The anti-Hindi agitations in Tamil Nadu have been ongoing intermittently in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu (formerly Madras State and part of Madras Presidency) since the early 20th century. The agitations involve several mass protests, riots, student and political movements in Tamil Nadu concerning the official status of Hindi in the state.
The first agitation was launched in 1937, to protest the introduction of compulsory teaching of Hindi in the schools of Madras Presidency by the first Indian National Congress (INC) government led by C. Rajagopalachari. This faced immediate opposition by Soma Sundara Bharathiyar, E. V. Ramasamy (later known as 'Periyar') and the opposition Justice Party. The three-year-long agitation was multifaceted and involved fasts, conferences, marches, picketing and protests. Government crackdown resulted in the deaths of two protesters and the arrests of 1,198 persons (including women and children). After the government resigned in 1939, the mandatory Hindi education was withdrawn in 1940. After India's independence from the United Kingdom, the adoption of an official language for the (to be) Republic was a hotly debated issue during the framing of the Indian Constitution. Succeeding an exhaustive and divisive debate, Hindi was adopted as the official language of India with English continuing as an associate official language for a pre-set period of 15 years. After the new Constitution came into effect on 26 January 1950, many non-Hindi States opposed efforts by the Union government to make Hindi the sole official language after 26 January 1965.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a descendant of the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) in the then Madras State, led the opposition to Hindi. To allay their fears, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru enacted the Official Languages Act in 1963 to ensure the use of English beyond 1965. Still, there were apprehensions that his assurances might not be honoured by successive governments. As 26 January 1965 approached, the anti-Hindi movement gained momentum in Madras State with increased support from college students. On 25 January, a minor altercation between agitating students and INC party members triggered a full-scale riot in Madurai, eventually spreading all over the State. The riots (marked by violence, arson, looting, police firing and lathi charges) continued unabated for the next two months. Paramilitary involvement (on the request of the State government headed by INC) resulted in the deaths of about 70 people (by official estimates) including two policemen. To calm the situation, the then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri assured that English would continue as the official language as long as the non-Hindi States wanted. The riots and student agitation subsided after this.
The agitations led to major political changes in the state. The DMK won the 1967 assembly election and the INC never managed to recapture power in the state since then. The Official Languages Act was eventually amended in 1967 by the Union government (headed by Indira Gandhi) to guarantee the indefinite use of Hindi and English as official languages. This effectively ensured the current "virtual indefinite policy of bilingualism" of the Indian Republic. There were also two similar (but smaller) agitations in 1968 and 1986 which had varying degrees of success. In the 21st century, numerous agitations in various forms have been continuing intermittently in response to covert and overt attempts of Hindi promulgation.
Background
The Republic of India has hundreds of languages. During the British Raj, English was the official language. When the Indian independence movement gained momentum in the early part of the 20th century, efforts were undertaken to make Hindi as a common language to unite linguistic groups against the British government. As early as 1918, Mahatma Gandhi established the Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha (Institution for the Propagation of Hindi in South India). In 1925, the Indian National Congress switched the language of its official business from English to Hindi. Both Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were supporters of Hindi and Congress wanted to propagate the learning of Hindi in non-Hindi speaking provinces of India. The idea of making Hindi the common language forcefully, was not acceptable to Periyar, who viewed it as an attempt to make Tamils subordinate to North Indians.
Agitation of 1937–1940
The Indian National Congress won the 1937 elections in Madras Presidency. Rajaji became the chief minister on 14 July 1937. He was a supporter of propagating Hindi in South India. On 11 August 1937, within a month of coming to power, he announced his intention to introduce Hindi language teaching in secondary schools by issuing a policy statement. On 21 April 1938, he issued a government order making the teaching of Hindi compulsory in 125 secondary schools in the presidency. Periyar and the opposition Justice Party led by A. T. Panneerselvam immediately opposed the move. They started state-wide protests against Rajaji and Hindi.
