Hindi’s Hindutva problem that supporters are not ready to reckon with

The controversy in Maharashtra over the imposition of Hindi has once again brought the language to the centre of a national debate. In April, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Maharashtra government issued an order making Hindi a compulsory third language in schools. The move faced fierce opposition and criticism from the parties led by cousins Raj Thackeray and Uddhav Thackeray, following which it was swiftly rolled back in June.

But the episode has stirred discomfort beyond Maharashtra, particularly in the so-called Hindi heartland. On social media, many self-identified Hindi-speakers expressed anger, not only at the rejection of Hindi in the classroom, but at reports that individuals in Mumbai had been physically assaulted for speaking Hindi, accused of ignoring Marathi.

This has triggered the familiar argument: no one should be forced to speak a language nor prevented from speaking one. Yet those voicing this sentiment are often silent when Hindi is imposed elsewhere – through state policy, bureaucracy, or cultural dominance. They regard Hindi as a necessary, if bitter, medicine – one that will supposedly integrate the “non-Hindi” Indian into the national mainstream.

At the same time, many of these voices oppose Karnataka’s directive that all schools, including central boards, like the Central Board for Secondary Education, introduce Kannada. Why should Hindi be compulsory in non-Hindi regions but not Kannada in Karnataka? If Hindi is necessary to thrive in India, why is Kannada not essential for life in Bengaluru?

It is important to be clear here: those who attack others for not speaking Marathi are not defenders of the language. They are agents of a majoritarian politics in which Marathi is merely a pretext. The same, in truth, applies to the loudest champions of Hindi. Their allegiance is not to a literary tradition or linguistic richness but a political project: Hindi becomes a vehicle, not a value.

When violence is enacted in the name of language, the issue ceases to be linguistic. It becomes a matter of power, of asserting dominance over communities that are seen as outsiders. Especially when such violence is collective and organised, language becomes a stand-in for territorial control and cultural assertion.

Some Hindi speakers protest: “We have never forced our language on anyone.” But this selective memory erases the lived reality of non-Hindi speakers in cities like Delhi, Patna, or Varanasi – Tamils, Malayalis, Manipuris – who have acquired functional, even fluent, Hindi through daily life, not coercion. Their children learn it in school.

But must the same logic apply in reverse? Should residents of Tamil Nadu or Karnataka be expected to mirror this? The claim that Hindi makes one “more Indian” is deeply flawed. Does speaking or knowing Hindi confer a deeper Indianness? Are Hindi speakers more Indian than those who speak Tamil, Assamese, or Bengali?

The myth of Hindi as India’s unifying language has long been dismantled. Today, for better or worse, English functions as the lingua franca across universities, courts, corporations and bureaucracies. Not knowing Hindi is not a barrier to participating in public life. Those who insist otherwise are rarely asked: in what way is Hindi essential?

Supporters of Hindi often express surprise at the resistance the language faces in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu or Karnataka. Why, they ask, should people oppose Hindi so vehemently? Why should they – the Hindiwalas – be expected to learn regional languages? Many even dream of a future where every Indian learns Hindi, so that they can relate to the Hindi speaker.

A recent video showed a bank employee in Bengaluru declaring that she would speak only in Hindi with a customer. Where once public-facing professionals – doctors, clerks, shopkeepers – learned the local language, today there is defiance: “We will not speak Kannada. You must speak our Hindi.”

What lies behind this entitlement?

Do Hindi speakers believe they own the country by sheer force of numbers? Do they see their claim on the republic as more legitimate than that of others? Is Delhi the centre and the rest of India their fiefdom? Is that why they feel no obligation to learn Marathi in Mumbai, while expecting Mumbaikars to speak Hindi?

Why is that even in Mumbai, the city of Hindi cinema, there is resistance to Hindi? Because the spread of Hindi is not organic. It travels not by affection, but by state sponsorship: through official mandates, public funds and policy incentives. It is buoyed by the demographic muscle it enjoys in Parliament and bureaucracy.

