Mr. Vice-President, Sir, I have great pleasure in welcoming this article, more so as it has been suitably amended by Dr. Ambedkar, and I hope his amendment will be accepted by the House. Sir, to me this article seems to open a new era for India. Recently there has been such a lot heard about linguistic provinces, and, my friend from West Bengal has already hinted that this particular article opened a way for a realignment of provincial boundaries, for the creation of fresh provinces. Sir, I do not look upon this article in that light. I do not believe that provinces should be carved out purely on a linguistic basis. There are other factors also that must be considered. There is the administrative convenience; there may be the geographical argument; there may be the economic demand and various other factors which must be taken into account before the linguistic argument can be given the emphasis that is demanded of people who feel aggrieved that they are a linguistic minority in any particular province. I do hope that once this article is passed by this Assembly, all the Governments of the provinces will see to it that its spirit is implemented immediately. They need not wait till the Constitution as a whole is brought into existence. Already in my part of the world there is a tremendous–a very unhealthy–linguistic warfare going on. It is assuming dangerous proportions, in my own case, in Chota-Nagpur hitherto–on the ground of language, attempts are being made to snatch a bit to the east, snatch a bit to the south, snatch a bit to the west. No consideration whatever is given to the fact that there are other grounds also which have to be taken into consideration, e.g., the question whether administratively this or that portion should be taken out of a particular area. I urge, and I have urged this before elsewhere also, that language by itself is no argument for the creation of new provinces or for realignment of boundaries. I do hope in my part of the world–particularly the Provinces of Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal will now see a new way of approaching this linguistic problem. In Bihar, for example, the Bengali-speaking people have always made the grievance that they were being victimised by the Hindi-speaking majority of the province. Sir, much has happened in the past–it is an ugly chapter–but I do hope now that this particular article will be in the Constitution that even the linguistic minorities may look forward to a confident future where they will have opportunities of conserving and developing their own particular languages. Sir, when we talk of languages, we generally think of languages that have a highly developed literature, that have a script and so forth. I would like to urge that languages that have not a script also deserve to be conserved and, to use Prof. Shah’s amendment,–‘developed’. I have been trying to look through the figures in the language census that has been provided us and I find that the languages of this country have been divided into five main divisions and in this division I find that the aboriginal languages have been classified separately. Now take the language which is known as the Mundari group of languages. According to the census I find there are very nearly 5 million people who speak the Mundari language. How many members are there in this House really who know that Mundari is a very rich language, that there is the Mundari Encyclopaedia — 14 Volumes of it? Yet, can it be said that in Mundari speaking areas that language is being encouraged? Is not the practice that every ruling class tries to drown whatever language there is in the country? We have had instances where a ruler has been an Oriya, he has forced Oriya upon the people of his State. The British came and they tried to thrust English down our throats. May be in Bengali-speaking areas, Bengali is insisted upon. Sir, I accept that, whatever be the provincial language, every person must learn that language. We have yet to decide what the rashtrabhasa will be—what shall be our national language. Everyone of us must learn that language. I want to urge that the languages must be conserved and developed. I realize that, in many instances, particularly of the aboriginal people, it would mean their learning three languages, viz., their own, the provincial language and also the rashtra-bhasha or the national language. But I do not think it would be too much of as train. After all the mother tongue is such that it does not exact the speaker much, but the main thing is this that all the provinces wherever there are linguistic minorities—I hate to use the word ‘minority’ in that sense—wherever there are linguistic minorities, the provinces should take a positive step in encouraging, in conserving, in developing all the languages that are capable of being conserved and developed. There are certain languages that will go under. I do not think there is much point in trying to keep alive a language that has not enough vitality in itself, that could not on its own momentum compete against other languages. I am not trying to defend those languages that have come and gone but I am thinking of languages that have survived through thousands and thousands of years and, if they are developed, they are capable of teaching us much about the past. I may give an instance. Now we know very little about ancient Indian history. That is largely because the most ancient stock of people who lived in this country, their languages have not been studied by the new-comers. It is a sad fact today that most of the aboriginal languages have been studied by foreigners. I doubt if there is a single Prime Minister of any province who can speak the aboriginal language of the majority of the aboriginals in his province. I doubt if there is a single minister in this country today who can speak any aboriginal language. If we are to develop these pre-Aryan languages, we shall find revelations from the ‘Asurs’ for example, we shall know more of the early days of the incoming of the Arya-speaking people. There are many things yet to be learnt about the ancient past, not only of the people but of the country as a whole. I look at article 23 from various angles. Sir, I have great pleasure in welcoming this article and I do hope that the Provincial Governments will act according to the spirit of this article long before the Constitution actually comes into existence so that the bitterness that there is in the provinces on account of this linguistic warfare may gradually disappear and all linguistic minorities may feel that their languages will not be victimised, that they may develop their languages as they like and that their language has a rightful place in the country.
