Question

‘Broken Images’ takes up a debate that has grown steadily since 1947—the politics of language in Indian literary culture, specifically in relation to modern Indian languages and English. Discuss.

Answer 1

The citizens of a multilingual country require some sort of common communication within an administrative unit. And the term assigned to this tongue is known as the “link” language in India. The central controversy regarding Hindi as the “link” language is seen to be persistent since Independence.

While Northern India advocate for Hindi the “link” language, Southern India feels that Hindi would be an advantage for the Northerners, especially in the Administrative service examinations. The debate goes on to further highlight how English conforms only to the Elitist and minor fragment of the Indian population whereas the southern and eastern part of the country feels that designating Hindi with the title of “link” language would fall as a liability to those who do not speak Hindi at all.

On the contrary, English, being a widespread and diasporic language is at least comprehendible to a large section of the nation. Besides, each state has its own linguistic minority groups and the use of an official language in those areas is again a major controversy.