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Modi wants more Indians to speak Hindi, but some states are shouting 'No'

NEW DELHI - In India, the land of more than a thousand tongues, few things inflame passions more than language. Touching the hot button comes with political peril. Just ask the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. High-profile brawls have erupted recently over Mr Modi's push for the nationwide adoption of Hindi, the language of his power base in northern India and a symbol of his campaign to unify the country around the ideology of Hindu nationalism. Late in June, the government of Maharashtra, a state in western India governed by Mr Modi's party, was forced to retract a policy requiring that Hindi be taught in elementary schools. Opposition politicians, residents and others had called the policy an affront to Marathi, the region's native language. In Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state with a history of rioting over efforts to make Hindi mandatory, the chief minister has raged for months against an education policy pushed by the Modi government, claiming that it is trying to force students to learn the language. Tamil Nadu sued the central government in May after it said that it would withhold education funds until the state implemented the policy. "It is common sense that pushing any one language will harm the national integration and unity of a linguistically diverse nation like India," said Mr Niranjanaradhya V.P., an activist who studies how education affects childhood development. "It is because of this imposition that there is so much resistance by people." Central government officials have been careful to emphasise publicly that India's strength lies in its linguistic diversity. When they attack any of India's languages, their target is English, calling it a legacy of colonialism that must be de-emphasised to build a new India. In June, Mr Amit Shah, India's minister for home affairs, said at a book launch that Indian speakers of English should be "ashamed" and that native languages were India's true jewels. But even as they publicly celebrate the country's polyglot nature, leaders of Modi's political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, have made the spread of Hindi a cornerstone of their overarching goal of remaking India into a Hindu-first nation. Hindi and English are India's two official languages, and Hindi is the mother tongue of the biggest group of Indians. As they work to forge what they call the new India rooted in a glorious Hindu past, Mr Modi government officials increasingly refer to the country as Bharat, a name derived from Sanskrit, the ancient language from which Hindi is drawn. The Modi government has steadily promoted Hindi across the nation by naming new public programs, such as for education, agriculture or development, in the language. In 2020, Modi's party overhauled India's decades-old national education policy to introduce more traditional, rather than Western, styles of teaching. It continued India's policy of teaching three languages in schools, but it gave states the flexibility to pick them, as long as two out of three were native to India. Tamil Nadu has refused to abide by that policy, which the state government claims is a way to force the teaching of Hindi. Its top leader, M.K. Stalin, has said that his state has no need for Hindi because it has achieved high literacy rates teaching in Tamil and English. Tamil Nadu and other southern states worry that the imposition of Hindi would wipe out their cultural heritage, including a family of languages with Dravidian, rather than Sanskrit, roots. Ordinary Tamils express pride in their language, which is rich in poetry and literature. While Tamil identity does not have much bearing on the state's politics, "there is absolute resistance to Hindi", said Ms Nirmala Lakshman, the author of The Tamils: A Portrait Of A Community. It is a general and diffuse sentiment that can morph into outrage when there is a threat of imposition, she said. In Maharashtra, the trouble started in April after Mr Devendra Fadnavis, the chief minister, issued a diktat that Hindi would be mandatory in elementary schools, in addition to English and Marathi. The blowback was immense. Mr Sushil Kedia, an investor, was trolled after posting on social media that he had struggled to learn Marathi despite being a longtime resident of the state. Vandals also attacked his offices. Mr Kedia later apologised for his comments. When the government's efforts to push Hindi create outrage, they often also generate political opportunities. The fight over Marathi reunited two prominent state politicians, estranged cousins who had a falling out nearly two decades ago and created their own political parties. "Everyone here has forgotten party divisions for the sake of Marathi," said one of them, Mr Raj Thackeray. "We have come together; we will stay together," said the other, Mr Uddhav Thackeray. The two marked their triumph over the weekend at a celebratory rally. The Thackeray reunion comes before important municipal elections and after Maharashtra's 2024 state elections, in which both of the Thackeray-led parties suffered major losses. On July 12, Mr Stalin, the Tamil Nadu leader, congratulated the two on their "victory". In a post on the social platform X, he said the campaign to reject the imposition of Hindi had "transcended state boundaries." NYTIMES

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