QUTPREAK IN INDIA OVER THE LANGUAGE
QUESTION
By Kailas Chandra
BOMBAY -- The Congress government: and the bourgeois press are now busy searching for scapegoats for the unprecedented mass upsurge in Tamilnad that is protesting against what has been construed as an imposition of Hindi as the official language in the south. Chief Min-. ister Bhaktavatsalam thrusts responsibility on the "left Communists , WR. the DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam| and some "mill owners."
This is how the congress leaders are trying to whitewash their utter failure to evolve a national language: for the country even. seventeen years after independence,
The fact is that the intensity with which the students and other sections of the people, including the working class, reacted to the enforcement of the Official Languages Act shows how deep the popular discontent has become against the capitalist- ~landlord regime of the Congress.
More than sixty persons have been killed and hundreds wounded by the police and the army after it was called out. Demonstrators, in turn, burned buses and trains, attacked police stations and destroyed public property all over the state. Infuriated by the police atrocities, the demonstrators burned two police sub-inspectors to death at Tirupur and some constables lost their lives at Gudalur. In Madras and other principel urban centres of the state, the demonstrators raised barricades and engaged the police in ‘pitched battles for days.
The call for anti-Hindi agitation was initially given by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which observed Republic Day (January 26) as a day of mourning. (This was the day Hindi became the official language of India.) The DMK which had once stood for the secession of the south from the Indian Union has now given up its demand fora sovereign Dravidastan.
On the eve of the agitation, the DMK leaders were arrested in mass and this touched off the widespread demonstrations. The brutal manner in which the police handled the peaceful student demonstrators in Madurai and other places was responsible for rousing popular “anger.
The students in the state formed their own Anti-Hindi Action Committee to conduct the movement. The imposition of Hindi as the official language has been resented strongly by the educated pettybourgeois masses. They fear the lowering of job opportunities if - Hindi is enforced as the official language in the government services in:place of English. Hindi is more "foreign": tothe south state than English, woe Fe
Behind the anti-Hindi agitation lies a feeling of deep social insecurity. In the midst of growing unemployment, the petty-bourgeois masses face serious competition for the limited number of available jobs. This has been intensified by the rising cost of living and the failure of the government to solve the basic food problem. One of the frequent slogans of the anti-Hindi demonstrators has-been: “You don't give us food; now you want to stifle our voice."
The southern people have always viewed Hindi as a symbol of "northern domination," as a language of the big monopoly capitalists (Marwaris, Gujartis from the north). English, which was introduced by the former British imperialist rulers, has existed as the only common medium of intercourse among the different language groups in India for the past two hundred years. (India has fourteen regional languages with independent scripts. ) .
Once the agitation began it soon got out of control of the DMK leaders who sponsored it. DMK leader Annadurai, who was released after a few days detention, appealed for suspension of the agitation. This went unheeded, The demonstrations turned into e general mass protest against police and army atrocities. The working class in Madras, Coimbatore, Madurai and other industrial centres was drawn into the vortex of struggle. On February 11 there was a complete general strike throughout Tamilnad. The students' Anti~Hindi Action Committee finally called off the agitation after a categorical assurance from New Delhi that Hindi would not be imposed on the non-Hindi people.
The Congress leadership could not remain unaffected. leaders like Kamarag Nadar (the Congress party's national president, from Tamilna), Atulya Ghosh (Bengal), Sanjiva Reddy (Andhra), Nijalingappa (Mysore), who are supposed to represent the non-Hindi states, disso~. ciated themselves from the Centre's decision and demanded that English should be retained as the official language indefinitely. Tamil ministers Subramaniam and Alagesan resigned from the central cabinet as a protest against the central government's refusal,to make a statutory provision to retain English as the official language.,. This was no doubt a stunt by the Congress leadership from Tamilnad to save face.
Unable to maintain unity in the face of the popular upsurge, the top echelons of the Congress hierarchy found themselves plunged into a major crisis. The obstinacy of the Hindi chauvinists in the central government complicated matters for the Congress leaders from the non-Hindi areas. Even the assurances given by Prime Minister Shastri that the Official Languages Act, as adopted by parliament, provided for the..continued use of English as an associate official language of the Union as long as the non-Hindi states wanted it, fell on deaf ears. For Shastri this was a climb down and a concession to popular feelings.
