustani also permitted.
Reflecting a national consensus, the Nehru Report (1928) had laid down that Hindustani, written in either the Devanagari or Urdu script, would be the common language of India, with English continuing for some time.
- It is notable that the Constitution of free India was ultimately to adopt this very stand — except for replacing Hindustani with Hindi.

The Two Questions Debated in the Constituent Assembly

The debate in the Constituent Assembly centred on two distinct questions:

Would Hindi or Hindustani replace English?
What would be the time-frame for such a replacement to happen?

The Debates

Sharp differences marked the initial debates, as the question of the official language was highly politicised from the very beginning.
The question of Hindi versus Hindustani was resolved relatively early, though with a great deal of acrimony.
- Gandhiji and Nehru both supported Hindustani, written in either the Devanagari or Urdu script. Though many supporters of Hindi disagreed, they had tended to accept the Gandhi–Nehru viewpoint.
- However, once Partition was announced, the champions of Hindi were emboldened — especially as the protagonists of Pakistan had claimed Urdu as the language of Muslims and of Pakistan.
  - The votaries of Hindi now branded Urdu “a symbol of secession” and demanded that Hindi in the Devanagari script be made the national language. Their demand split the Congress party down the middle.
- In the end, the Congress Legislative Party decided in favour of Hindi over Hindustani by a margin of 78 to 77 votes, even though Nehru and Azad fought for Hindustani.
  - As part of the compromise, the Hindi bloc was forced to accept that Hindi would be the official, and not the national, language.
The issue of the time-frame for the shift from English to Hindi produced a sharp divide between Hindi and non-Hindi areas.
- Spokespersons of Hindi areas favoured an immediate switchover to Hindi, while those from non-Hindi areas advocated retaining English for a long, if not indefinite, period.
  - In fact, they wanted the status quo to continue until a future parliament decided to shift to Hindi as the official language.
- Nehru favoured making Hindi the official language, but also wanted English to continue as an additional official language, making the transition gradual and actively encouraging the study of English for its usefulness in the contemporary world.

The Case for and Against Hindi’s Dominance

The case for Hindi rested largely on the fact that it was the language of the largest number, though not the majority, of India’s people, and was also understood at least in urban areas across most of northern India — from Bengal to Punjab, and in Maharashtra and Gujarat.
Critics of Hindi pointed to its being less developed than other languages as a literary language and as a language of science and politics.
- Their main fear, however, was that Hindi’s adoption as the official language would place non-Hindi areas — especially South India — at a disadvantage in education and economic life, particularly in competition for government and public-sector appointments.
- Such opponents argued that imposing Hindi on non-Hindi areas would lead to their economic, political, social, and cultural domination by Hindi-speaking areas.
Aware, as leaders of a multilingual country, that they could not ignore or even appear to ignore the interests of any linguistic area, the constitution-makers arrived at a compromise — one that left the constitution’s language provisions “complicated, ambiguous and confusing in some respects.”

The Constitutional Compromise

The Constitution provided that Hindi in the Devanagari script, with international numerals, would be India’s official language.
- English was to continue for all official purposes till 1965, when it would be replaced by Hindi, which was to be introduced in a phased manner; after 1965 it would become the sole official language.
- However, Parliament would retain the power to provide for the use of English for specified purposes even after 1965.
The Constitution laid upon the government the duty to promote the spread and development of Hindi, and provided for the appointment of a commission and a Joint Parliamentary Committee to review progress in this regard.
State legislatures were to decide the matter of the official language at the state level, though the Union’s official language would serve as the language of communication between the states and the Centre, and between one state and another.
Implementation of these language provisions proved to be a formidable task, even with the Congress party in power across the country.
- The issue remained a subject of intense controversy and grew increasingly acrimonious with time, though for many years nobody challenged the underlying provision that Hindi would eventually become the sole official language.

