Given English’s role as a global link language, and as a language of global power, Shah’s statement appears absurd. How can a government that claims global leadership, and regularly hobnob with dominant Western powers such England and United States of America, look down upon English? 

Shah’s statement could have been ignored as foolhardy and bizarre, if not for its deep roots in the Hindutva ideology and the government’s divisive and inequality-inducing policies. The Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi responded promptly, pointing out that Amit Shah and his government basically want to exclude the majority of Indians from upward mobility in the global economy. They wish to reserve the upper echelons of elite professions for the Western educated children of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and their carefully chosen friends. 

True enough, but there is more to Shah’s statement than nepotism and crony-ism. His clarion call against English may be couched in the rhetoric of de-colonization and socio-linguistic equality, but it is essentially an alibi for the government’s deep-rooted casteism, majoritarianism and attempts at Sanskrit-Hindi imposition. 

The BJP feels inconvenienced by India’s dual relationship with English. English was both a language of colonial power as well as a source of modern ideas. It was through English – sometimes directly and sometimes in translation via the Indian vernaculars – that Indians felt and absorbed about the emancipatory impulses of modern democracy, secularism, pluralist nationalism, humanism and socialism. They creatively interpreted these in the Indian context and fostered the modern Indian nation-state as we know it.  

The milieu that produced multilingual nationalist leaders such as Gokhale, Tilak, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and Azad, also produced Hindutva stalwarts such as Hedgewar, Golwalkar, Savarkar, Deoras, Madhok and Vajpayee. Yet how easily these Hindutva leaders set aside the pluralist and democratic traditions, and advocated for an unequal and exclusivist Hindu nation! Unable to reasonably account for this divergence, today’s Hindutva leaders seem eager to vilify not only the ideas which created modern India, but also a language that played a pivotal role in the process. 

English played a key role in shaping a modern conception of social justice. In the caste-divided pre-modern India, Dalits and backward classes had been excluded from “classical” Sanskrit education. With the coming of English, Indian vernaculars were gradually standardized by creatively adopting English grammar and syntax to the vernacular linguistic structures. The rise of vernaculars did offer new opportunities in education and employment for those excluded by Sanskrit and Persian; but only to a limited extent.  

In the nineteenth century, the vernaculars were taken over by regional caste elites who infused these languages with Sanskrit, and used them as vehicles to consolidate their social power. Dalit and backward class communities excluded from Sanskritic institutions could attend vernacular schools but often had to be satisfied with a place in the verandah rather than inside the classrooms. 

Limited access to vernaculars meant that English – often learnt directly from missionaries – became the key source of modern emancipatory ideas for Dalit Bahujan communities. Great thinkers and leaders such as Jyotirao Phule, Iyothee Thass, Jogendranath Mandal, and BR Ambedkar creatively combined these modern ideas with indigenous egalitarian ethos to give us the modern vocabulary of social justice.    

An iconic incident in mid-1970s Karnataka demonstrates the tension-filled relationship between Dalits, the modern vernaculars and English. In 1973 a Dalit minister in the government of Karnataka – B. Basavalingappa – called upon the Dalits to prefer English over the vernacular, given the persistent gate-keeping by upper caste Kannadiga authors and scholars.  Basavlingappa’s comment created a furore which in turn generated a counter-reaction from young Dalit students. 

The counter-reaction culminated in the formation of the historic Dalit Sangharsh Samiti (DSS), which became the cradle for iconic Kannada writers such as Devanoor Mahadeva and Siddalingaiah. Thus, while these authors ultimately opted for Kannada as their medium of expression, English’s social power and emancipatory potential were a key part of the linguistic matrix of post-colonial India. Deeply afraid of social justice politics, the BJP is uncomfortable with these histories, and with the enabling the role played by the English language. 

Given English’s dual role in India – of both conquest and emancipation – a wholesale removal of English was never part of the decolonization agenda. While Angrezi Hatao movements did take place in the years following independence, notably led by Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia, those movements were primarily about ensuring socio-linguistic equality. 

The BJP government’s National Education Policy (NEP 2020) waxes eloquent about multilingual education. If the BJP was actually serious about linguistic equality, it would have committed public money to producing enough translated materials to make quality multilingual education a reality. 

Far from it, the BJP government is keen to impose Hindi in the name of multi-lingual education and under the pretext of decolonization. Recently, a controversy erupted after the Mahayuti government in Maharashtra, led by BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis, announced that Hindi would be a compulsory third language for students from Classes 1 to 5, starting the academic year 2025-26 as part of the phased implementation of the three-language formula of the NEP 2020.

Any kind of linguistic imposition is unjust; on top of that, Hindi imposition is laced with caste inequality and majoritarian aspirations. The Hindi that Amit Shah (and many before him) regularly glorifies as our primary “national language” is a specific Sanskritized version of the popular North Indian tongue called Hindustani. As the freedom struggle picked up pace, preparing Hindi to be the national language became a major pretext for Sanskritization.  

The Sanskritization undertaken in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created a vernacular that was not only indexed by caste but also had a distinct “Hindu” feel to it. Sanskritization was a way to eliminate Persian elements from the Hindustani tongue and distinguish Hindi from Urdu along religious lines. The resultant Hindi-Urdu controversy played a key role in polarizing North Indian society, and associated Hindi exclusively with the Hindu community – a process that was critiqued from within the Hindi cultural milieu (even by stalwarts such as Munshi Premchand) and beyond.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, while reflecting on what could be an acceptable link language for India, famously said, “We are not going to allow Hindi imperialism to be used as an instrument of domination over non-Hindi areas”. He preferred Hindustani in place of Sanskritized Hindi as the link language in India.  

The NEP gives pride of place to Sanskrit and calls for a three-language policy without clear indications that this would not mean Hindi imposition. The richness of other classical traditions such as Tamil, Telugu, Odia are acknowledged but not given the same significance as Sanskrit. Likewise, the role of Persian and Urdu in India’s civilizational journey are completely obliterated.

The best of India’s de-colonial traditions has emphasized on national sovereignty, independent foreign policy, undoing of deep-seated institutional inequalities, and creating a just and equal society. The BJP government has tried to systematically undo our achievements in each of these fields. Beating back Left-liberal and Dalit Bahujan resistance – all rooted partially in the English language – has been an integral part of this attempted un-making. Shah’s aspersions against English must be read in this context as well. 

Continue to push Sanskrit-Hindi through the backdoor, and beat back those who oppose this under the pretext of beating back colonial linguistic legacies: these are the two goals that Amit Shah seeks to achieve simultaneously, through his anti-English aspersions.