The ruling classes bid to pre serve the best of everything to itself and at the same time keep the slaves as slaves is nowhere so effectively felt as in India’s language policy. The ruling class com prizing the top 10% of India’s upper caste Hindus tells the slaves. To read, write and speak in their own mother tongue. And also, eat, sleep and die in their own mother tongue, A blind love for the mother tongue and a deep hatred against English and other languages is created through the napkin papers owned by this ruling class, Even the official media is injecting the poison of language pride into the hearts of the slaves. Even in an international city like Bombay, State owned bus boards, even their route numbers, are in Marathi, Shiy Sena, a fascist party, controlling the Bombay civic body, wants to drive out non Maha rashtrians from the city. In Bang lore, India’s fifth biggest city, Kannada fanatics are tarring name boards in English and Tamil. The Tamil speaking minorities of Bang lore despite being its original in habitants are facing the danger of being driven out. This blind love for one’s mother tongue will soon develop into hatred against those who speak other languages. In cinema, songs, dramas, books and newspapers and on every silly occasion political leaders, actors, writers, journalists ask the slays to die for their mother tongue and drive out the “foreigners”, meaning those who do not speak the mother tongue of the area. All over India people who deliver speeches in English are shouted down. The ruling class has succeeded in creating a mania for the mother tongue. And finally this monster of the mother tongue will eat its very creator. Ironically, it is this ruling class, also the most vocal in advocating ekta (unity), which is building walls around each language group to keep others out, The leadership of dividing India is with the ruling class itself. Already English is replaced as official and court language by the mother tongue of the area. English typewriters are fast going out of use that means in couple of years, a person speaking one language will be a total foreigner in a different language territory. Using mother tongue to speak, read and write is considered patriotic. Anybody resorting to English is dubbed unpatriotic, if not antinational. English is going out of fashion. In the Hindi belt, English is dead long back. Each linguistic State is becoming an island.
But all this mania for the mother tongue is for the masses. Mother tongue for the masses and English for the classes. Because the ruling class knows that English is the passport to become a ruler. It sends its children only to English con vents. We have two sets of education system in India: language education for the slaves to keep them as slaves and English education for the rulers. The slaves succumbing to the ruling class propaganda against English, which is dubbed a foreign language, educate their children in their respective mother tongue and this education makes them fit to become clerks, The rulers educate their children only in English and this prepares them to become rulers. All this has led to such a serious language fanaticism that today there is a veritable war going on between Karnataka and Maha rashtra on the Belgaum border issue, between Kerala and Karnataka on the Kasargod issue, between Konkanis and Marath is in Goa, between Bengalis and Gork has in Darjeeling, between Hindus and Sikhs in Punjab, between Ben gales and Assamese in Assam, Sind his and Marath is near Kalyan, Bombay.
These linguistic walls have divided us so much that today there is no Indian in India. We are Punjab is, Sindhis, Malaya lees, Bengalis, Gujaratis and like that. Even in the Hindi spoken in the “Hindi belt”, there is lot of difference. Gujaratis and Rajasthanis will protest if asked
What they speak is Hindi. The trials of the Chotanagpur have their own languages, The Hindi belt is as much divided as any other part, and soon more walls will be built. The Assam govt, order imposing Assamese language on non Assamese means denial of govt. jobs to Muslims, tribal etc.
Language is the foundation on which the structure of sub nationalism is built, the “language fanaticism”, as it is described by the ruling class, will certainly fragment the country. Nobody can stop this process. Language died Pakistan when the Bengali Muslims resisted the domination of the Punjabi Muslims; Language feud is breaking Lanka in an ethnic war. This is what is called as the “nationality question” in Marxist language. And all future struggles will be essentially based on this principle. Politicians pour oil on this bumming fire of subnational list because it serves their interests. Language cuts across religions and even caste, But language alone is not the binding factor. That the Punjab is speaking Hindus dis owed their own mother tongue out of hatred against Sikhs, who also speak the same language, proves that language alone does not create nation. The Tamil speaking Muslims of Sri Lanka are not with the Tamil Hindus. The Hindus and Muslims of Kerala speak Malayali and have everything else in common, yet the Hindus hate the Muslims there, India is a very complicated country. We have the pull of language, jati, religion and the territory. The tribals have their ethnic bond. That is why we very often stress the point that India is not a nation but a group of nationalities. India was never a nation. The first people to artificially unite these diverse elements were the British. The moment they left, India got divided.
That is why for the first time we have no “national leader”, EMS Namboodiripad may be a big “communist” leader but how many will come to listen to him if he addresses a public meeting in rural Gujarat? We have no more national leaders like Nehru, Patel or M.K. Gandhi because Indians don’t consider themselves as a nation. We have some political leaders but they are leaders for their particular jati or area.
This urge for sub nationalism is a universal phenomenon, particularly in Asia and Africa, It is an inevitable process in a country with hundreds of languages, jati’s and serious ethnic divisions, The tribal district of Bastar in Madhya Pradesh is larger than the State of Kerala, That is why we often hear demands for Khalistan, Gorkha Jand, Uttarkhand, Jharkhand, Dal itastan, Dravida Nadu, Telgu Desam, etc. The “sons of the soil” slogans, “foreigners get out” are all cruder forms of this nationality urge which has made the persecuted nationalities feel that self-respect is more important than self-rule, The growing economic crisis created by the ruthless exploitation by the ruling class, leading to serious unemployment is further fuelling this linguistic fire, The latest explosion in Ulhasnagar, near Bombay, where the Shiy Sena fought its own ally, BJP, proves the internal contradictions Of the ruling class, The Sindhis of Uthasnagar constitute 55% of the towns 300,000 population and as small traders they found BJP Serving their interests better than SS. But the lumpen Marathis vote for SS because that fans their hatred against the more cunning Sindhis. This led to the murder of a SS leader and the explosion followed, Both SS and BJP are part of the Hindu Nazi front but when the language issue came they got divided, In Goa, every party is divided on the Konkani issue,
Allover India, the ruling class is Caught in its own contradictions, It Is this ruling class which is leading the struggle both for and against this sub nationalism, They sing both the songs of unity and also vivisection of India, Because it is caught in the jaws of the sharpening traditions. It is Jyoti Basu who is crushing the urges of the Gorky has in Darjeeling. It is the Hindu Nazis who are distributing trishuls to kill Sikhs. The ruling class is digging its own grave. We should do everything to make it dig as deep a grave.as possible and push it into it, SIM, Joshi, a Pune “Socialist Brahmin”, came to Belgaum to build a wall against the Kannadigas. And these linguistic walls will divide India paving way for its vivisection, the ruling class arrogance not to recognize the sentiments of the Nagas, Mizos, and other ethnic tribes of the northeast is driving them towards secession, such an intolerance of minority expressions will deprive the country of its diversity. Kashmiris are already feeling they are not Indians and on the top of this wound the ruling class is trying to rub the salt. By this the ruling class is only increasing the number of enemies within.
India is not a nation but a group of nationalities. Babasaheb Ambedkar has beautifully outlined this point in his famous book, Pakistan or Partition of India (Thacker & Co., Bombay 1945), A nation is different a country is different. Several nations can exist within a country, USSR, USA,
China is prominent examples for this, If only the ruling class recognizes the diversity and the urges of the different nationalities, India can remain as one country. But this is a big IF, Or else it will break. And if it breaks our people, the persecuted nationalities, cannot be held responsible for it, because we did not build these walls of separation.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 15, 1986
