Language is the outward expression of our inner most thoughts and a common national language is a prime necessity as it makes for unity and cohesion in a manner in which no other single factor does. As in the case of redistribution of provincial boundaries, there is an outcry in favour of some of the provincial languages struggling for supremacy. This is only natural but there should be no antagonism between one language and another. Whether the provinces should be formed on linguistic basis or some other basis or should be left intact has nothing to do with the question of national language – the lingua franca of the country. That the Government of the day can give a great lead in this matter goes without saying. Witness the case of English which under the domination of our late foreign masters practically became the lingua franca throughout the length and breadth of this vast country. But in order to be the national language it should not only be the language of the intelligentsia but of the common people. It should be a language which should be spoken and understood by all classes of people and by the majority of them. Considering the huge population of India we find that of the provincial languages such as Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Telugu or Oriya, none of them is spoken or understood by the great majority of the people of India and the only language that can lay claim to a great extent to this position is Hindi which is spoken not only in Upper India but in C. P., Rajputana, Bihar and various other tracts. But the spoken Hindi is not the Sanskritised Hindi of Scholars and the intelligentsia – for after all what is their percentage as compared to the huge population of the country – but a Hindi full of short, sweet and simple words, the pure, chaste and unadulterated Hindi spoken by the great majority of the people and which the uneducated people, the women folk and the children make full use of and speak freely and frankly. Although Sanskrit is the mother of most of the Indian languages – the languages not only of India but also of the World – and although it is the language par excellence in which our Vedas, Upanishads, Shastras, the Ramayan and Mahabharat and the Immortal Gita are written and although in the words of Sir William Jones, the great Orienta list, “Sanskrit is more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin and sweeter than Italian”, still it is not the language of the common people and so it is not desirable that we should draw upon it for our daily requirements in Hindi. Moreover Sanskrit has been a dead language for several centuries like Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and in spite of the marvels of the marvellous and in imitable Ashtadhyayi of Panini, the greatest Grammarian of the world, Sanskrit is most difficult to learn. The test of a national language should be its simplicity, and that it should be easily understood by everybody in the country. Now nobody can deny that the Sanskrit Alphabet is the most perfect and scientific in the World and it is also very natural and not unlike the alphabets of other languages. For example the very first letter of its alphabet is a. The mouth automatically opens when you have to utter this and the sound represented by it is the very first sound which one hears when the mouth is opened. Similarly when the last letter of the Sanskrit alphabet, that is m is uttered the mouth is automatically shut, which means that it is rightly the last letter of the alphabet, although I do not forget that m in a sense is not the last letter of the Devanagri alphabet because it is followed by other letters like yara la va but they are variations of other letters. For instance ya is a variation of e, ra is a variation of ree, la is a variation of lree, va is a variation of oo. On account of the perfection of the Sanskrit alphabet, Hindi which is spoken by the great majority of the people in this country, should when reduced in writing, be written in Devanagri script (Cheers). Sometime ago a move was made to evolve what is known as basic English. If some such steps could be taken with regard to Hindi, it would be much easier for other people who do not at present speak Hindi or write Hindi to learn it in the minimum of time. In view of the position hitherto and at present occupied by Urdu written in the Persian script and in view of the fact that it is the language generally used by our Muslim brethren who number nearly 3 1/2 or 4 crores in this country and who are scattered throughout the length and breadth of this country, and in view of its intrinsic merit that its script is a sort of shorthand, I think it is desirable that we should pay some attention to Urdu also but of course it can never be and there is no reason why, it should be the primary language of the Nation. The national and official language should of course be Hindi written in the Devanagri script but the second language should in my opinion be Urdu because it is a sort of shorthand and takes much lesser time to write and occupies much lesser space than other languages. For example take the word ‘Muntazim’ which in Urdu is written as if it were one compound letter, but if you write in Hindi in Devnagri script or Roman English it will consist of 7 or 8 distinct letters. Similar instances are ‘Muntazir, Muntashir, Muntakhib’ and hundreds of other similar combinations of letters which at present form unitary words. So I think that in view of the fact that Urdu is at present spoken by an appreciable number of people in this country and especially in big cities like Delhi, Agra, Lucknow and other places, and the country side round about Delhi, and other large centres of population in Northern India and it possesses certain advantages in as much as it is a sort of shorthand, I submit that we should treat it as the second language of the country. Moreover, if we adopt it as a second language, it will be a gesture of good-will towards the Muslim population who, as I have already said, number no less than 3 1/2 to 4 crores. And in a secular State we will do well to make such a gesture. However much we may feel the consequences of the partition and the holocaust that followed in its wake we should take a realistic view of things, for after all we cannot build on anger, vengeance or retribution. Although I happen to represent a distant part of India at the moment, namely the Orissa States, I am a Punjabi, and like most Punjabis have suffered grievously in a variety of ways on account of the partition, but that should not make me forgetful of our duty towards the country. We should also not forget that the Father of the Nation during his life-time freely and unreservedly expressed himself in favour of Hindustani, and in expressing this opinion he was never depressed; on the other hand he was always impressed with the reality of the situation and the necessity and the correctness of this view.
