Why it's important to understand Karunanidhi's fight against Hindi imperialism
It is only because of the politics of Karunanidhi that English TV channels, English textbooks, a whole employment ecology with English as currency, exists in India.
A few days have passed since the demise of the Tamil national hero, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, and the plethora of reactions, solidarities and posturings are out there for all of us to see.
In the English media, I have seen various obituaries of the Kalaignar, mostly copy-pasted from Wikipedia, synonyms then replaced for “originality”. In the Hindi media across the political spectrum, especially in TV media, there was hardly any mention of the fact that this giant of a man, who rests on the Marina Beach now, fought against Hindi imperialism. But no amount of silence from the Hindi media can suppress that truth.
(M Karunanidhi addressing the third meet of the International Conference of Tamil Studies, inaugurated at the College de France in Paris on July 15, 1970. (Credit: UNESCO))
And I, a Brahmin Bengali, whose first language in school was Bangla and medium of instruction in school was English, owe my career and worldview largely to the import and legacy of what CN Annadurai and his crucial lieutenant M Karunanidhi did for years, peaking in 1965.
They protested the imposition of Hindi on non-Hindi people.
They saved all non-Hindi people, especially non-Hindi people of the upwardly mobile class, from complete oblivion. The Indian Union's service industry economy of the present, with its backbone being English articulation and comprehension, and its lifeblood being a large IT-literate youthful class, is a product of that great generation of Tamil leaders, Muthuvel Karunanidhi being among the foremost.
Let me explain.
The Indian Union was not formed on the basis of any single language. India had always been conceived of — as the peerless giant of Bengali nationalism and Indian unity, Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, stated — as a federation of nations, an example for the world community.
However, from the very start, and if I may say, even before the start, chauvinist and imperialist tendencies arose from what is the Hindi belt that demanded Hindi, their language of ease, become the language of communication of all citizens. So much so that even in the Constituent Assembly of India that was discussing the future Constitution of India, member of that Assembly from the United Provinces, RV Dhulekar actually said aloud that those in India who do not know Hindustani have no right to be in the Assembly which was making the Constitution of India (Hindi and Urdu were widely referred to by the common term 'Hindustani' before Hindi and Urdu became contentious and ideologically opposite concepts).
This sentiment was voiced and expressed by various members of the Constituent Assembly from the 'Hindustan region' or the Hindi belt. They ranged in ideology from being progressives to secular democrats to Hindu communalists — a wide range that the Congress could hold at that point of time. But they were united on the point of Hindi supremacy. This represented a fundamental, as evidenced by the nature of the debate that followed, between non-Hindi members who resisted Hindi imperialism and Hindi members who insisted on Hindi imposition on a non-Hindi speaking population.
(The front page of EV Ramasamy's periodical Kudiyarasu (September 3,1939). The headline reads 'Veezhga Indhi' (Down with Hindi). (Credit: Wikimedia Commons))
A compromise formula was reached. This retained English for the time being as an official language of the Union, while Hindi was the other official language of the Union.
English was to lapse after a certain period, when Hindi was to become the sole official language of the Indian Union.
This compromise was a ticking time bomb because of the lapse clause.
This arrangement was really a deal between non-Hindi elites (where only an English-educated class would have access to officialdom in the form of jobs and opportunities) and the whole of the Hindi national polity (where all the people would have access to officialdom). The big loser were the great masses of non-Hindi citizens of the Indian Union, who were then, and are still now, the majority of the citizens of the Indian Union.
This wasn’t surprising as the Constituent Assembly itself was not elected on the basis of universal adult franchise with about 12 per cent of the people based on education, tax-paying and property status getting the right to vote. This ensured that the 1946 equivalents of Cho Ramaswamy and Subramaniam Swamy got to represent the Tamils. And even they were miffed by the Hindi supremacist attitude.
The rise of the DMK under CN Annadurai’s leadership, with M Karunanidhi being among his brightest lieutenants, ensured that the imposition of Hindi would be resisted in the land of the Tamils. When English was to lapse and Hindi was to become the sole official language due to Delhi’s imperial whim, Tamils resisted.
(Tamil talk: CN Annadurai and EV Ramasamy. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons))
Kannadigas, Telugus and Bengalis resisted too, but in the Tamil land, it became a huge cultural resistance.
Tamils could see how all opportunities would be closed off to their youths. This would be true for all non-Hindi youths, but Tamils, with a history and tradition of a sophisticated understanding of political dynamics in a multi-national, multi-lingual polity, reacted both with reason and passion.
So intense was the resistance that the plan of making Hindi the sole official language was postponed to a time when non-Hindi people would agree to it.
In short, never.
Because English was retained, at least the elites among the non-Hindi citizens of the Indian Union could eke out a path of upward mobility. I count myself among those fortunate ones. It is because of the generation of Tamil leaders that counted M Karunanidhi among its leading lights that I am able to write this article today and an editor at Daily O is able to check it for grammar, and something like DailyOexists in English.
