India After Gandhi (23 page)

I am not expected to understand the legal intricacies of the Resolution. But my common sense tells me that every one of us should march in that road to freedom and fight together. Sir, if there is any group of Indian people that has been shabbily treated it is my people. They have been disgracefully treated, neglected for the last 6,000 years. The history of the Indus Valley civilization, a child of which I am, shows quite clearly that it is the newcomers – most of you here are intruders as far as I am concerned – it is the newcomers who have driven away my people from the Indus Valley to the jungle fastness . . . The whole history of my people is one of continuous exploitation and dispossession by the non-aboriginals of India punctuated by rebellions and disorder, and yet I take Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru at his word. I take you all at your word that now we are going to start a new chapter, a new chapter of independent India where there is equality of opportunity, where no one would be neglected.
⁴⁵

Three years later, in the discussion on the draft constitution, Jaipal made as peech that was spirited in all senses of the word. Bowing to pressure by Gandhians, the prohibition of alcohol had been made a directive principle. This, said the adivasi leader, was an interference ‘with the religious rights of the most ancient people in the country’. For alcohol was part of their festivals, their rituals, indeed their daily life itself. In West Bengal ‘it would be impossible for paddy to be transplanted if the Santhal does not get his rice beer. These ill-clad men . . . have to work knee-deep in water throughout the day, in drenching rain and in mud. What is it in the rice beer that keeps them alive? I wish the medical authorities in this country would carry out research in their laboratories to find out what it is that the rice beer contains, of which the Adibasis need so much and which keeps them [protected] against all manner of diseases.’
⁴⁶

The Constituent Assembly had convened asub-committee on tribal rights headed by the veteran social worker A. V. Thakkar. Its findings, and the words of Jaipal and company, sensitized the House to the tribal predicament. As a member from Bihar observed, ‘the tribal people have been made a pawn on the chessboard of provincial politics’. There had been ‘exploitation on a mass scale; we must hang down our heads in shame’.
⁴⁷
The ‘we’ referred to Hindu society as a whole. It had sinned against adivasis by either ignoring them or exploiting them. It had done little to bring them modern facilities of education and health; it had colonized their land and forests; and it had brought them under a regime of usury and debt. And so, to make partial
amends, tribals would also have seats in the legislature and jobs in government ‘reserved’ for them.

The most controversial subject in the Assembly was language: the language to be spoken in the House, the language in which the constitution would be written, the language that would be given that singular designation, ‘national’. On 10 of December 1946, while the procedures of the House were still being discussed, R. V. Dhulekar of the United Provinces moved an amendment. When he began speaking in Hindustani, the chairman reminded him that many members did not know the language. This was Dhulekar’s reply:

People who do not know Hindustani have no right to stay in India. People who are present in this House to fashion a constitution for India and do not know Hindustani are not worthy to be members of this Assembly. They had better leave.

The remarks created acommotion in the House. ‘Order, order!’ yelled the chairman, butDhulekar continued:

I move that the Procedure Committee should frame rules in Hindustani and not in English. As an Indian I appeal that we, who are out to win freedom for our country and are fighting for it, should think and speak in our own language. We have all along been talking of America, Japan, Germany, Switzerland and House of Commons. It has given me a headache. I wonder why Indians do not speak in their own language. As an Indian I feel that the proceedings of the House should be conducted in Hindustani. We ar enot concerned with the history of the world. We have the history of our own country of millions of past years.

The printed proceedings continue:

The Chairman: Order, order!

Shri R. V. Dhulekar (speaking still in Hindustani): I request you to allow me to move my amendment.

The Chairman: Order, order! I do not permit you to proceed further. The House is with me that you are out of order.
⁴⁸

At this point Jawaharlal Nehru went up to the rostrum and persuaded Dhulekar to return to his seat. Afterwards Nehru told the errant member of the need to maintain discipline in the House. He told him that ‘this is not a public meeting in Jhansi that you should address “Bhaio aur Behno” [brothers and sisters] and start lecturing at the top of your voice .
⁴⁹

But the issue would not go away. In one session members urged the House to order the Delhi government to rule that all car number plates should be in Hindi script.
⁵⁰
More substantively, they demanded that the official version of the Constitution be in Hindi, with an unofficial version in English. This the Drafting Committee did not accept, on the grounds that English was better placed to incorporate the technical and legal terms of the document. When a draft constitution was placed before the House for discussion, members nevertheless asked for a discussion of each clause written in Hindi. To adopt a document written in English, they said, would be ‘insulting’.
⁵¹

It is necessary, at this point, to introduce a distinction between ‘Hindustani’ and ‘Hindi’. Hindi, written in the Devanagari script,drew heavily on Sanskrit. Urdu, written in a modified Arabic script, drew on Persian and Arabic. Hindustani, the
lingua franca
of much of northern India, was a unique amalgam of the two. From the nineteenth century, as Hindu-Muslim tension grew in northern India, the two languages began to move further and further apart. On the one side there arose a movement to root Hindi more firmly in Sanskrit; on the other, to root Urdu more firmly in the classical languages from which it drew. Especially in the literary world, a purified Hindi and a purified Urdu began to circulate.
⁵²

Through all this, the language of popular exchange remained Hindustani. This was intelligible to Hindi and Urdus peakers, but also to the speakers of most of the major dialects of the Indo-Gangetic plain: Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Marwari and so on. However, Hindustani, as well as Hindi and Urdu, were virtually unknown in eastern and southern India. The languages spoken here were Assamese, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil and Telugu, each with a script and sophisticated literary tradition of its own.

