The paper assesses the connection between language policy and rise of populist politics in India, a land of diverse languages. It also poses the challenge as to how majoritarian politics in federal polities often may lead to a domino-effect with states following the national programme leading to an atmosphere of fear in the minority communities.
India is a land of diversity, with twenty two languages incorporated in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. The official languages of the country is English and Hindi and the constituent states have declared the majority language of the respective states as 'official'. Till recently it was felt that the language issue in India is completely resolved. But the rise of new nationalism has reopened the question of language policy and propagation of majority language as a tool of the renewed nationalist fervour. The declaration of Hindi as mandatory for all students till secondary level of education is state-run schools led to a domino-effect with individual states imposing their major languages on linguistic minorities. This has led to the development of two diametrically opposite approaches: linguistic nationalism versus linguistic accommodation. Since language has been utilized by nationalist leaders to rekindle nationalism and also by leaders of sub-state movements demanding greater political autonomy, it presents an interesting puzzle as to how can these conflicting interests coexist or who wins? In India, another significant concern is that Hindi and Sanskrit are the language of the religious texts of Hindus, presenting a religious angle to the language question. The paper attempts to probe the intrinsic connect between language policy and new nationalism in India
