Thread by @KumarSeshadri

India is a veritable #TowerofBabel, with more than two dozen official languages and hundreds of dialects.

This has caused lots of tension because everyone wants to preserve their culture. There's also the feeling that there should be some link language to connect the whole.
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For a long time, #English was the link language, but self-styled nationalists, especially from the ruling #BJP, felt this was a betrayal of "Indian" values.

So they kept pushing for the use of #Hindi as the #NationalLanguage.

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But Hindi is not even spoken by a majority (>50%) of Indians. It is merely spoken by the most Indians.

So people of other ethnicities worry that under Hindi domination, their languages would disappear.

A three-language formula was suggested as far back as the 1960s.

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It required everyone in India to learn English, Hindi, and a third language.

But the three-language formula was a failure as South Indians learned Hindi, but North Were not interested in learning any South Indian language as the third language. They usually chose Sanskrit.

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National Unity has been a tricky prospect in India. More recently, the #Modi government tried to revive the debate by plumping for local languages, not only Hindi. So a kid in #Karnataka could study all the way to a Bachelor's degree in any subject in #Kannada.

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But this also failed. People know that, apart from the government, there's no place where you can communicate entirely in Kannada. Employers want English language skills, and students who learn in Kannada (or any other vernacular medium) will lose out in the job market.

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The ruling BJP government is also determined to make Hindi the national language and thrust Hindi down the throats of #Tamils, #Kannadigas, #Malayalees, #Odiyas, #Marathis, #Bengalis, #Gujaratis, and #Assamese, going by the repeated statements of Home Minister Amit Shah.

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The Hindi speakers of India will get the chance to force Hindi as the national language after 2026, when #delimitation of the seats of #Parliament, which has not been done for 50 years, is finally done, because delimitation will give Hindi speakers a dominant majority.

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Using this dominant majority of seats, corresponding to their population dominance, Hindi MPs can railroad all opposition and make Hindi the national language of India.

If that happens, it will *likely* lead to unrest in all of India and lead to #secessionist movements.

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IF that happens, and if India breaks up, then the argument of the BJP will come true.

They have always said that if Japan has its national language, Japanese, France has French, Germany has German, Italy has Italian, and the UK has English, why not India Hindi?

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Only problem: Hindi is not THE "Indian" language. There is no one Indian language.

BUT, IF India breaks up into different linguistic countries, what they say would be true.

#TamilNadu would have the national language of Tamil.

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Karnataka would have the national language of Kannada.

#AndhraPradesh and #Telangana would have the national language of #Telugu.

#Kerala would have the national language of #Malayalam.

#WestBengal would have the national language of #Bengali.

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Assam would have the national language of Assamese.

And so on. Then each of these countries would be like France, Germany, or Italy.

But there would be no more India.

The only way for India to remain united is to have English as the national language.

Let us be united.

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There are those who may think I am exaggerating. You people need to read the history of the anti-Hindi agitations in Tamil Nadu and the agitation over the formation of Andhra Pradesh in 1952 to understand how emotive language is for Indian people.

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en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Hind…

I would very much love to live in a united India and to be able to go anywhere from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Kutch to Itanagar without a visa.

But, if the government continues its divisive policies, I fear the worst.

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I myself am a fluent speaker, reader, and writer of Hindi, and enjoy watching Hindi movies and Hindi songs. I have appreciated both Hindi prose and poetry. So I don't write this out of hatred of Hindi or Hindi speakers.

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As I have already written before, India is a land of great diversity, and cannot be held together by religion (Hinduism) alone.

Tolerance of our differences - religious, cultural, linguistic, dietary - is the only way to keep India united.

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link.medium.com/XSqoGZyX6zb

hope I will not have to see a Balkanized and irreparably broken India as long as I live, but I am afraid that cynical politicians, motivated by short term electoral gains, will succeed in #BreakingIndia by dividing India on the lines of its diversity.

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