Weaknesses of the Hindi Protagonists

The constitution-makers had hoped that by 1965, the protagonists of Hindi would overcome Hindi’s weaknesses, win the confidence of non-Hindi areas, and thereby earn a longer transitional hold — and that with the rapid growth of education, Hindi would spread naturally and resistance would gradually weaken. Unfortunately, the spread of education proved too slow to make the expected impact.
Moreover, Hindi’s chances of success as an official language were undermined by its own proponents.
- Instead of adopting a gradual, moderate approach relying on persuasion, the more fanatical among them preferred imposition through government action.
- Their zeal tended to provoke a counter-movement. As Nehru told Parliament in 1959, it was their overenthusiasm which came in the way of Hindi’s spread and acceptance, since “the way they approach this subject often irritates others, as it irritates me.”
Hindi also suffered from a lack of social science and scientific writing — in the 1950s, for example, there were hardly any academic journals in Hindi outside the literary field.
- Instead of developing Hindi as a genuine means of communication in higher education and journalism, Hindi leaders were more preoccupied with making it the sole official language.
A major weakness of the Hindi protagonists was that, instead of developing a simple standard language with wide acceptance — or at least popularising the colloquial Hindi already spoken and written across many parts of India — they tried to Sanskritize the language, replacing commonly understood words with newly manufactured, unwieldy terms in the name of linguistic “purity” free of alien influences.
- This made the language increasingly difficult for non-Hindi speakers — and even many Hindi speakers — to understand or learn.
- All India Radio, which could have played an important role in popularising Hindi, instead so Sanskritized its Hindi news bulletins that many listeners switched off their radios during the Hindi news.
- Nehru himself, a Hindi speaker and writer, complained in 1958 that he could not understand the language in which his own Hindi speeches were being broadcast. Yet the purifiers of Hindi did not relent, resisting all attempts to simplify the news broadcasts — driving many previously uncommitted people into the ranks of Hindi’s opponents.
Despite these weaknesses, Nehru and the majority of Indian leaders remained committed to the eventual transition to Hindi as the official language.
- They believed English could not continue forever as India’s official language, even as its study was to be encouraged.
- In the interests of national unity, economic, and political development, they also recognised that the full transition to Hindi should not be time-bound, and should await a more politically auspicious moment when the willing consent of non-Hindi areas could be secured.
- However, non-Hindi leaders became progressively less open to persuasion, and their opposition hardened over time — leading many of them to veer towards demanding an indefinite continuance of English.

The 1956–1960 Controversy and the Official Language Commission

Sharp differences over the official language issue resurfaced during 1956–60, once again revealing disruptive tendencies within the polity.
In 1956, the Report of the Official Language Commission — set up in 1955 under a constitutional provision — recommended that Hindi should start progressively replacing English in various functions of the central government, with the effective change to take place in 1965.
- Its two members from West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, Professor Suniti Kumar Chatterjee and P. Subbaroyan, dissented, accusing the Commission of a pro-Hindi bias and calling for the continuation of English.
  - Ironically, Professor Chatterjee had himself once headed the Hindi Pracharini Sabha in Bengal before independence.
The Commission’s report was reviewed by a special Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC).
- To implement its recommendations, the President issued an order in April 1960 stating that after 1965, Hindi would be the principal official language, but English would continue as the associate official language without any restriction on its use.
- Hindi would also become an alternative medium for the Union Public Service Commission examinations in due course, though for the time being it would be introduced only as a qualifying subject.
In accordance with the President’s directive, the central government took several steps to promote Hindi, including:
- Setting up the Central Hindi Directorate.
- Publishing standard works in Hindi or in Hindi translation across various fields.
- Compulsory Hindi training for central government employees.
- Translation of major legal texts into Hindi and promoting their use by the courts.
These measures aroused suspicion and anxiety in non-Hindi areas and groups — yet the Hindi leaders themselves remained unsatisfied.
- Professor Suniti Kumar Chatterjee, an eminent linguist and former staunch promoter of Hindi, stated in his dissenting note that the Commission’s outlook was one of “Hindi speakers who are to profit immediately and for a long time to come, if not forever.”
- Similarly, in March 1958, C. Rajagopalachari, ex-president of the Hindi Pracharini Sabha in the South, declared that “Hindi is as much foreign to the non-Hindi speaking people as English to the protagonists of Hindi.”
- On the other hand, two major champions of Hindi, Purshottamdas Tandon and Seth Govind Das, accused the Joint Parliamentary Committee of being pro-English.
Many Hindi leaders also attacked Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the Minister of Education, for dragging their feet on implementing the constitutional provisions and deliberately delaying the replacement of English, insisting that the constitutional deadline for the changeover must be rigidly observed.
- In 1957, Dr Lohia’s Samyukta Socialist Party and the Jan Sangh launched a militant movement — continuing for nearly two years — demanding the immediate replacement of English by Hindi.
  - One of their agitational methods, adopted on a large scale by Lohia’s followers, was defacing English signboards of shops and other establishments.

