Language and the Law: Why a Country Legislates about Language

In one line

India had to choose a language for its own government without letting the choice break the country, and almost every rule in this topic is a piece of that compromise.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: language became a legal question in India because the Constitution had to settle four separate things at once: the language in which the Union would conduct its business, the language of each State, the language of communication between them, and the language of the courts and of the statute book. It did so in Part XVII, articles 343 to 351, and it protected the position of speakers of other languages through articles 29 and 30 and, after the Seventh Amendment, articles 350A and 350B. The settlement was not final in 1950: article 343(2) gave English fifteen years, and what happened at the end of that period produced the Official Languages Act 1963 and the assurance that decided the question politically.

The four questions a plural country has to answer

One: in what language does the Union govern? Every file, every notification, every Act of Parliament, every judgment of the Supreme Court has to be in some language, and whichever is chosen advantages those who already speak it.

Two: in what language does each State govern? A State can choose its own, and most did.

Three: in what language do the Union and the States talk to each other, and the States among themselves? Without a rule, a letter from Tamil Nadu to Punjab has no language.

Four: what happens to everybody who does not speak the chosen language? This is the question the rest of the topic is about, and it has two halves: minorities within a State, and the speakers of languages that were not chosen at all.

Why the questions are legal and not merely administrative. Because the answer decides who can enter the public service, who can follow a trial, who can read the law that binds them, and whose children can be taught in a language they understand. Language allocates access to the State.

What made the Indian problem particular

No language is spoken by a majority of Indians. Hindi in its various forms is the largest, and it has never been a majority language. So the ordinary solution, adopting the majority's language, was not available.

The administration ran in English, which almost nobody spoke. English was the language of the courts, of the higher services and of the legislature, and it was the mother tongue of a fraction of one per cent of the population. Retaining it entrenched an elite; abandoning it disabled a government.

And the country had just been partitioned. The framers were not willing to risk a second division over language, which is why the settlement is a compromise and reads like one.