Sir, I am sorry to have to speak with such fervour on this particular subject but I do feel very strongly about it. As I have said, I have no axe to grind but my friends-I do not question their motives-I believe they are sincere and fervent but let me appeal to them-their sincerity is being misconstrued by those who do not see eye to eye with them. They feel that at the bottom of this intransigence and intolerance is an ill-conceived communal motives-whether they are directed with that purpose or not-to make all the ideals of a Secular State still-born. I cannot understand it. What are you afraid of ? Some of you have not forgotten the slave mentality of the past 200 years. As my Friend Pandit Maitra has said language is a living, dynamic thing. You cannot put it in a straight-jacket. You cannot artificially prescribe the process by which language will grow, and will be inspired. What are we seeking to do ? You seem to be motivated by a fear that the Hindus are so emasculated that they will repudiate their own culture, they will repudiate their own language; mid to prevent the Hindus from repudiating their culture in evolving their own language you must therefore put in a rigid formula. I cannot understand it. Who are you afraid of ? Who is going to take away your Hindi in its inevitable and natural growth to its full stature as the National language. Sir, I cannot help feeling that this attitude is analogous to an attitude where some Britishers wake up some morning; for some reason their memories am carried back to the bitterneses of the Roman invasion and they Start a movement that all words of Latin origin should be expurgated from English. There is nothing different from a movement, to expurgate words of Latin origin from English-between that movement and the movement to purge Hindi of awry word however assimilated it may have become to Hindi which has either in Urdu or a persian origin.