Nehru’s Assurances and the Official Languages Act, 1963

Fully aware of the danger the official language issue posed to Indian polity, the Congress leadership took the grievances of non-Hindi areas seriously and handled the issue with great care and caution, working towards a compromise.
- Nehru repeatedly made clear that an official language could not and would not be imposed on any region, and that the pace of transition to Hindi would have to be determined with regard to the wishes of the non-Hindi people.
- He was supported in this by the leaders of the Praja Socialist Party (PSP) and the Communist Party of India (CPI); the PSP criticised Hindi extremism, warning that it “might severely strain the unity of a multilingual country like India.”
The highlight of Nehru’s approach was a major statement in Parliament on 7 August 1959, in which he assured the non-Hindi people: “I would have English as an alternate language as long as the people require it, and I would leave the decision not to the Hindi-knowing people, but to the non-Hindi-knowing people.”
- He also told the people of the South: “if they do not want to learn Hindi, let them not learn Hindi,” and repeated this assurance in Parliament again on 4 September 1959.
In pursuance of these assurances — though delayed by internal party pressures and the India–China war — the Official Languages Act was passed in 1963.
- Nehru declared its object was “to remove a restriction which had been placed by the Constitution on the use of English after a certain date, namely, 1965.”
- However, this purpose was not fully served, as the assurance was not clearly articulated in the Act itself. The Act stated only that “the English language may . . . continue to be used in addition to Hindi.”
  - Non-Hindi groups criticised the use of the word “may” in place of “shall,” which left the Act ambiguous in their eyes and, in their view, fell short of a statutory guarantee.
  - Many wanted a cast-iron guarantee — not out of distrust of Nehru personally, but out of concern about what would happen after Nehru, especially as pressure from Hindi leaders continued to grow.
The death of Nehru in June 1964 heightened these apprehensions, further fuelled by hasty steps and circulars issued by various ministries preparing the ground for the changeover to Hindi in the coming year.
- For example, instructions were given that the central government’s correspondence with the states would be in Hindi, with an English translation appended only in the case of non-Hindi states.
Lal Bahadur Shastri, Nehru’s successor, proved unfortunately insensitive to the concerns of non-Hindi groups.
- Instead of taking effective steps to counter their fears, he declared he was considering making Hindi an alternative medium in public service examinations — meaning non-Hindi speakers could still compete in English, but Hindi speakers would gain the advantage of using their mother tongue.
In protest, many non-Hindi leaders shifted their approach — instead of merely seeking a slowdown of English’s replacement, they now demanded no deadline be fixed for the changeover at all.
- Some went further still: the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and C. Rajagopalachari demanded that the Constitution be amended to make English the official language of India.

The Anti-Hindi Movement

As 26 January 1965 approached, a fear psychosis gripped the non-Hindi areas, especially Tamil Nadu, creating a strong anti-Hindi movement.
- On 17 January, the DMK organised the Madras State Anti-Hindi Conference, calling for 26 January to be observed as a day of mourning.
- Students, concerned about their career prospects and apprehensive of being outstripped by Hindi speakers in the all-India services, were the most active in organising the widespread agitation, raising and popularising the slogan: “Hindi never, English ever.”
  - They too demanded an amendment to the Constitution, and the students’ agitation soon developed into statewide unrest.
- The Congress leadership, though controlling both the state and central governments, failed to gauge the depth of popular feeling and the widespread character of the movement, and attempted to repress it rather than negotiate.
Widespread rioting and violence followed in the early weeks of February, leading to large-scale destruction of railways and other Union property.
- So strong was the anti-Hindi feeling that several Tamil youth — including four students — burned themselves to death in protest against the official language policy.
- Two Tamil ministers, C. Subramaniam and Alagesan, resigned from the Union cabinet.
- The agitation continued for about two months, claiming over sixty lives through police firings.
The only eminent central leader to show concern for the agitators was Indira Gandhi, then Minister for Information and Broadcasting.
- At the height of the agitation, she flew to Madras, showed sympathy for the agitators, and thereby became, after Nehru, the first northern leader to win the trust of the aggrieved Tamils and of the people of the South in general.
Efforts by the Jan Sangh and Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) to organise a counter-agitation in the Hindi areas against English did not receive much public support.

