Omkar Dattatray
Every year, India observes National Hindi Diwas on September 14 to commemorate the day in 1949 when the Constituent Assembly adopted Hindi, written in Devanagari script, as one of the official languages of the Union. On paper, this day is marked with great pomp and ceremony. Speeches are delivered by leaders, awards are conferred on writers, poets, and officials who have promoted Hindi, and government institutions are directed to prioritize the language in their correspondence and documentation. Schools and universities organize essay competitions, debates, and cultural programmes in Hindi. Yet, behind the cultural extravaganza and official proclamations lies a question that India has repeatedly failed to answer with honesty: is Hindi truly being celebrated as a unifying force, or has it been reduced to a token of political posturing, burdened with contradictions, resistance, and apathy? To celebrate a language is to nurture it, to make it flourish in thought, literature, science, and innovation. It is to give it dignity and respect in both rural and urban spaces, in classrooms and boardrooms, on the stage of literature and on the screens of technology. On Hindi Diwas, however, one often sees the opposite. What passes for celebration is shallow sloganeering, often stripped of intellectual seriousness. The political elite make a few statements about Hindi being the language of the people, but their own children are sent to English-medium schools, their speeches in Parliament are in English, and their social media feeds are overwhelmingly in English. The hypocrisy is stark. Hindi Diwas is marked with ceremonial devotion once a year, while for the remaining 364 days, Hindi is treated as inferior in the hierarchy of languages that dominate modern India.
The larger tragedy is that Hindi, despite being the mother tongue of over 40 percent of Indians and one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, has been unable to command respect in many spaces where it should have thrived. English, the colonial legacy, has entrenched itself as the language of upward mobility, education, governance, and global communication. Even within India, a degree of shame and hesitation accompanies the use of Hindi in elite circles. The growing aspirational class of urban India sees English as the passport to success, while Hindi is relegated to being the language of the masses, of rusticity, and of limited opportunities. National Hindi Diwas does little to address this cultural imbalance. Instead of inspiring pride, the official sermons often deepen the perception of Hindi as a language being forced from above rather than embraced with affection from below. The problem also lies in the politicization of Hindi. Instead of being nurtured as a cultural treasure of India, Hindi has been weaponized in the name of nationalism. The language debate has historically been one of the most contentious issues in India’s post-independence history. Efforts to impose Hindi as the sole national language met with fierce resistance in non-Hindi speaking states, especially in the south, where linguistic pride in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam clashed with the central government’s attempts to enforce uniformity. Hindi Diwas, therefore, is not celebrated with equal enthusiasm across the country. For many, the day carries undertones of linguistic domination, rather than cultural celebration. A truly national language ought to unite, not divide; it should be a medium of connection, not coercion.
Moreover, the neglect of Hindi as a serious language of science, technology, and higher education remains glaring. Despite policy announcements, there are very few world-class textbooks in Hindi for advanced studies in medicine, engineering, or law. Students from Hindi-medium backgrounds often find themselves at a crippling disadvantage when they step into higher education or competitive examinations dominated by English. If Hindi were genuinely respected, governments would have invested decades ago in producing cutting-edge knowledge in the language, ensuring that Hindi speakers are not disadvantaged in global or national competition. Instead, Hindi has been trapped in ceremonial uses -government advertisements, political speeches, and cultural programmes - while the real engines of power and opportunity continue to function in English. The fate of Hindi literature further exposes this contradiction. India boasts an extraordinary tradition of Hindi poets, novelists, and playwrights, from Tulsidas and Premchand to Nirmal Verma and Dharamvir Bharati. Yet, their works remain confined to limited readerships, rarely promoted globally, and often overshadowed by English-language writers from India who are celebrated on international platforms. The Hindi publishing industry struggles with poor marketing, weak translations, and lack of patronage. The global literary imagination of India is increasingly dominated by English, even though Hindi literature is rich, diverse, and deeply rooted in Indian realities. On Hindi Diwas, leaders pay ritualistic homage to Hindi writers, but little is done to bring their works into the mainstream, to translate them widely, or to nurture new generations of Hindi writers who can capture contemporary India.
At the societal level, Hindi’s decline is visible in everyday life. Parents in urban India are often reluctant to speak to their children in Hindi, believing that fluency in English will secure their future. Bollywood, once a bastion of Hindi, now increasingly uses Hinglish, diluting the purity of the language in favor of global appeal. Television channels pepper their broadcasts with English words, while digital platforms thrive on a hybrid of English and Hindi that erodes the latter’s integrity. The younger generation consumes popular culture in English and has limited exposure to classical Hindi literature or even standard Hindi vocabulary. If this trend continues, Hindi Diwas will become nothing more than an annual reminder of a language slowly losing ground in its own home. The question, therefore, is not whether Hindi deserves to be celebrated. It does. As the language of millions, as the repository of centuries of literature, culture, and philosophy, Hindi is an inseparable part of India’s soul. The real question is whether we are willing to move beyond tokenism, beyond one-day celebrations, and commit to a serious revival of Hindi in education, literature, science, and society. The survival and flourishing of Hindi require structural reforms, not symbolic gestures. It requires a government that produces knowledge in Hindi, a society that takes pride in conversing in it, an academic community that writes and researches in it, and a cultural ecosystem that promotes it with vigor. Until then, Hindi Diwas will remain a hollow ritual - loud in celebration, weak in substance, and reflective of the contradictions of a nation that pays lip service to its mother tongue while surrendering its mind and future to another. Let me conclude with a couplet of a poet who said ,’’Kab Youn se Nikhar Uthage Yeh Hindi Ke Bala, Kab sara Jag Isse Hojayeega Matwalla.’’
The author is a columnist, social, KP activist & Freelancer |
