: The language issue in India #WorldNEWSAll India has several languages and dialects, all of them deserving equal respect, and I am strongly opposed to imposition of Hindi anywhere. A controversy has

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The language issue in India #WorldNEWSAll
India has several languages and dialects, all of them deserving equal respect, and I am strongly opposed to imposition of Hindi anywhere.
A controversy has arisen in India over the decision of the Madhya Pradesh BJP Govt of teaching in Hindi in medical colleges in the state.
In this article I will not go into the correctness or otherwise of this decision, but will instead discuss the general issue relating to Hindi, particularly in the light of the strong opposition to it in the state of Tamilnadu.
India has several languages and dialects, all of them deserving equal respect, and I am strongly opposed to imposition of Hindi anywhere.
In fact it was the short sighted policy of some north Indian politicians in the 1960s of trying to impose Hindi that led to agitations and strong opposition, particularly in Tamilnadu (on which the DMK party swept into power).
That having been said, I strongly urge Tamilians and others in India to voluntarily learn Hindi, and I wish to give my reasons.
I do not believe that Hindi is superior to Tamil (or any other language). Tamil has a rich literature coming down from ancient times, and Tamilians are justly proud of it.
However, the fact remains that Hindi is spoken by about 15 times more people in India than Tamil or Telugu or any other state language. It is spoken as the first language in the Hindi speaking belt i. e. UP, Bihar, MP, Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, and Delhi, as also in the Andaman Islands.
Hindi is also spoken as a second language in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab, Kashmir, Telangana, Goa, north eastern states, etc. In other states too, many people can speak Hindi.
In fact Hindi is already the link language of India and in this connection I may narrate an incident which took place when I was Chief Justice of Madras High Court.

I had been invited by the Gulbarga University (in northern Karnataka) to give a talk. I flew from Chennai to Hyderabad, from where I traveled by taxi to Gulbarga. A Professor of Gulbarga University had come to Hyderabad to accompany me to Gulbarga in the taxi. On the way I heard the Professor and the taxi driver conversing with each other in Hindi.
This surprised me, as both of them were South Indians I asked the Professor about this, and he explained that his mother tongue was Kannada and he did not know Telugu, while the taxi drivers mother tongue was Telugu but he did not know Kannada. But both knew Hindi, which enabled them to communicate with each other.
When a Judge of the Indian Supreme Court I sat on a bench with Justice HK Sema, who was from Nagaland, and we used to converse in Hindi as all Nagas can speak it.
Once I spoke in Anna University in Chennai and advised Tamilans to voluntarily learn Hindi.

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