Should India adopt English as its official National language??

Question

Hindi was adopted as the National Language, however it doesnt align culturally with more than 50% of the Indian population.It is not at all popular in the Southern part of the country, and is NOT the corporate lingua franca, nor is it the international medium of instruction for Mathematics or Science. I would like to know what people feel about this and whether it is time to correct this state of affairs ,which was essentially created as a compromise post-independence. Whereas English creates common ground for instruction and communication across regions and it is also essential for business at a national and international level.

I see "English" as a language that has evolved and distanced itself somewhat from its Anglo-Saxon cultural/political roots, and English is not about a "particular" country any more.

And oh -btw I am NOT talking about abolishing Hindi.

Answer 1

The official figure of 'mother tongues' spoken in India is 1,683, of which an estimated 850 are in daily use and 24 languages are spoken by a million or more people.

While talking about cultural alignment, you must first understand a few statistics. Hindi is spoken as a first language by over 337 million people (approximately one third of India's population) and learned as a second language by millions more. Engilish is an oficially accepted language in India spoken by 20 - 25 million people in the country. So do you notice the difference here?

Just becuase few people cannot speak hindi you want english to be the official language. But the fact is that there are more number of Indians who can't speak English. Since Hindi is spoken by most of the population, it is the national language. Besides there are a lot other official languages adopted by the government.

Article 343 of the Indian Constitution recognises Hindi in Dēvanāgari script as the official language of the union government; the Constitution also allows for the continuation of use of the English language for official purposes. Article 345 provides constitutional recognition to "Official languages" of the union to include any language adopted by a State Legislature as the official language of that state. In effect, there are "Official Languages at the state and center level but no one "national language". Until the Twenty-First Amendment of the Constitution in 1967, the country recognised 14 official regional languages. The Eighth Schedule and the Seventy-First Amendment provided for the inclusion of Sindhi, Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali, thereby increasing the number of official regional languages of India to 18. Individual states, whose borders are mostly drawn on socio-linguistic lines, are free to decide their own language for internal administration and education. The Constitution of India recognises 22 "regional languages", spoken throughout the country, namely Bengali, Assamese, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Meitei, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. Hindi, apart from being an official language of the Union of India, is the official language of the states Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttaranchal, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and the National Capital Territory of Delhi. English is the co-official language of the Indian Union, and that each of the several states mentioned above may also have another co-official language.

As far as it international medium of communication is concerned, peeople worldwide started learning languages like spanish, french, germany, russian, etc. This is simply due to the fact that these countries didn't give up their local language but instead developed themselves and made the whole world accept the values of their language. But here in India, there are a hell lot of idiotic people that think that adoption of a foreign language would accelkrate the progress. Instead we could focus on creating values for our own national language and let the whole world adopt ours.

About business, do you know the in China, a country whose economy is growing rapidly, most of the business people speak chines. Instead of they themselves learning english hire a translator to take care of international affairs. Japan, the number one in technology carried out all it's gevernment jobs on papers even after the advent of computers. They adopted computers for government routine sectors only after a programme was developped to identify japanese script in the computer.

Language, does not restrict or enhance progress of a nation, the efforts of the citizens contribute into it. The U.S.A. took more than 200 years to develop into a strong and completely developed nation as today (British America broke of with It's colonial sister in the year 1776). India has just gone through 60 years. have patience...

:-)

Answer 2

I think the questioner has asked a good question.

In trying to examine the concept of national language Wikipedia explains the following : A national language is a language (or language variant, i.e. dialect) which represents the national identity of a nation or country.

A national language is used for political and legal discourse and so designated by a country's government. Some countries have more than one national language, such as Canada which uses both French and English. A national language is not to be confused with the predominant language, which is spoken by the majority of people from within a country's borders.

Whilst in Singapore, Chinese comprise of 73% of population of Singapore, its national language is Malay and not Mandarin-Chinese reflecting the identity of Malay Singaporeans who were the original inhabitants but who are now a minority.


India is a diverse nation with around 50 language and many dialects. Whilst Hindi does not culturally align with more than 50% of population so does English. I would imagine that only around 10% of population would be conversant with English language.

India could think of retaining Hindi as the national language and also adopting English as the national language.

However it would always be very difficult to find a solution where a billion people would be happy. Therefore a need of finding a compromise between a practical solution and people's need to feel connected to India by the medium of language.

Answer 3

I don't think it's a good idea at all. Although you are not talking about abolishing Hindi, when people begin speaking a language that everyone knows, indigenous languages begin to die, because they become less useful and less practical. It happens in Francophone Africa, and in many nations that were once European colonies. Language is an important part of one's cultural identity. The "International medium of instruction for mathematics and science" should not be a factor at all. That would be suggesting that ALL countries that do not speak that language should make it their official language, rather than just India.

