ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY

Department Of Law

Topic – Constitutional Protection to Linguistic Minorities

MD MAIDUL ISLAM
Faculty No: 23LWMWA123
Enrolment No: GP6515
Roll No: 123
Course: LLM
Semester: 1
Session: 2023-24
Subject: Law and Social Transformation.

Submitted To-
Prof Dr. Md. Kalimullah
Professors
Departments of law ( A.M.U )
 SYNOPSIS

1. Introduction

2. Defining Linguistic Minority(s) in India

3. Language Policy in India

4. Language in pre- independent India

5. Language Issue in pre-independent India

6. The protection of linguistic minorities: the constitution

7. The protection of linguistic minorities: commissions

8. Affirmative action and languages

9. Conclusions

10.References
1.Introduction:
Language played an integral role in the birth and development of the Indian state and is
extremely important for understanding modern Indian politics. Language was a key component
of the Indian national freedom struggle and this was reflected in independent India being
reorganized on linguistic lines. The very essence of the Indian federal structure has language at
its core. India is a multilingual and multicultural democratic state with more than sixteen
hundred variants of languages being spoken in the country. Unity in diversity is the mantra
enshrined in the Constitution of India. Indian constitution framers ensured that India followed a
policy of accommodation towards its different diversities.

India is a land of diverse cultures, languages, religion and ethnicity. Language and religion has
played a critical role in defining what India is today. Political independence of India after nearly
two hundred years of English rule, was accompanied by territorial partition of India into two i.e.
India and Pakistan, on religious basis. The newly independent India faced unprecedented
communal violence due to partition. The two most important issues in post colonial India were of
national security and accommodation of India’s vastly diverse population into the Union of India.
Accommodating and integrating India’s diverse plural culture was the greatest challenge. It
further opened up the Pandora box of ‘minority(s)’ issues in India. Indian politics can be rightly
termed politics of minorities’ accommodation and appeasement.

In India, the data collected about mother tongues through the 2011 census showed 19,569
languages, which after linguistic scrutiny and categorisation resulted in 1,369 ‘rationalised’
mother tongues. Nearly 400 of these languages however are facing the threat of extinction in the
coming 50 years. While this data speaks volumes about the linguistic diversity in India, it also
highlights the continued need to protect and nurture the languages spoken by the minorities.

Human life is experienced, shaped, expressed and evolves with language. It is like having a name
and not having a language essentially makes one nameless. The human ‘self’ is not only social
but one constructed upon language. Language is an important identity marker for individuals as
well as groups. Not only is language a critical identity marker, it plays a very fundamental
political role too. The very concept of ‘nation’ has ‘one language’ as its definitive pre-requisite.
Though it has been debated but speakers of same language can form strong ties and share a
feeling of belonging. Language being the vehicle for the communion of thought provides the
most effective single bond for uniting the people. Without language unified social action is
impossible (Diamond 1959:12). Language has been recognized as a social institution which
enables us to acquire our social heritage and be full-fledged members of societies. Language
appears as the greatest socializing factor and that “society cannot be formed without a language”
(Bhattacharya 1967: 381-386). Ludwig Wittgenstein says that, “the limits of my language are the
limits of my world .

2.Defining Linguistic Minority(s) in India:

Minorities in India can be categorized into four i.e. caste, tribe, religion and language. Out of
these four categories of minorities, the first three categories are Pan Indian in nature whereas the
fourth category of minorities based on languages is region specific. In India, Hindus form the
religious majority with 80.5 percent of Indian population following Hinduism. Muslims i.e. the
followers of Islam form the major religious minority group comprising 13.4 percent but the same
cannot be said in terms of language as Hindi spoken by 41.0346 percent of Indian population is
the language spoken by a large population of Indians but is not the majority language in all parts
of India. In fact Hindi speakers constitute linguistic minority in most southern, western and
eastern states of India.

The term ‘minority’ is nowhere defined in the Constitution of India it did feature in the
Constituent Assembly Debates (CAD) but not in the constitution of India. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar,
Chairman of the Drafting Committee distinguished between technical and non-technical use of
The term ‘minority’. He pointed out that-

“the technical sense of the word ‘minority’ is for purposes of certain political safeguards such as
representation in the legislatures and public services (but in Article 23)…the word is used not
merely to indicate minority in the technical sense but it covers minorities which are minorities in
cultural and linguistic sense”

He further went on explaining this distinction by way of examples.He remarked that-

“if a certain number of people from Madras came and settled in Bombay for certain purposes,
they would be, although not a minority in the technical sense, cultural minorities. The article
intends to give protection in the matter of culture, language and script.