It is because of the politics of Karunanidhi that English TV channels, English language textbooks, a whole employment ecology with English as currency, exists in the Indian Union. Under Karunanidhi and MGR, Tamil Nadu took the lead for the mass production of engineering graduates, creating a technology-literate workforce which changed the face of Tamil Nadu, in ways that should be understood as a test case for the success of linguistic identity politics.
Other Dravidian states also followed suit. English is the most sought-after language commodity in the Hindi belt — this is in spite of the advantage that Hindi citizens receive in all Union government jobs, tenders, information and service access, etc., compared to non-Hindi citizens. The majority of non-Hindi people are still excluded from spheres where all Hindi people and English-educated non-Hindi people compete. Eighty-three per cent Bengalis of "Bangla" do not know any other language other than Bangla, according to the 2001 Linguistic Census of India. That is the reality Muthuvel Karunanidhi was very well aware of.
He was a fighter for the people, of inalienable rights of a linguistic nation. He remained a life-long warrior against the usurpation of power by Delhi. And his generation of fighters from the Tamil land showed that if an economic powerhouse decides to stand up, the Delhi imperium has to negotiate.
Karunanidhi’s dream was of an Indian Union based on equality. Thus, he called for giving equal Constitutional rights and status to all 8thSchedule languages. He called for equality. Who opposes equality but imperialists? Pakistan’s Urdu imposition on Bengalis cost it very dearly.
All over the world, the imposition of someone’s language over someone else is a way to create various classes of citizens. When there are first, second and third class citizens, it is a method of breakage. In a multi-lingual polity, one can either have unity — or uniformity.
One cannot have both.
courtesy : dailyo.in
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Trouble ‘Miyas’ everywhere only then they will leave Assam: Himanta Biswa Sarma
Says “Himanta Biswa Sarma, BJP are openly against them, we are saying it openly
New Delhi: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday said that four to five lakh “Miya voters” would be removed from the electoral rolls in the state once the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists is carried out. He also made a series of controversial remarks openly targeting the Miya community, a term commonly used in Assam in a derogatory sense to refer to Bengali-speaking Muslims.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an official programme in Digboi in Tinsukia district, Sarma said it was his responsibility to create difficulties for the Miya community and claimed that both he and the BJP were “directly against Miyas”.
“Four to five lakh Miya votes will have to be deleted in Assam when the SIR happens,” Sarma said, adding that such voters “should ideally not be allowed to vote in Assam, but in Bangladesh”. He asserted that the government was ensuring that they would not be able to vote in the state.
The chief minister was responding to questions about notices issued to thousands of Bengali-speaking Muslims during the claims and objections phase of the ongoing Special Revision (SR) of electoral rolls in Assam. While the Election Commission is conducting SIR exercises in 12 states and Union Territories, Assam is currently undergoing an SR, which is usually meant for routine updates.
Calling the current SR “preliminary”, Sarma said that a full-fledged SIR in Assam would lead to large-scale deletion of Miya voters. He said he was unconcerned about criticism from opposition parties over the issue.
“Let the Congress abuse me as much as they want. My job is to make the Miya people suffer,” Sarma said. He claimed that complaints filed against members of the community were done on his instructions and that he had encouraged BJP workers to keep filing complaints.
“I have told people wherever possible they should fill Form 7 so that they have to run around a little and are troubled,” he said, adding that such actions were meant to send a message that “the Assamese people are still living”.
In remarks that drew further outrage, Sarma urged people to trouble members of the Miya community in everyday life, claiming that “only if they face troubles will they leave Assam”. He also accused the media of sympathising with the community and warned journalists against such coverage.
“So you all should also trouble, and you should not do news that sympathise with them. There will be love jihad in your own house.” He said.
The comments triggered reactions from opposition leaders. Raijor Dal president and MLA Akhil Gogoi said the people of Assam had not elected Sarma to keep one community under constant pressure. Congress leader Aman Wadud accused the chief minister of rendering the Constitution meaningless in the state, saying his remarks showed a complete disregard for constitutional values.
According to the draft electoral rolls published on December 27, Assam currently has 2.51 crore voters. Election officials said 4.78 lakh names were marked as deceased, 5.23 lakh as having shifted, and 53,619 duplicate entries were removed during the revision process. Authorities also claimed that verification had been completed for over 61 lakh households.
On January 25, six opposition parties the Congress, Raijor Dal, Assam Jatiya Parishad, CPI, CPI(M) and CPI(M-L) submitted a memorandum to the state’s chief electoral officer. They alleged widespread legal violations, political interference and selective targeting of genuine voters during the SR exercise, describing it as arbitrary, unlawful and unconstitutional.
