Maharashtra Govt Withdraws Hindi Mandate: A Strategic Retreat Or Respect For Marathi Identity?
Whether a political chess move or good sense that prevailed, the Maharashtra government’s decision to withdraw the two Government Resolutions of April 16 and June 17, mandating that Hindi be introduced as the third language from Class 1 across the state, should be welcomed.
After issuing the GRs and insisting alternately that Hindi must be taught as the third language and that Hindi need not be the third language, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis appears to have taken a step back on the issue.
However, the fire has not yet been put out. A committee has been formed under the leadership of economist Dr Narendra Jadhav to advise the government on this issue. This may well help Fadnavis to blunt the opposition.
Maharashtra’s politicians, including the estranged Uddhav and Raj Thackeray, spoke in one voice, while the GRs united social leaders, intellectuals and citizens who saw varying degrees of Hindi imposition. They would find it more difficult to agitate against a committee’s recommendation.
The withdrawal of the GRs, therefore, does not mean that the government has bowed to its critics, including its constituent parties, the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party led respectively by deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar; it may well have delayed the decision. For now, it allows the critics, especially the Thackeray cousins, to claim moral victory that the coming together of pro-Marathi forces beat back the government.
Of course, Fadnavis attempted to be too clever by half on the issue. In asserting that the three-language policy—Marathi, English and Hindi—was introduced as part of the National Education Policy (2020), he chose to disregard that the NEP allows states to choose any two Indian languages besides a foreign language.
He conveniently skipped that it lists 15 languages, including Hindi, as the third language option. In its insistence on prioritising Hindi, the Fadnavis government gave wind to the sentiment that Hindi is sought to be made the default second language in Maharashtra. How many of the Hindi-speaking states of north India teach Marathi or any of the South Indian languages in their schools? asked the critics.
However, it would be a mistake to see the anti-policy agitation as an anti-Hindi one because almost every critic has spoken in appreciation of Hindi. The resistance has been to it being foisted, especially on children.
Subtly though, the agitation also sought to articulate the anxieties across Maharashtra that Marathi language, culture, and identity—the Marathi Asmita—have been steadily diminished by the BJP in power at the centre and in the state.
Marathi, to paraphrase one of its greatest worshippers, Kusumagraj or VV Shirwadkar, was not merely a language but a repository of the identity and culture of Maharashtra.
A Jnanpith and Padma Bhushan awardee, Kusumagraj is honoured by the state government by commemorating his birth anniversary on February 27th every year as Marathi Bhasha Divas. Languages are meant to open new worlds of ideas, literature, and culture; languages are not meant to divide and fragment people.
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