- . But a- new demand, to amend the constitution of the Indian Union to retain English permanently as the official language, has been made. The Madras agitation has apread to the neighbouring states of Andhra,
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Mysore and Kerala. There were violent demonstrations in some parts of Andhra. Students in West Bengal have taken up the cue and have organised massive demonstrations not only for the retention of English as. the official language but also for the release of the almost 1,000 Communist leaders who have been arbitrarily arrested.
This is the first time that Tamilnad, which has a reputation of being relatively "tame," has experienced a mass upsurge of such magnitude.
Despite negative features, such as the absence of a competent. leadership able to channelise the democratic urge of the people, the anti-Hindi agitation has amply demonstrated that the masses are capable of exceptional courage, audacity and sacrifice. This is another answer to those pessimistic "parliamentarians" who have lost faith in the ability. of the masses to fight.
The demand thet Hindi should not be imposed on those who do not speak it is a just, democratic demand which must be supported by all. progressive sectors and the working-class parties. But this demand must be linked with the other wider economic and political issues facing the people such as food, rising prices, etc.
_In the name of an "emergency," the Congress government has launched an offensive against civil liberties in order to cover up its own failure to solve any of the basic problems of the people. ~The first round was directed against the (Left) Communist party but the hatchet will fall on all left-wing parties and groups that offer an effective socialist challenge to the bourgeoisie.
None of the traditional left and working-class parties have advanced a programme for the language movement in the south. The dan-ger arises that extreme reactionary parties will be able to take ad-. vantage of the situation to foment regional and linguistic chauvinism among the masses to serve their own reactionary ends. The working~ class parties must drop this complacent attitude and work out a positive programme for movements seeking democratic demands like this.
India is entering a new phase of perpetual crisis, both on the economic and political fronts, with the bourgeois regime unable to solve any of the basic problems of the people. The traditional par= ties of the left are also disintegrating. New mass upsurges in the context of the growing economic distress are inevitable. . The masses must be educated in action to throw up their own leadership and organs of struggle in the form of elected councils of workers, students and peasants on local and regional levels to formulate their own demands and to fight for them.
It is possible to link up the students! agitation against Hindi in the non-Hindi states with wider demands for democratisation of the management of universities and educational institutions, reduction in. ‘tuition fees, recognition of students! committees in schools and col-
leges, etc. Students are playing a dominant role in .the newly emerging democratic struggles in every state, but their movements must be integrated with the working-class movement as a whole. Joint councils -of workers and students can be organised. The working class must support these struggles with its own class demands for nationalisation of good trade, banking, import and export trade, workers! participation in management, etc.
The regional languages must indeed be developed as the languages of the administration. English should be continued as the official language as long as the people want it. It must be remembered that only a workers! and peasants! government can evolve.a truly national ianguage for this country.
The anti-Hindi agitation in the south has exposed the utter weakness of the Congress leadership.and the hollowness of its organi-~ sational and political integrity. It is obvious that most of the Congress leaders do not possess even a national perspective and suffer from regional chauvinism of the worst type. The aimless drift of the bourgeois leadership.can easily pave the way for the emergency of centrifugal tendencies and eventual Balkanisation of the country, with regional bourgeois interests trying to assert themselves in their own chaotic manner.
and twenty other Calcutta intellectuals have warned that the Congress
party leadership, in trying to impose Hindi on the non-Hindi people and to suppress civil liberties, is paving the way for dividing the country. a
This is a real'danger. Unity of the nation as a whole is at stake; the-bourgeois leadership of the Congress is uneble to preserve it. There are also tendencies inside the Congress and the extreme right-wing parties like the Jan Sangh and the Swatantra party which favour. liquidation of the existing parliamentary. institutions in favour of a semimilitary dictatorship. The coming midterm election in Kerala will test the boasted democratic intentions of the ruling bourgeoisie,
The Congress leadership has been able to survive the present crisis only. because of the nonexistence of a strong working=class party that can challenge its power.. The working class must throw up a leadership that can rally together all the exploited strategy of the Indian: people to guarantee the unity of India and to march to the goal of a socialist revolution. .
THE LEONI GOVERNMENT expressed official "regret and grief" to the U.S. after: trigger-happy Caracas cops shot down a Peace Corps mémbér who came out of a jeep hands up February 19. The police “error" was to mistake an American for a Venezuelan. Otherwise it would have been a routine incident.
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NINTH WORLD YOUTH FESTIVAL
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