Under British rule, English had emerged as the language of higher education and administration. Would it remain in this position after the British left? The politicians of the north thought that it should be
Replaced by Hindi. The politicians and people of the south preferred that English continue as the vehicle of inter-provincial communication.

Jawaharlal Nehru himself was exercised early by the question. In a long essay written in 1937 he expressed his admiration for the major provincial languages. Without ‘infringing in the least on their domain’ there must, he thought, still be an all-India language of communication. English was too far removed from the masses, so he opted instead for Hindustani, which he defined as a ‘golden mean’ between Hindi and Urdu. At this time, with Partition not even a possibility, Nehru thought that both scripts could be used. Hindustani had a simple grammar and was relatively easy to learn, but to make it easier still, linguists could evolve a Basic Hindustani after the fashion of Basic English, to be promoted by the state in southern India.
⁵³

Like Nehru, Gandhi thought that Hindustani could unite north with south, and Hindu with Muslim. It, rather than English, should be made the
rashtrabhasha
, or national language. As he put it, ‘Urdu diction is used by Muslims in writing. Hindi diction is used by Sanskrit pundits. Hindustani is the sweetmingling of the two.’
⁵⁴
In 1945 he engaged in a lively exchange with Purushottamdas Tandon, a man who fought hard, not to say heroically, to rid Hindi of its foreign elements. Tandon was vice-president of the All-India Hindi Literature Conference, which argued that Hindi with the Devanagari script alone should be the national language. Gandhi, who had long been a member of the Conference,was dismayed by its chauvinist drift. Since he believed that both the Nagari and Urdus scripts should be used, perhaps it was time to resign his membership. Tandon tried to dissuade him, but, as Gandhi put it, ‘How can I ride two horses? Who will understand me when I say that
rashtrabhasha
= Hindi and
rashtrabhasha
= Hindi + Urdu = Hindustani?’
⁵⁵

Partition more or less killed the case for Hindustani. The move to further Sanskritize Hindi gathered pace. One saw this at work in the Constituent Assembly, where early references were to Hindustani, but later references all to Hindi. After the division of the country the promoters of Hindi became even more fanatical. As Granville Austin observes, ‘The Hindi-wallahs were ready to risk splitting the Assembly and the country in their unreasoning pursuit of uniformity.’
⁵⁶
Their crusade provoked some of the most furious debates in the House. Hindustani was not acceptable to south Indians; Hindi even less so. Whenever a member spoke in Hindi, another member would ask for a
translation into English.
⁵⁷
When the case was made for Hindi to be the sole national language, it was bitterly opposed. Representative are these remarks of T. T. Krishnamachari of Madras:

We disliked the English language in the past. I disliked it because I was forced to learn Shakespeare and Milton, for which I had no taste at all . . . [I]f we are going to be compelled to learn Hindi . . . I would perhaps not be able to do it because of my age, and perhaps I would not be willing to do it because of the amount of constraint you put on me . . . This kind of intolerance makes us fear that the strong Centre which we need, a strong Centre which is necessary will also mean the enslavement of people who do not speak the language of the Centre. I would, Sir, convey a warning on behalf of people of the South for the reason that there are already elements in South India who want separation . . ., andmy honourable friends in U.P. do not help us in anyway by flogging their idea [of] ‘Hindi Imperialism’ to the maximum extent possible. Sir, it is up to my friends in U.P. to have a whole-India; it is up to them to have a Hindi-India. The choice is theirs . . .
⁵⁸

The Assembly finally arrived at a compromise; that ‘the official language of the Union shall be Hindi in the Devanagari script’; but for ‘fifteen years from the commencement of the Constitution, the English language shall continue to be used for all the official purposes of the Union for which it was being used immediately before such commencement’.
⁵⁹
Till 1965, at any rate, the notes and proceedings of the courts, the services, and the all-India bureaucracy would be conducted in English.

Mahatma Gandhi had once expressed his desire to see an Untouchable woman installed as the first president of India. That did not happen, but some compensation was at hand when an Untouchable man, Dr B. R. Ambedkar, was asked to serve as the chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly.

On 25 November 1949, the day before the Assembly wound up its proceedings, Ambedkar made a moving speech summing up their work.
⁶⁰
He thanked his fellow members of the Drafting Committee, thanked their support staff, and thanked a party of which he had been a lifelong opponent.
Without the quietwork in and out of the House by the Congress bosses, he would not have been able to render order out of chaos. ‘It is because of the discipline of the Congress Party that the Drafting Committee was able to pilot the Constitution in the Assembly with the sure knowledge as to the fate of each article and each amendment.’

In a concession to patriotic nostalgia, Ambedkar then allowed that some form of democracy was not unknown in ancient India. ‘There was a time when India was studded with republics’. Characteristically he invoked the Buddhists, who had furthered the democratic ideal in their Bhikshu Sanghas, which applied rules akin to those of Parliamentary Procedure – votes, motions, resolutions, censures and whips.

Ambedkar also assured the House that the federalism of the constitution in no way denied states’ rights. It was mistaken, he said, to think that there was ‘too much centralization and that the States have been reduced to Municipalities’. The constitution had partitioned legislative and executive authority, but the Centre could not on its own alter the boundary of this partition. In his words, ‘the Centre and the States are co-equal in this matter .

Ambedkar ended his speech with three warnings about the future. The first concerned the place of popular protest in a democracy. There was no place for bloody revolution, of course, but in his view there was no room for Gandhian methods either. ‘We must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and
satyagraha
[popular protest]’. Under an autocratic regime, there might be some justification for them, but not now, when constitutional methods of redress were available.
Satyagraha
and the like, said Ambedkar, were ‘nothing but the grammar of anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us’