India’s Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah and the ruling BJP – Party is trying to advance Hindi as the national pride language of Bharat and to supplant English.
Bharat [India] has many ethnic languages but about 43% of Bharat people speak mostly Hindi (as well as Bhojpuri, an off shoot of Hindi that was spoken by indentureds or girmityas). Since less than 8% other languages such as Telugu and Bengali are spoken, it makes it easier to implement Hindi as the national language against opposition epically from the non-Hindi belt that feel threatened by the proliferation of Hindi and who instead prefer to have their colonial language English.
Hindi language is not only about pride for Bharat but it also allows most importantly for Indians to converse covertly when among others.
Growing up in Trinidad, most adult Indians up to the seventies could have communicated to some degree in Hindi as a covert language.
In New York City in the seventies most NRI – Bharat Indians could not communicate with any unifying Bharat language but English.
The Bangladesh people on the other hand had a unifying language (Bangla or Bengali) and can communicate without others knowing what is said. English is important as a global language for commerce ,but Indians and Bharat Indians need to have a national language in case of war to communicate covertly by not using English.
When a Nation does not have a unifying national language it’s much easier for that nation to be conquered. Africans slaves in the ‘NEW WORLD’ did not have a unifying national language which made it difficult to communicate with their brethren and made it easier for their slave masters to keep the slaves divided.
It’s important for every nation and this is also true for Bharat to have a national language to be a strong nation.
By Vassan Ramracha