Sir,

Appreciate your thought when you said ‘Let not a language tear asunder a united Bharat’ (Abracadabra by K.B. Ganapathy in SOM dated Mar. 4, 2025). But, in the larger context in today’s India, we witness that language, religion, caste, creed, and cultures play a pivotal role especially for our power-hungry politicians who constantly play mind games to win an election.

Now the question of accepting Hindi as a national language is disputed by citizens. The truth is Hindi has not been declared a national language, but has been made a mandatory language under National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. From August 1947, Hindi and English have been accepted as link languages for communication and it continues in the same position.

Non-Hindi speaking States, especially in South India, have a fear that their languages will be ignored and the dominance of Hindi will undermine languages like Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Bengali, etc.

Languages are the gateways to the world. Hence, we should learn a language out of LOVE and not be trusted upon individuals by the authority. One will gain and thrive across the world by learning more languages.

Promote all Indian languages on par with Hindi and see the ‘magic’ happen in Bharat, the land of diversity with rich regional languages and multiple cultures.

— Norbert Gregory Brown, N.R. Mohalla, 4.3.2025

Note: All Indian languages cannot be taught in a school. Country must have a language policy which will determine the number of languages to be taught (three under NEP) and which are those languages. Each State may be allowed to decide. The link language may be English for now. —Ed

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