India has the second largest number of languages in the world: 740. However, after 15 years, with the continuing opposition of non-Hindi speaking states, the Official Languages Act of 1963 allowed English to continue indefinitely until legislation to the contrary. Some people consider Urdu to be the language of Muslims, and only a pure Hindi devoid of Urdu words is …
Big Picture Connecting Tamils and the State of Tamil Nadu to Hindu religious centres in north and western India has become a focus of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s politics. Mr. Modi offers Hindutva’s cultural nationalism that cuts across linguistic identities as a counter to Dravidian politics that dominate the State. Recently, 3,000 people from Tamil Nadu, most being descendants of …
There is a raging debate in the country about the ‘idea of India,’ though the phrase is rarely explained by those who use it. It may refer to the many origins of India’s diverse populations and cultures, or may even be used as a synonym for what we think was or is the Indian ‘civilisation’. However, by ‘civilisation’ one implies …
Historically, the symbiotic relationship of a language with the idea of a nation has been marked by much contestation across the world since the nineteenth century. At the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee held on April 8, 2022, Home Minister Amit Shah commented that in all the north-eastern States Hindi would be made compulsory until Class 10. …
