NEW DELHI: “A society must have one language for education. It should be Hindi. Hindi can bring millions of people together. Therefore, the longer it takes for Hindi to get its rightful place, the greater the harm to the country.”
Is this statement made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding the new education policy? No, this statement was made by Mahatma Gandhi in 1917 when he sent a circular to his millions of supporters. Not only this, but a few months later, in 1918, he held a conference in Madras (now Chennai) under the presidency of C.P. Ramaswami, which was inaugurated by Annie Besant, and a proposal to celebrate the ‘Hindi Year’ was passed.
To further promote this campaign, he sent his son Devdas Gandhi, and then wrote a letter to his Tamil associate saying, “Unless the Tamil representatives are genuinely committed to Hindi, the boycott of English will not succeed in the General Assembly. I see that the movement for Hindi is becoming somewhat like the Khadi movement. Do all that is possible to spread the movement.”
Mahatma Gandhi, realising the need for a national language to unite and organise a divided India, said, “Without a national language, a nation is mute.”
In contrast to this, Maharashtra is witnessing protests from Congress, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena, Raj Thackeray’s MNS, and some other groups regarding Modi’s education policy, which includes making Hindi mandatory from classes 1 to 5 along with Marathi in schools. These organisations are unwilling to accept the fundamental principles of Mahatma Gandhi. It is ironic that Congress and its allied parties, through their dirty politics, are stoking the flames of separatism based on caste and language in various states. Initially, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin and other DMK leaders strongly opposed the importance of Hindi and other Indian languages in the new education policy under the pretext of regional autonomy. Now, in Maharashtra, there is strong opposition from opposition parties regarding the inclusion of Hindi as the third language for students in Marathi and English-medium schools from classes 1 to 5.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has clearly stated, “Speaking Marathi will be mandatory in the state. We have already implemented the new education policy. According to this policy, we are trying to ensure that everyone speaks both Marathi and the national language. The policy advocates for the use of a common conversational language across the country, and the Maharashtra government has already taken steps to ensure the widespread use of Marathi.”
The Maharashtra government has announced a detailed plan to implement the National Education Policy 2020 for the academic session 2025-26. The government has clarified that in Maharashtra’s English and Marathi medium schools, only two languages are taught, while schools in other mediums already follow the three-language formula. Marathi and English are mandatory in those schools, and they teach the language of instruction. Now, Hindi will be made mandatory as the third language. From the 2025-26 academic session, Hindi will be taught in Class 1, and the government aims to extend this to all classes by the 2028-29 session.
In Maharashtra, a state where Marathi is the dominant language, making Hindi mandatory is seen as a strategic move. The aim is to make students multilingual and open doors for national-level communication and opportunities. Hindi-speaking students from other states will also benefit from easier access to education in Maharashtra. This change is being made to enhance the overall language development and communication skills of students. The government believes this will increase respect for linguistic diversity among children and strengthen national unity.
However, opposition parties and regional organisations may protest against this decision, as they advocate for maintaining the primacy of regional languages in the state. Sanjay Raut, spokesperson for Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena, and Raj Thackeray are making baseless arguments, suggesting that Hindi is being recognised as “Hindu” instead. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after extensive discussions and debates in Parliament, has urged the prioritisation of Hindi and other Indian languages in the 2020 education policy. As per the policy, children can choose to study their mother tongue along with two other Indian languages or a foreign language like English or French as the third language. Despite the practical clarity provided, leaders and organisations that engage in vote-bank politics by dividing society are trying to stir the public against the use of Hindi for upcoming elections, such as the Tamil Nadu Assembly or the Mumbai Municipal Corporation elections.
Interestingly, prominent actors like Kamal Haasan are also opposing Hindi education, just like other leaders. The leaders and actors of South Indian states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, and Maharashtra conveniently forget that, in the last five years, their regional languages—Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam—have earned billions through Hindi-dubbed films and have astonished Bollywood and even Hollywood. Haasan, along with many actors and filmmakers from South India and Eastern India, have gained the most popularity from Hindi films. Leaders like P. Chidambaram, a staunch opponent of Hindi, are in stark contrast to Indira Gandhi’s era Chanakya Kamaraj or Prime Ministers like Narasimha Rao and H.D. Deve Gowda, who felt proud to learn and speak Hindi.
In fact, even before independence, the importance of Hindi was understood by leaders, scholars, and educators from non-Hindi-speaking regions. Even Amir Khusro, in the 17th century, used the term ‘Hindavi’ to highlight the utility of Hindi. Swami Dayanand, the great reformer of the Arya Samaj, wrote his “Satyarth Prakash” in Hindi. All great leaders like Swami Dayanand, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Mahatma Gandhi, Lokmanya Tilak, Subhas Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, and Vinoba Bhave emphasised accepting Hindi as the unifying language of the country. The framers of the Constitution even made provisions for Hindi to be the official language. Therefore, those opposing Hindi and Indian languages in education are even labelling it as unconstitutional, which is entirely wrong. Articles 29-30, 120, 210, 343, 351, and 394 of the Constitution have provisions for adopting Hindi at various levels.
Article 343 designates Hindi as the official language, and Article 351 states, “It is the duty of the Union to promote the spread and development of the Hindi language so that it can be the medium of expression of all elements of Indian culture.”
Following this goal, the Modi government is making rapid progress in implementing Hindi and other Indian languages under the new education policy.