Language was never just a tool of communication for Mahatma Gandhi-it was a weapon for freedom and a bridge to unite India’s diverse masses. As he spearheaded the independence movement, Gandhi grappled with a fundamental question: How could a nation demand freedom while conducting its business in the language of its colonizers? This conviction led him to develop a comprehensive vision for India’s national language, one that would connect leaders to ordinary citizens and forge a collective Indian identity.
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The power of words in freedom
Gandhi believed that true Swaraj required breaking free from the linguistic chains of colonialism. In his seminal work Hind Swaraj (1909), he argued that Indians who communicated with each other in English and took their disputes to British courts in English were perpetuating their own enslavement. For him, the continued dominance of English was a mark of humiliation under colonial rule.
Gandhi posed a powerful question to his compatriots: How could a “dumb nation” without its own common language demand freedom from an alien regime? He was among the first leaders of the freedom struggle to recognize that most pre-Gandhi leaders had avoided this vital question because they were part of the English-educated elite-barristers, lawyers, and people of substance who were comfortable operating in the colonizer’s tongue.
In his capacity as a member of the Second South African Delegation in 1909, Gandhi wrote that love and respect for Indian languages were essential before Indians could truly call their country their own. He emphasized that for India to achieve meaningful independence, the freedom struggle had to become a mass movement-and that was only possible through a language the masses understood.
Language as a unifying force
Gandhi’s insistence on language was not merely practical but deeply philosophical. He declared that language was a powerful means of achieving national unity, and the more firmly it was established, the broader based that unity would be. He linked language directly to the cause of freedom, stating that as long as the Congress did not use an Indian language for all its work, Swaraj remained impossible.
His approach was demonstrated through action. During the Champaran Movement in 1917 and subsequent campaigns in Kaira and Ahmedabad in 1918, Gandhi emphasized political education through the vernacular as an essential step. He drafted leaflets in simple, homely style to ensure workers understood not just the practical demands but the moral and spiritual dimensions of their struggle.
Gandhi’s criteria for a national language
At the Second Gujarat Educational Conference in Broach on 20 October 1917, Gandhi laid down five specific requirements for any language to become India’s national language:
Ease of learning for officials: The national language should be easy for government officials to learn, enabling them to communicate effectively with citizens across the country.
Medium for religious, economic, and political discourse: It must be capable of serving as a vehicle for all forms of public intercourse-from spiritual discussions to trade negotiations to political debates.
Speech of the majority: The language should already be spoken by the majority of India’s inhabitants, giving it a natural foundation for national adoption.
Accessibility for the whole country: It should be easy for people from all regions of India to learn, not just those from particular linguistic backgrounds.
Independence from temporary interests: The choice should not be influenced by passing political considerations but should be made with India’s long-term unity in mind.
Why English failed the test
Gandhi was unequivocal in his assessment: English did not fulfill any of the five requirements he had outlined. His objection was not rooted in hatred-he acknowledged English as a “world language” necessary for acquiring modern knowledge. However, he firmly believed it could never become India’s national language.
The primary problem was accessibility. Gandhi pointed to the gulf that English created between the educated classes and the uneducated masses. Only a tiny fraction of India’s population could speak English, which meant conducting national affairs in this language excluded the vast majority of citizens from participating in their own governance.
Moving among the masses, Gandhi observed that lack of fluency in English was taking away the self-esteem of Indians. He lamented what he called the “false de-Indianizing education” that made Indians believe they could not succeed without English. This, he argued, was a form of continued mental colonization.
The elite-mass divide
The nationalist movement operated in two distinct registers: English, the language of the colonial state and educated elite, and the regional vernaculars, which carried the resonances of everyday life for ordinary Indians. Gandhi sought to bridge this divide. He cultivated what scholars describe as “diglossia nationalism,” enabling elites from different provinces to communicate while allowing nationalist ideas to reach common people.
Gandhi himself set an example by adhering to his mother tongue, Gujarati, in his major writings. Works like Hind Swaraj, his autobiography, and Sarvodaya were originally composed in Gujarati. He was dismayed that even Gujaratis used English to converse among themselves, considering it a form of self-impoverishment and an insult to their own language.
Hindi as the candidate
Having established that English could not serve as India’s national language, Gandhi proposed Hindi-or more precisely, Hindustani-as the only language fulfilling his five criteria. However, his conception of Hindi differed significantly from the Sanskritized version that would later become standardized.
Gandhi defined Hindi as the language spoken by Hindus and Muslims in North India, written in either Devanagari or Urdu script. He emphasized that Hindi and Urdu were not two different languages but the same language with artificial distinctions created by educated classes-Hindus who Sanskritized their speech and Muslims who Persianized theirs.
Hindustani: The confluence of two rivers
Gandhi promoted Hindustani as a symbol of unity between Hindus and Muslims. In 1925, he persuaded the Indian National Congress to accept Hindustani as the official language for its proceedings. He used a beautiful metaphor to describe his vision, saying that Hindi and Urdu were like the Ganga and the Yamuna, while Hindustani was the Saraswati-the invisible river that flowed beneath, connecting them.
He urged both communities to embrace rather than reject each other’s vocabulary: Hindus should not purge Persian words, and Muslims should not eliminate Sanskrit terms from their speech. This harmonious blend, he believed, would be as beautiful as the confluence of the sacred rivers and would last forever.
Respect for regional languages
Importantly, Gandhi’s advocacy for a common language was not meant to supersede regional languages but to supplement them. At the 1924 Belgaum Congress session, he clarified that provincial governments, legislatures, and courts should use the vernacular of their province. Hindustani was meant for central government affairs and inter-provincial communication.
He declared that unless Indians gave Hindi its natural status and provincial languages their due place in people’s lives, all talk of Swaraj was useless. His vision was a three-tiered structure: mother tongue for local affairs, the regional language for provincial matters, and Hindustani for national communication.
The Hindustani Prachar Sabha
When the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan began pushing for a heavily Sanskritized version of Hindi, excluding Urdu vocabulary, Gandhi resigned and founded the Hindustani Prachar Sabha in May 1942. He could not, as a Satyagrahi committed to non-violence and unity, support a movement that alienated Muslims by purging their linguistic contributions.
The objective of his new organization was to promote Hindustani-the language spoken and understood by both Hindus and Muslims in North India, written in both Nagari and Persian scripts. For Gandhi, language was ultimately about connection, not division. His dream of Hindustani as a unifying force remained unrealized as post-partition politics pushed Hindi and Urdu further apart. Yet his vision of language as a bridge rather than a barrier continues to resonate in discussions about India’s linguistic diversity.
What do you think? Can any single language truly unite a nation as linguistically diverse as India, or does Gandhi’s vision of Hindustani offer lessons for how different linguistic communities might coexist while maintaining their distinct identities?
References
- https://www.epw.in/engage/article/hindi-imposition-examining-gandhis-views-on-common-language
- https://elinepa.org/mahatma-gandhi-and-the-contentious-issue-of-languages-in-india/
- https://www.languageinindia.com/april2005/earlygandhi2.html
- https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~jason2/papers/natlang.htm
- https://ashvamegh.net/issue-language-indian-english-literature/
- https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/socp13/chapter/undoing-education-learning-decolonising-the-mind/
- https://thefederal.com/category/opinion/gandhi-jayanti-opinion-elites-masses-india-freedom-struggle-209535
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/hindustani
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