Language as a Divisive Factor

In one line

Language divides in India because the choice of an official language decides who can get a government job, follow a trial and read the law, and those are not sentimental questions.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: language operates as a divisive factor in India in four ways. First, the choice of an official language distributes access to public employment and to the State, so it is a distributive question and not merely a cultural one. Secondly, the reorganisation of States on a linguistic basis made language a territorial identity, so that a linguistic community became a political unit. Thirdly, the presence of linguistic minorities inside every linguistic State reproduces the problem at a smaller scale. Fourthly, sons-of-the-soil movements convert a linguistic identity into a claim on jobs and land within a State. The law's answers are Part XVII, articles 29 and 30, articles 350 to 350B, and the assurance in section 3 of the Official Languages Act 1963.

The four ways language divides

One: it distributes access to the State

A person whose language is the official language can apply for a post, read the file, follow the trial and understand the notice. A person whose language is not must first learn another language before they can do any of it.

That is why the anti-Hindi agitations happened where they did. In the non-Hindi States, and particularly in the south, the prospect that Hindi would become the sole official language of the Union in 1965 was understood as the prospect of a permanent disadvantage in the Union services and in every dealing with the Union.

The point to make in an answer. Treating the language question as a matter of pride misses what was actually at stake. It was employment, and the Constitution's own machinery, article 344 and the Official Languages Act, is an employment settlement as much as a cultural one.

Two: reorganisation made language a territory

The States were redrawn on linguistic lines between 1953 and 1956, dealt with in [The Formation of Linguistic States].

The consequence. A language acquired a State, a government and a police force. A linguistic community became a political unit with an apparatus, which is a much sharper thing than a cultural group.

And it produced a border problem. Every linguistic boundary leaves speakers on the wrong side of it, and the disputes over Belgaum and over the border districts have outlasted the reorganisation by seventy years.

Three: every linguistic State has linguistic minorities

A State constituted for the speakers of one language contains speakers of others, and the State's official language, its medium of instruction and its recruitment rules all operate on them.