India: Retreat to English

Languages are the pedigrees of nations.

— Samuel Johnson A land of vastly mixed pedigrees, India has been forced to concede again that its own indispensable language is English. After meeting with the chief ministers of India's 16 states, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri reaffirmed in Parliament last week that English would continue to be an "associate" official language. By this promise Shastri hoped to calm the linguistic strife in South India, which has cost at least 60 lives and threatened to bring down his government.

India's 1950 constitution provided that during the first 15 years of independence, English as well as Hindi—the language of North India and the Congress Party leaders—would be an official language. Thereafter Hindi would become the only official tongue and English would assume associate status. When the change went into effect in January, South India's non-Hindi-speaking people feared that henceforth they would be discriminated against in government employment and in other ways. Riots flared (TIME, Feb. 5), and the Cabinet ministers from South India threatened to resign unless English was fully restored. But Shastri also faced angry pressure from the Hindi side of his verbally violent party. Last week 106 Congress Party M.P.s from North India petitioned the government—in English—to uphold Hindi as the only official language. Fanatics of the pro-Hindi Jan Sangh Party prowled the streets of Delhi, blotting out English signs with coal tar.

Caught in the crossfire, Shastri temporized, upheld Hindi while at the same time promising that there would be no anti-Hindi discrimination. There will be equality in confusion: all civil-service applicants will probably be given exams in Hindi, English, and one of the other 13 major languages of India. In his small, dry voice, Shastri promised "a study of all aspects involved." Critics complained of his lack of leadership, but Shastri's very weakness and vagueness stopped the violence at least for the time being.