English is only essential for business because the United States is a great economic power. China and India are both on the rise as economic powers, so Hindi and Mandarin are becoming more useful globally in business and politics. Indians do not need to adapt to Westernization and speak English. Americans and Europeans who want to deal with India should be just as willing to learn Hindi as the Indians to speak English. Saying that English should be spoken over other languages is unfair and ethnocentric. (and English is even less "culturally alligned" than Hindi, considering it's alligned with British culture)

I have an appreciation for linguistic, cultural, and spiritual diversity throughout the world, so the idea of English becoming dominant over native Indian languages is not appealing to me at all.

Answer 4

It's a horrible idea. Yes, there are many idfferent languages, but imposing a Western langauge on as Asian nation hardly seems right. However, having the most largey spoken langauge as the lingua francae seems to be a good compromise. In a way, it's preserving a cultural identidy. It's not like all the other lagnauges are being phased out -- all the langauges are official in their respective state. This allows most Indians to be bi- or even tri- lingual (with English). Making English official would make younger/furture generations think that there's no use for any other langauge, and an "America" effect would take place, thus weakening Indian culture.

English could be kept as an International language. A langauge for education, science, and math. But let Hindi, and other respective state langauges be the language of the Indian people, cultural identidy.

This is how I see it. And it also seems like I'm alone on this one. >_<

Answer 5

I think your country should take a look at the Philippines closely. The Philippines has 170 languages and dialects spoken all over the archipelago. The government declared a national language which was based on the Tagalog dialect. Therefore everyone in the Philippines was forced to learn Tagalog in schools. However this is not commonly used by the rest of the regions as we have our own dialects. When the Americans occupied the Philippines in 1899, we had the opportunity to learn English and use it well. When the Americans left in 1946, we use English in school instruction, books, commercial and even government transactions, forms and debates. This made the Philippines the 3rd largest country in the world that uses English extensively. However, caution should be taken. English is so much used that parents are giving English names to their children sometimes in awkward spellings. English words and grammar are used in the local dialect with strange results. The local dialects and English language is slowly merging as one. In fact English proficiency (proper English use) in the Philippines is starting to decline. The Philippines does not have a good public school system and most of the poor are left out. Since these poor people are not proficient in English, most of them are in a disadvantage during government exams since they could not understand the English questions well. Recently there has been a growing debate that we should teach more in the local dialect so that these students can understand the subjects well. The Japanese are not English speakers yet they are among the most intelligent people in the world. Bottom line is, we need good minds not linguists.

Answer 6

India should use English as official language as same as now.when it comes to national language it is case of sensitivity of different people have on their respective languages.personally I think there is no need to have national language.showing one language as national language than others,can cause damage cultural aspects as well as feelings.we should be proud that we are diverse. If anyone asks what is your national language then I would reply 'we have 22 languages'.dont compare us with China and Japan.we are different.development can happen without this problem of language.

Answer 7

Unofficially the English language has predominantly occupied in all wakls of life.Where ever the two languages is already in use is still being used. And recently, the software and the computer usage has already occupied the usage portion of English in large quontum.The higher study education is already in English only, no highly translation is possible and secondly even if you translate ,the depth of the meaning will not really reach.Hence rather than making the English the official National language, let be continued as it is.If you put in black and white , there are certain elements, will use this oppurtunity to create vulnerable situation like babar musjid.

Answer 8

Indian here, I agree. Most schools now teach as english as the main language, and Hindi is taught in a manner similar to how spanish is taught in America. The future generations will be english speaking dominant in India.

Indian is divided into several different states, and each state has its own language. That is what they use to communicate in the most with, not Hindi. Hindi is the unifying language, or was... English has taken that role.

Answer 9

it would be a good idea but i don't think it should replace Hindi. i mean half the country does speak the language. also Hindi as a language is part of the Indian culture. its like saying you can understand french culture through English. you really cant. i take french and if some1 was to explain certain aspects of french culture to me in English i would be like "HUH! that doesn't make sense". but when i look at the same culture through the french language it totally makes sense. though its not popular in the south but i don't think even the south would agree to getting rid of Hindi even though no one speaks it there.

however, i do think people should be taught English because English is a international language and like you said it would help business, communication and etc.

Answer 10

Yes, probably it should! Probably then we will have more effective ways of learning the language (nationals of English speaking country to teach us English). We wouldn't be left struggling to search for English fluency classes or spending thousands on English fluency classes even after 15/20 years of schooling done in English. We wont have people thinking about every non-English speaker as 'person having low upbringing'. Nor would non-English speakers have complex of being a 'low performer'.
Anyways, language of communication is more about having a 'convenient medium of communication' rather than about 'losing cultural identity'.