Among a plethora of problems that faced the country after its independence in 1947, one was of language. Unlike big countries of the world, the US, Russia and China, India then lacked a common language. People wondered how the country could make progress in absence of a lingua franca. The question was not to be brushed aside. The British propagated English language and used it for official business. Though vernaculars were not discouraged, yet English remained the medium of expression. The good thing emanating from this policy was that after independence, we did not feel isolated in our global relations because English, like French, had been accepted by the world as the main binding language of the people of the world. Fortunately, India had not to go through the ordeal of learning English to run the Government. Our political leaders were well educated in English, with many of them having completed their education in a British university.
Nevertheless, the three -language formula had to be adopted for school and college going students just because the largest spoken language in India, meaning Hindi, had to be given space to develop in due course of time. Although English language remained the language for official communication yet local or provincial languages also continued side by side. Notwithstanding deep set prejudice for provincial language, something very natural, the Government adopting very flexible and resilient attitude, gave a long time to Hindi to develop as the national language of India. The popularity of Hindi today after nearly seven decades of independence is very satisfactory in almost all parts of the country. The Central and State Governments did make substantial investment in theoretical sense to promote Hindi among the citizens of India. Radio and television as well as the print media played significant role in its promotion and popularity. But the largest and most effective role in popularizing it has been played by the film industry in Bollywood. The simple and sweet use of Hindi vocabulary by the Bollywood stands in direct contrast to the verbose and archaic Hindi used by the radio. Ultimately, a time came when the AIR, too, had to change the tone and tenor and shift to simple and pleasant Hindi. The future augurs well for Hindi language and literature and a time will come soon when no one province of India will call to be having the monopoly of Hindi language be it UP or Bihar or Madhya Pradesh. Hindi as a subject is included in the curriculum of almost all universities, colleges and schools in India. Most of national level competitive examinations including those for IAS, IFS, and IPS etc. are conducted by the UPSC simultaneously in English and Hindi languages. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the first Indian Prime Minister to address the UN General Assembly in Hindi.
Addressing the 10th World Hindi Conference in Bhopal in which delegates from about forty countries of the world participated, the Prime Minister said that English, Chinese and Hindi are going to be influential in the digital world. Citing a personal example, the Prime Minister said that he often thinks if he had not learnt Hindi, what would be his position today. However, sounding a note of caution, the Prime Minister rightly warned that patronizing Hindi should not mean ignoring regional languages. We should not allow regional language to die down just because we remained glued to Hindi or English. Regional languages contain very rich fund of knowledge and wisdom and we cannot afford to lose that at any cost. We would like to go beyond what the PM has suggested. In the modern world, the concept of global village is gaining much ground. This is because of a number of factors like fast growing trade relations, development and commonality of futuristic vision and approach to human problems and increased interaction between people and nations. This implies that people begin to learn many important languages. There was a time when Chinese and Japanese people thought it unpatriotic to learn and speak English. Today that thinking stands reversed. In this context, therefore, for us in India, just because ours is a developing country, our youth need to learn as many important foreign languages as they can besides Hindi and English. We have about a million Indians working in Gulf countries where Arabic is spoken. If they learn Arabic, chances of improving their job conditions become bright. That is the benefit of learning a foreign language besides our own. In final analysis, it will be said that for Indians, speaking good Hindi and learning other languages including the local dialects is an asset.
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