3.Language Policy in India:

 India adopted a two level language policy: National level: at the national level, India follows
bilingualism i.e. two languages Hindi and English are recognized as the official languages of the
Union of India. State level: at the state level, the major regional language(s) of the states’ are
declared as the official language. And along with this there is a provision by which the states can
declare any other language as the additional official language. Hence, at the state level there is
mostly one officially recognized language (majority language in most cases) of the state besides
English in the Southern and eastern states of India and Hindi in the northern and western states.
Hence, if a language is not the official language of any state in India it suffers disadvantage.
Though, the Sahitya Parishad, an Indian literary body at the national level incorporated many
languages in India, it is the major languages which are flourishing. The major non-dominant
language’ groups are also developing but in slow pace. But the most affected are the tribal
languages with some facing threat of extinction. The important question is how many languages
can be recognized? What kind of right claims can be recognized as group rights? Though India
has been organized on language grounds still there remains the issue of internal minorities within
these states. What will be the fate of such internal linguistic minority groups?

4.Language in pre- independent India:

Language played a very definitive role in Indian politics. Even before the birth of Indian
National Congress, many people of the different regions in India felt the need for an Indian
language to act as a link language for inter-regional communication. Most social reformers of
India believed that language was a powerful force and can be utilized for eradicating the evil
social practices that have crept into the Indian society. Raja Ram Mohan Roy, a leading figure of
the Indian social reforms movement, also known as ‘Father of Modern India’, started publishing
the Samvad Kaumudi, a Bengali magazine in 1821 and the Mirat-ul-Akbar in Persian in 1822.
For Raja Ram Mohan Roy, these two magazines in two major languages of India conveyed the
message of the negative impacts of the social evils like sati and child marriage. They propagated
inheritance rights for women and equality. His vision was to modernize Indians and the means he
emphasized most was modern education in English language. Govind Ranade, an active member
of the Prarthana Sabha, started the Anglo-Marathi newspaper called Induprakash. Swami
Dayanand Sarawati, the founder of Arya Samaj, a Hindu reform movement in 1875 stated that
Hindi should be the link language of India. He wrote his most famous work Satyarth Prakash in
Hindi. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, one of the first extremist leaders of Indian National Congress,
started the two newspapers Maratha in English.

5.Language Issue in pre-independent India:

 The linguistic principle as a formula for organizing Indian territories first came up in 1903
during the discussions about the division of Bengal. Later, in 1918, the Montague-Chelmsford
Report, which examined the viability of formation of sub-provinces on linguistic and racial basis,
suggested that governance would be simplified in homogenous unit and conducting of legislation
in vernacular would help in drawing men not acquainted with English into the public arena. The
Indian National Congress (INC), in opposing the partition of Bengal on religious grounds, lent
indirect backing to the linguistic principle in 1905. According to Joseph E. Schwartzberg “the
1905 partition aroused Congress’ sensitivity to language for the first time”. The support
continued with the formation of a separate Congress organizational province of Bihar in 1908,
Sindh and Andhra in 1917, and with the acceptance of the linguistic reorganization of provinces
as an explicit political objective in the Nagpur session of the Congress in 1920. Thereon the
organization of Indian National Congress was organized on the basis of language.

6.The protection of linguistic minorities: the constitution:

Article 30 (1) of the Constitution of India provides a fundamental right to linguistic minorities to
establish and administer educational institutes of their choice. The Constitution however, under
Article 351, provides a directive to the Union to promote the usage of Hindi across India, so that
it can serve as a medium of expression among the diverse population. This provision has an
imperialising effect on the speakers of languages other than Hindi, and linguistic minorities are
the ones who face the blunt of it, especially when English is also promoted across the country at
the cost of local and regional languages.

The Constitution of India (Article 350 A) provides that every state must provide primary
education in a mother tongue and also provide for the appointment of a ‘Special Officer’ for
linguistic minorities (Article 350 B), who is responsible to investigate matters relating to
linguistic minorities and report them to the President. Neither the constitution nor any piece of
legislation however defines linguistic minority. It was in 1971, in the case of DAV College etc.
v/s State of Punjab, and other cases, that the Supreme Court of India defined a linguistic minority
as a minority that at least has a spoken language, regardless of having a script or not. In the case
of TMA Pai Foundation and Others vs State of Karnataka, it further held that the status of
linguistic minority is to be determined in the context of states and not India as a whole.

