ENGLISH IN INDEPENDENT INDIA
India, after becoming independent in 1947, was left with a colonial language, ie. English, as the language of government.
English was the only language used for official purpose in the British India.
The University Education Commission-1948 recommended the regional languages as the media of instruction.
Nationalist motivations were of the opinion that an indigenous Indian language should be adopted as the official language. Hindi seemed most qualified for that, since it had more native speakers than any other Indian language and was already widely used in interethnic communication.
When, the Constitution of India was made, it was declared in Article 343 (1) that Hindi will be the official Union language. It was also mentioned that over a period of fifteen years since the commencement of the Indian Constitution, Hindi will replace English, which was used as the official language of the country.
However, there was provision made that Parliament can decide whether to use English as an official language or not.
There were, however, several problems with selecting Hindi.
Firstly, Hindi is not evenly distributed throughout the country; e.g. in the South.
Secondly, it was thought that the speakers of other languages would be offended by its selection; other indian languages, for example Tamil, Telugu and Bengali, had as much right to be national languages as
Hindi.
In spite of these problems, Hindi was chosen as the na
tional language in the constitution, and English
as to be replaced by Hindi in fifteen years' time.
The non-Hindi speaking communities across the country protested on the
language from E
1963. The government wanted to adapt a policy which would help to maintain the status quo
According to the Official Language Act, 1963, since 26th January, 1965, Hindi in Devanagari script has
been declared the official language of the Union
However, Section 3 of the Official Language Act mentioned that English may also be used for official
purposes even after 1965. English has been given the status of the 'subsidiary official language' of India
in 1967 a law was passed which allowed the use of both Hindi and English for all official purposes and
that situation sl exists. As a result, English continues to be a language of both power and prestige.
The Official Language Rules, 1976 also specifies various usages of these official languages. The Department
of Official Language was form
evelopments and usages of the official languages of the country.
aspect of the change in official
nglish to Hindi. This protest resulted in the enactment of the Official Language Act,
ed under the Ministry of Home Affairs, which is authorized to monitor the developments and usages of the official languages of the country.