Outcomes of the Anti-Hindi Movement

The agitation forced both the Madras and Union governments, and the Congress party, to revise their stand — they now decided to yield to the intense public mood in the South and accept the major demands of the agitators.
- The Congress Working Committee announced a series of steps that would form the basis for a central enactment embodying these concessions, leading to the withdrawal of the Hindi agitation.
- This enactment was delayed by the Indo-Pak War of 1965, which temporarily silenced all internal political dissension.
With the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri in January 1966, Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister; having already won the trust of the people of the South, expectations grew that a genuine effort would now be made to resolve the long-festering dispute.
- Other favourable factors included the Jan Sangh’s muting of its anti-English fervour and the SSP’s acceptance of the basic features of the agreement worked out in 1965.
Despite facing economic problems and a weakened parliamentary position after the 1967 elections, Indira Gandhi moved the bill to amend the 1963 Official Language Act on 27 November 1967.
- The Lok Sabha adopted the bill on 16 December 1967, by a vote of 205 to 41.
This Act gave unambiguous legal fortification to Nehru’s assurances of September 1959:
- It provided that the use of English as an associate language, alongside Hindi, for official work at the Centre and for communication between the Centre and non-Hindi states, would continue as long as the non-Hindi states wanted it — giving them full veto power on the question.
- A virtually indefinite policy of bilingualism was thereby adopted.
Parliament also adopted a policy resolution laying down that:
- Public service examinations were to be conducted in Hindi, English, and all the regional languages, with the proviso that candidates should have additional knowledge of Hindi or English.
- The states were to adopt a three-language formula: in non-Hindi areas, the mother tongue, Hindi, and English (or some other national language) would be taught in schools, while in Hindi areas, a non-Hindi language — preferably a southern language — would be taught as a compulsory subject.
In July 1967, the Government of India took a further step on the language question. Based on the report of the Education Commission (1966), it declared that Indian languages would ultimately become the medium of education in all subjects at the university level, though the time-frame for the changeover was left to each university’s discretion.

Conclusion

After many twists and turns, extensive debate, and several agitations — some small, some explosive — India arrived at a widely accepted solution to the difficult problem of its official and link language. Since 1967, this issue has gradually receded from the political scene, demonstrating the Indian political system’s capacity to manage a deeply contentious problem democratically and in a manner that ultimately promoted national consolidation rather than division. It was a problem that could genuinely have jeopardised the country’s unity, but one for which a widely acceptable solution was found through negotiation and compromise — a credit not only to the Congress leadership, despite its hiccups along the way, but also to the Opposition parties, including the DMK, which itself helped cool political tempers in Tamil Nadu once in power.

No political problem, of course, is solved for all time, and problem-solving in a nation as complex as India remains a continuous process. Yet it is significant that Hindi has continued making steady progress in non-Hindi areas through education, trade, tourism, films, radio, and television, even as English — dominant still as an official language — has spread rapidly as a second language, including in Hindi-speaking regions themselves, reflected in the proliferation of English-medium schools across the country. Both Hindi and English are likely to continue growing as link languages even as regional languages increasingly occupy official, educational, and media space — a trend visible in the growth of newspapers across all these languages. English, in particular, seems likely to endure indefinitely as the language of communication among India’s intelligentsia, as a library language, and as the second language of its universities — roles that Hindi, despite the original constitutional vision, has so far failed to fully assume, its cause having been set back for years by the very zeal of its most enthusiastic protagonists.