By This paper by Rama Kant Agnihotri discusses the debates of the Constituent Assembly (1946-1950) with regards to language and the language rights of minorities.
Through the course of the paper the author wishes to examine the decisions made by the Constituent Assembly despite the presence of vested interests from various majority groups. He goes on to state that all decisions regarding language were made in the larger interests of the country even though it was passed by an elite majority that was present in the constituent assembly. Ultimately, the primary objective was to protect and preserve the existing political and religious safeguards even if it meant the compromise of the linguistic rights of the minorities.
The constituent assembly met for the first time in December, 1946 and held their last meeting in January, 1950. Agnihotri makes the observation that, there is a sharp contrast to how seriously the assembly discussed and debated the issue of language and how the subject of language has been treated since independence. The decision that India would not have a national language or that Hindi would be the official language or even that English would continue to used for official purposes were made after a lot of debate and discussions.
Often, the result of consensual politics is the suppression of the voices of minorities, especially when prejudices are widely shared. Due to this very reason, certain questions pertaining to linguistic rights of minorities were suppressed during the debates of the constituent assembly. When queries were made about Hindi being made the official or national language, they were immediately shut down. Similarly, any requests to include Mundari, Oraon and Gondi in the schedule of Languages were ignored.
The members of the constituent assemble failed to realise the essence of India and that was the harmony within at the heterogeneity at societal levels in the process of deliberating on constitutional subjects. Even though it was agreed that future generations could make the appropriate changes, especially in matters of language; such decisions got influenced by stereotypes and homogenous perspectives and as result, the linguistic rights of the minorities got pushed to the back burners.
Many underestimates language as barely a means of communication. Language has an effect policy matters in very complicated ways. Language is the foundation upon which our worlds are built upon. The entire human network is created and maintained through language. Moreover, all present knowledge and future knowledge is rooted in language. The author states that language is a part of one’s identity and knowledge base. The constituent assembly debates failed to take this perspective into account.
The subject of language posed a great deal of difficulty for the constituent assembly. In his concluding remarks, Rajendra Prasad said, “Overwhelming majority and compromise are the basis of all decisions.” The constituent assembly left many decisions for future governments to make. But through the decisions they did make; it let individual states use regional languages, decided the languages for the courts of justice and ensured a sense of continuity in the different spheres of daily activity.
However, they also left behind unanswered questions; the question of the medium of education in multilingual spaces was not answered, easy access to English was not provided for as more efforts were put towards promoting the Sanskritised form of Hindi. This continues to have a knock-on effect even today as underprivileged sects of society rarely get access to such an opportunity despite the dominance of the English language across most walks of life.
The voices of the minorities were severely suppressed in this whole process. Democracy in its essence means the harmony in the face of the so many diversities. The 8th Schedule has languages only from the Indo Aryan and Dravidian families. In spite of, languages like Bhili or Bodo, which were spoken by lakhs of people; Sanskrit, which is spoken by a few thousand, managed to find a place in the 8th Schedule.
