The Hindu : Government to bring comprehensive legislation on languages

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Dec 24, 2003

National

National

Government to bring comprehensive legislation on languages

By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi Dec. 23. The Rajya Sabha today approved a Constitution (One-Hundredth Amendment) Bill, 2003, to include Bodo, Santhali, Maithali and Dogri in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution taking the number of official languages to 22.

The Bill was passed after the Deputy Prime Minister, L K. Advani, assured members to bring a comprehensive legislation to include more languages in the Eighth Schedule after consulting experts and linguists "as it is there is demand for inclusion of 35 more languages,'' he said.

Mr. Advani said the Constitution Amendment to include Bodo was brought in as part of the memorandum of settlement between Bodos, Assam Government and the Centre. Santhali language was included to keep the balance as it is a widely spoken language by another tribal group in the area.

Regarding a demand for substituting English with any other Indian language, he said for the unity of the country it was necessary that both English and Hindi co-exist. "National unity is more important than language issue," he said, adding that de-linking from English was not a good thing as India had its advantages in Information Technology sector over China because of the knowledge of English.

Earlier initiating the discussion, the Congress member, Pranab Mukherjee, said while he had no objection to any language being included in the Eighth Schedule, the Government should have consulted the Standing Committee to bring a comprehensive and well thought-out legislation. According to him, piecemeal legislations as this would only create rift in the country.

L.M. Singhvi (BJP) said while the intention was not to reduce the impact or acceptability of Hindi by including more languages in the Eighth Schedule, let there not be a feeling that only when people demonstrate or take to the streets they were heard. He said that he had been campaigning for inclusion of Rajasthani since 1962.

While Chandrakala Pandey (CPM) named more than a dozen languages that should be included in the Eighth Schedule, Rama Shankar Kaushik (SP) was loudly cheered when he urged the Government to differentiate between "Bhasaha aur Boli'' (Language and dialect). "If you cease to differentiate between language and dialect, you will end up reducing the status of Hindi as the official language and that will create tension on the basis of language.''

Laloo Prasad Yadav (RJD) said that inclusion of a language or dialect in the Eighth Schedule should be done carefully and comprehensively so that there was no dispute on the medium of examinations, finding teachers, programmes on radio and television.

Arjun Singh (Congress) also cautioned the Government to be cautious in not creating circumstances when dialects became language and a language gets disintegrated.

Saying that Hindi was not a "majority language," S.V. Verumbi (DMK) demanded that the official language of a State be included as official language of the country. He was interrupted by Amar Singh (SP) who raised an objection to opposition to Hindi. "I respect Tamil but to oppose Hindi is not correct.'' Janeshwar Mishra (SP) felt that no Indian language could flourish as long as recognition was given to English remained.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National