Govt policies & Interventions

India, renowned for its linguistic pluralism tries to give an impression on the global stage that it has one pre-eminent language. Is that move acceptable?

KEY POINTS

Issue

·         Union Minister recently said the government continues to take measures for the acceptance of Hindi as one of the official languages of the UN.

·         If the government were to succeed, Hindi would become the seventh official language of the UN after Arabic, English, Russian, French, Spanish and Chinese.

Procedure

·         For Hindi to be accepted as an official language of the UN, it will involve the adoption of a resolution by the General Assembly with a two-thirds majority and also share the financial expenditure that would be incurred in the process.

Why it is unacceptable?

·         Article 343 of the Constitution of India deems English and Hindi to be official languages of the Union and not as the National language of India.

·         It makes no sense for a country like India, which prides itself on its multilingualism, to make a case for Hindi at the UN.

·         It will be quite incongruous for India to spend good money on interpretation and translation at the UN, when many of its own representatives use English.

·         The policy seems to ignore the non-Hindi speaking ministers representing various territories of Indian Union.

·         Meanwhile, Indian parliament itself is not multilingual.

·         For instance, our Indian Parliament provides simultaneous interpretation services for Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Oriya, Tamil and Urdu only.

·         When a member speaks in any of these nine languages, the speeches are translated into Hindi and English only.

·         Therefore, a Malayalam-speaker will not have his speech translated to Bengali but only to Hindi and English.

·         But in European Union Parliament in Strasbourg where 23 languages are simultaneously translated into one another.

·         Without making the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha multilingual and inclusive, any efforts to make Hindi an official language of the UN will renew the fears of non-Hindi speakers.

·         As a country known for its linguistic pluralism, India should not give an impression on the global stage that it has one pre-eminent language.

Please Review.

PLZ REVIEW