Idea of one country, one language was bequeathed to us by colonialists | The Indian Express

Idea of one country, one language was bequeathed to us by colonialists | The Indian Express

Written by Sowmya Dechamma |Updated: September 20, 2019 11:13:47 am

The writer is assistant professor, Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Hyderabad.

Idea of one country, one language was bequeathed to us by colonialists

All totalitarian regimes — communist, militarist, right-wing or even social-welfarist — seem to share an anxiety about plurality. For, that could lead to questions being asked from the powers that be. Plurality is chaos, while a unitary entity is controllable.

What the rest of India objects to is not Hindi, but its imposition by the machinery of the state. (Photo: Getty Images/Thinkstock)

Unlike in the past when the Hindi Divas would go by rather uneventfully, the day got special attention this year. Tweeting in Hindi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said: “Today, if one language can do the work of uniting the country, then it is the most spoken language, Hindi. There is so much influence of English on us that we cannot talk in Hindi without its help.” The minister also said that people should realise that if languages are lost to foreign influence, “we will be severed from our culture”.