Mains- GS-1 Society.

  1. In South Asia, we commit the mistake of interpreting political maps as cultural maps.
  2. Hindi is being imposed using the logic of “One Nation – One Language” in a multilingual India.
  3. It must be remembered that one of the reasons behind the partition between Western Pakistan and Eastern Pakistan was the imposition of Urdu on the Bengali population.
  4. Urdu as a concocted Islamic category was made to mediate between the two distinct cultural zones under an imaginary Islamic linguistic umbrella.
  5. Even if a multilingual nation like India becomes monolingual, over a course of time it will gradually create many distinct dialects unique in themselves.
  6. The Sinhala Only Act (the Official Language Act) of 1956 was a high point in Sri Lanka’s history which triggered intense enmity and distrust between the Sinhalis and the Tamils.
  7. It replaced English with Sinhala as the sole official language of Sri Lanka with the exclusion of Tamil people who formed 70% of the population.
  8. Singapore has a multi-ethnic population (Chinese, Malay and Indian), in its formative years, there was immense pressure to declare Chinese as the official language of Singapore. But it opted for English.
  9. India should have a robust language policy that emphasises on the quality of language learning rather than running language departments.
  10. In India, there should be focus on how to study language structurally and systematically.