The agitation was backed by Periyar's Self-Respect Movement and Justice Party. It also had the support of Tamil scholars like Maraimalai Adigal, Somasundara Bharathiar, K. Appadurai, Mudiyarasan and Ilakkuvanar. In December 1937, Tamil Saivite scholars were among the first to announce their opposition to the Hindi teaching in the Saiva Sidhandha Maha Samaja conference at Velur. Women also participated in the agitation in large numbers. Moovalur Ramamirtham, Narayani, Va. Ba. Thamaraikani, Munnagar Azhagiyar, Dr. S. Dharmambal, Malar Mugathammaiyar, Pattammal and Seethammal were some of the women who were arrested for participating in the agitation. On 13 November 1938, the Tamil Nadu Women's Conference was convened to demonstrate women's support for the movement. The agitation was marked by anti-Brahmin sentiments as the protesters believed Brahmins were attempting to impose Hindi and Sanskrit over Tamil. Despite the general anti-Brahminism of the agitation, a few Brahmins like Kanchi Rajagopalachari also participated in the movement. The Tamil speaking Muslims in the Madras presidency supported the agitation (in contrast to the Urdu-speaking Muslims, who supported the propagation of Hindi, since Hindi and Urdu are linguistically the same language called Hindustani). The agitation was marked by fasts, protest marches, processions, picketing of schools teaching Hindi and government offices, anti-Hindi conferences, observing an anti-Hindi day (1 July and 3 December 1938) and black flag demonstrations. It was active in the Tamil speaking districts of the presidency – Ramnad, Tirunelveli, Salem, Tanjore and North Arcot. During the course of the agitation, two protesters – Natarajan and Thalamuthu – lost their lives in police custody.
The ruling Congress Party was divided on the Hindi issue. While Rajaji and his supporters stuck to their position, Sathyamurti and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan were against it. They wanted Rajaji to make Hindi optional or to provide a conscience clause for allowing parents to withhold their children from Hindi classes. But Rajaji was firm in his stance. The police response to the agitation grew progressively brutal in 1939. During the agitation, a total of 1,198 protesters were arrested and out of them 1,179 were convicted (73 of those jailed were women and 32 children accompanied their mothers to prison). Periyar was fined 1,000 rupees and sentenced to one year of rigorous imprisonment for inciting "women to disobey the law" (he was released within six months on 22 May 1939 citing medical grounds) and Annadurai was jailed for four months. On 7 June 1939, all those arrested for participating in the agitations were released without explanation. Rajaji also organised pro-Hindi meetings to counter the agitators. On 29 October 1939, the Congress government resigned protesting the involvement of India in the Second World War, and the Madras provincial government was placed under governor's rule. On 31 October, Periyar suspended the agitation and asked the governor to withdraw the compulsory Hindi order. On 21 February 1940, Governor Erskine issued a press communique withdrawing compulsory Hindi teaching and making it optional.
Agitations of 1946–1950 From 1946 to 1950, there were sporadic agitations against Hindi by the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) and Periyar. Whenever the government introduced Hindi as a compulsory language in schools, anti-Hindi protests happened and succeeded in stopping the move. The largest anti-Hindi imposition agitations in this period occurred from 1948 to 1950. After India's independence in 1947, the Congress government at the centre urged all states to make Hindi compulsory in schools. The Congress government of Madras Presidency under Omandur Ramasamy Reddiar complied and made Hindi compulsory in the 1948–49 academic year. It also introduced a minimum qualification in Hindi for the promotion of students to higher classes. Periyar once again launched agitation against the imposition of Hindi. The 1948 agitation was supported by former Congress nationalists like M. P. Sivagnanam and Thiru. Vi. Ka, who recanted their earlier pro-Hindi policies. On 17 July, the DK convened an all party anti-Hindi conference to oppose the compulsory Hindi teaching. As in the agitation from 1938 to 1940, this agitation was also characterized by strikes, black flag demonstrations and anti-Hindi processions. When Rajaji (then the Governor-General of India) visited Madras on 23 August, the DK staged a black flag demonstration against his visit. On 27 August, Periyar and Annadurai were arrested. The government did not change its position on Hindi and the agitation continued. On 18 December, Periyar and other DK leaders were arrested again. A compromise was reached between the government and agitators. The government stopped the legal action against the agitators and they in turn dropped the agitation on 26 December 1948. Eventually, the government made Hindi teaching optional beginning in 1950. Students who did not want to learn Hindi were allowed to participate in other school activities during Hindi classes.
Official languages and the Indian Constitution
The Indian Constituent Assembly was established on 9 December 1946, for drafting a Constitution when India became independent. The Constituent Assembly witnessed fierce debates on the language issue. The adoption of a National Language, the language in which the Constitution was to be written in and the language in which the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly were to be conducted were the main linguistic questions debated by the framers of the Constitution. On one side were members from the "Hindi-speaking provinces" like Algu Rai Sastri, R.V. Dhulekar, Balkrishna Sharma, Purushottam Das Tandon, (all from United Provinces), Babunath Gupta (Bihar), Hari Vinayak Pataskar (Bombay) and Ravi Shankar Shukla, Seth Govind Das (Central Provinces and Berar). They moved a large number of pro-Hindi amendments and argued for adopting Hindi as the sole National Language. On 10 December 1946, Dhulekar declared "People who do not know Hindi have no right to stay in India. People who are present in the House to fashion a constitution for India and do not know Hindi are not worthy to be members of this assembly. They had better leave."Constitution Assembly Debates-Official Report (New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1988), Volume 1, p 26-27