No other Indian language enjoys the same institutional backing. In Indian embassies, officers are assigned to promote Hindi. Government recruitment prioritises Hindi translators over others. Official communication defaults to Hindi even in places and institutions where it is unnecessary. They see massive funds being allocated for Hindi to be made a language of the United Nations Organisation.

Speakers of Tamil, Bengali, Malayalam see this and understand the politics behind it. They, too, are citizens of this republic. They, too, are entitled to cultural dignity and state resources. But Hindi gets a differential treatment by the Union government, privileged over others.

Why must one learn Hindi? Is it a repository of global knowledge? A gateway to world literature? Would a Tamil speaker feel drawn to Hindi for these reasons? The answer is no. Nor is Hindi a bridge to the country’s many languages. Translation initiatives, by Sahitya Akademi, National Book Trust, remain sparse and focused mostly on creative literature. Most of these works are already more widely accessible in English. Once again, Hindi appears optional, not essential.

It is unfortunate that the BJP continues to feed the illusion that Hindi is now receiving its rightful place through measures like introducing it as a medium of medical or engineering education. These initiatives were announced with fanfare and quietly abandoned when students rejected them. Yet, the party continues to boast of these policies, misleading Hindi speakers and offering them a false sense of linguistic pride. They live in a bubble of self-deception.

Today, Hindi’s most potent function is not literary or cultural but political. That explains the opposition to it. The Hindiwalas often say that it is the politicians of these non-Hindi states who oppose Hindi whereas the people are learning it. That is exactly the point.

There is no opposition to Hindi as a language but Hindi as the vehicle of North India-centric majoritarian politics.

Hindi is vital to the project of Hindutva. One must ask why the ideologues of Hindutva, most of them from Maharashtra, choose Hindi as their language of power? The answer is not cultural, but demographic.

The Hindi belt is the largest reservoir of the imagined Hindi/Hindu majority. Here, Hindutva manufactures its strength of numbers. How is this number fabricated? Those who identify Hindi as their mother tongue are often either Bhojpuri or Maithili or Bajjika speakers. Hindi is not their first language. But they are counted as Hindi speakers which helps swell the number of Hindi speakers.

Those who remember Partition can recall how Urdu speakers entered Hindi as their mother tongue. The battle for Hindi and against Urdu was fought in the medium of Urdu. This was to inflate the numbers of the Hindi speakers. In this sense, Hindi is not a language but an instrument of majoritarian politics.

Three years ago, a Bengali friend from Jabalpur told me of an interesting event. A senior leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – himself a Bengali – addressed a gathering of Bengalis in Hindi in a bold, even insolent, gesture. His reasoning: Bengalis, he claimed, originally migrated from Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh, so Hindi is their true tongue. They must adopt and own it as their language, he insisted. This is the logic behind the RSS slogan in Bengal: “No Durga, No Kali; Only Ram and Bajrangbali.”

To replace Durga with Ram is to overwrite Bengali cultural identity with a north India-centric Hindi-ised Hindutva identity. Similarly, the elevation of the deity Vamana over Bali in Kerala represents an effort to impose a Sanskritic, North Indian order on Dravidian memory and Malayalam culture.

Let there be no ambiguity about the project of this political Hindi: the Hindi promoted today is not the Hindi of Gandhi, writers and poets like Premchand, Mahadevi Verma, Muktibodh, Agyeya or Omprakash Valmiki. It is not the syncretic Hindi that embraced Urdu. What is seen today is a purified, Sanskritised and sanitised version, purged of “foreign” words, molded into a Hindu tongue.

This is a resentful, weaponised Hindi, the Hindi of Hindutva. That is why political scientist Suhas Palshikar warns that leaders like Raj Thackeray and Uddhav Thackeray, if they continue their dalliance with Hindutva, will soon find themselves ensnared by this Hindi.

Hindutva and Hindi are no longer separable. Why else would Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis advocate Hindi, or Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan champion it in the Telugu state? The answer is clear: both are emissaries of Hindutva’s politics and Hindi is now its standard.

Hindi speakers, too, must confront this uncomfortable truth. For their own sake, and for the sake of Hindi, they must begin the difficult task of disentangling their language from the ideology that now speaks in its name.

The sooner this happens, the better. For Hindi. And for the republic.

Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University.