Article 347 of the constitution provides power to the President for use of minority
Language in the administration of the states, be used more effectively. Also the office of the
Governor should be vested with special powers to protect the interests of the linguistic
7.The protection of linguistic minorities: commissions:
According to the Report of the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities
however linguistic minority status of a community is determined by numerical inferiority, non-
dominant status in a state, and possessing a distinct identity. The report states that “exclusive
adherence to a minority language is a leading factor that contributes to socio-economic
backwardness, and that this backwardness can be addressed only by teaching the majority
language”.
The Commission should have rather emphasised the need to develop mechanisms and
institutional structures to accommodate linguistic minorities so that they do not fall into the traps
of socio-economic backwardness merely because of the language they speak. Instead of
addressing the gaps in the education system which makes invisible the language of the linguistic
minorities, the commission recommends that such individuals and communities learn the
majority language to survive. This is a clear acknowledgement of systematic state discrimination
emanating on the basis of the language that an individual and community speaks. The state is
responsible to create equal opportunities for everyone regardless of whether they belong to the
majority or the minority but is clearly fails to do so.
A workshop on linguistic minorities, held in 2006 by the National Commission for Religious and
Linguistic Minorities, lead to the recommendations that the term linguistic minority must be
defined properly and that such a definition should then be used while framing a law to provide
affirmative action based on socio-economic backwardness. Even though the criteria suggested
for identifying socio-economic backwardness among linguistic minorities is the same as that
applied while identifying backward communities in India, to be regarded as more backward, the
individuals among the linguistic minority must not have the knowledge of the majority language.
This again is problematic as the additional criteria to determine the backwardness of a linguistic
minority group should not be the lack of knowledge of the majority language. Instead it should
be the vulnerability of the particular language to extinction, lack of institutional support to
develop, sustain and promote a language.

It is necessary to emphasise that the mere knowledge of the majority language does not alleviate
the backwardness of the linguistic minorities and that it can only be achieved by integrating the
minority languages into the education system. This will help in preserving such languages and
the associated knowledge systems while also easing the process of learning for students
belonging to linguistic minorities. The recommendations of the workshop can only be aptly
referred to as half-hearted attempts to integrate the minority languages into the education system.
While it does provide that the teachers in schools with sizable linguistic minority must know the
minority language, it does not suggest any steps to ensure that the medium of education should
be in the minority language for students belonging to the particular linguistic minority. It only
means that the state is trying to impose assimilation on linguistic minorities by not providing
them adequate support to integrate their language in the education system.
8.Affirmative action and language:

The most vulnerable among linguistic minorities are those belonging to tribes. Despite the
vulnerability of their languages, there are hardly any government schemes or mechanisms that
try and integrate these languages into the education system. Most of the linguistic minorities in
India belong to indigenous groups and hence, they can avail reservation in Institutions for Higher
Education under the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category. This, in essence, amounts to linguistic
discrimination to impose assimilation on such students through the primary and secondary
education system by instructing them in a majority language. It even paves the path to
disappearance of languages as the individuals belonging to the linguistic minorities are
assimilated into the majority language and culture at the cost of their own language. Especially in
a scenario where the government itself promotes assimilation into the majority regional language
or English by offering it as a means of alleviation from backwardness, it creates a strong
dichotomy between retaining one’s own language and upward social mobility. Since the medium
of instruction is alien to the students belonging to the linguistic minorities, most of them
discontinue their studies and the ones who continue with their studies, do it at the cost of their
own language.

It is high time that the government understands these gaps in the education system for the
indigenous linguistic minorities and take the necessary steps to integrate the languages of the
linguistic minorities into the education system. The available affirmative action can only be
effectively utilised by the students of indigenous linguistic minorities if their medium of
instruction is their own language and English/majority regional language is taught
comprehensively as a second language. Therefore, paving the path towards “real education” of
such students while also equipping them with a resourceful second language.
Conclusions:
One can draw certain conclusions regarding India’s policies towards its linguistic minority
groups, from the above analysis.

Firstly, the major language groups of India got a fair share in the form of territorial recognition.
The second group of linguistic minority groups which were concentrated in specific areas within
the states were also accommodated by granting some form of autonomy within the specified
areas, like declaring the minority language as the additional official language in areas where they
are in majority, providing facility for mother tongue education in primary schools, like Assam
declared Bengali as the additional official language in the Bengali concentrated area of Cachar
district, like wise Nepali was declared as the additional official language in Darjeeling and
Kurseong districts in North Bengal. Recently, a tripartite agreement was signed between the
Centre, the West Bengal government and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha of Darjeeling, to form the
Gorkha Territorial Administration, an independent autonomous authority.The third group of
linguistic minorities which remain scattered in one or more states have the right to establish
educational institutions to preserve and promote their language. The fourth category i.e. the tribal
linguistic groups are the worst off among all the linguistic minority groups in India. These
groups are economically and educationally at the lower rung of the society.

Second, the UNESCO Atlas of World Languages in Danger (2009) ranked India in the first
position with 196 of its languages under threat of extinction. The two Indian languages i.e. Bodo
and Manipuri, official languages of Assam and Manipur respectively are also in Hence, this is
evident enough that policies for language development and preservation have not had the
required impetus from state agencies in India and much needs to be done.
References:

1.M.P. Jain, Indian Constitutional Law, LexisNexis, 12 (7th Edn., 2016)

2. Indian Polity, M Laxmikant. (McGraw Hill Education [India] P.Ltd. Chennai, 5th edt.2018)
3. D.D. Basu, Shorter Constitution of India (1996), Prentice Hall of India(P) Ltd., New Delhi.
4. H.M. Seervai, Constitutional Law of India (1996).