Lessons unlearnt | The Indian Express

Lessons unlearnt | The Indian Express

Written by Rangin Pallav Tripathy |Updated: September 24, 2019 2:54:01 am

The writer is a Fulbright post-doctoral research scholar at Harvard Law School.

Lessons unlearnt

Linguistic policy should not be driven by a politics of identity.

The debate in the Constituent Assembly on language was marred by extreme positions. (Source: Express Archives)

A statement by Purushottam Das Tondon in 1949 neatly captures the major problem that saddles any discussion on linguistic policy in India — looking at language only as a marker of identity. Speaking at a public meeting, he declared: “Those who oppose acceptance of Hindi as national language and Nagari as the national script are following the policy of anti-national appeasement and are catering to communal aspirations.”