Aladi Aruna, illustrious parliamentarian and a staunch advocate of Dravidianism, who is the author of the monograph titled Hindi Imperialism has brought the relevance of language and culture in mass politics. His boyhood and youth hood coincided with times of great tumult, brought about by economic depression, anti-colonial struggles, self-respect movement, class and caste assertions, and the battle against the imposition of Hindi. Like many others of his generation, he was exposed to new ideas, thoughts, and political ideologies. It was a time when the personality of EVR, popularly referred to by the Tamil masses as Periyar loomed large transcending the social and political boundaries. Periyar was seen as someone who symbolised a social revolution, a person who could turn the world upside down, break down the barriers of caste and purity and think of an undifferentiated mass of people united by their allegiance to Tamil, and sometimes to other sister Dravidian languages. The new Indian nation-state with its pronounced bias towards Hindu-Hindi culture and an insidious backdoor Brahminism provided greater opportunities to radical minds to rebel against hegemony in any form or shape.

The imposition of Hindi on Tamil-speaking people has elicited many responses, which have had tremendous social and political implications in South India. This has been a very emotional issue as well and there have been many instances when young men as custodians of Tamil language and heritage, have performed acts of self-immolation. But this entire emotionalism linked to the imagery of Tamil as mother and as something divine would never have attained such heights had the self-respect movement of Periyar had not created an aura about Tamil nationalism. In the 1930s, Periyar led the anti-Hindi agitation which swept through like a wildfire the Tamil-speaking districts of the Madras Presidency. Thousands of young men and women broke laws and prohibitory orders imposed by the state authorities to express their resentment against Congress politicians who favoured the introduction of Hindi in the Tamil medium schools. Hindi was berated for its connections with the Hindi heartland and its Aryanic lineage. It seemed to represent a social order that privileged caste and other forms of social hierarchy and subordination. The anti-Hindi movement attracted cultural activists, Tamil linguists, retired members of the subordinate bureaucracy and non-Brahmin political leaders with different political affiliations. The movement met with repression and many of the Congress leaders including C. Rajagopalachari expressed little sympathy for the young people, who had borne the brunt of police action. Memories and sentiments of the anti-Hindustani agitation of the 1930s were not lost. They continued to survive in the urban neighbourhoods, villages as well as in the remote human settlements. There was considerable support from the emigrant Tamil communities settled in different parts of Southeast Asia which often found expression in their writings published in the popular Tamil journals. There were instances of young Tamil men arriving from Ceylon, Indo-China and Malaya to take part in the anti-Hindi demonstrations which were held in the urban areas of the Tamil districts. State-sponsored mayhem and long periods of imprisonment stoked fire in the young hearts. Within a decade or more, the chances of a rebellion came and the streets of Madras and elsewhere drew in large crowds of people protesting against the imposition of Hindi by the provincial Congress government. Mount Road in Chennai more popularly known as the Anna Salai was the epicentre of this movement. Crowds painted in black the trading establishments owned by North Indians and shouted slogans that they would never accept the domination of the Hindi-speaking people.

The forceful imposition of Hindi on the Tamil masses did not stop. Time and again it appeared and every time it was repulsed with determination by Tamil patriots. Self-immolation in the streets was the most common form of protest and perhaps the most emotional form of expressing affection for one’s mother tongue. Heart-rendering scenes touched all and the political elite in New Delhi found themselves in a dilemma. Periyar was still alive in these difficult days of the 1960s, and so were his onetime lieutenants C. Annadurai and K. Karunanidhi. The vision of a separate Dravida Nadu of the 1940s made a comeback in popular memory. The resentment against the Congress Ministry of M. Bhaktavatsalam was much in evidence and the emotionalism of Tamil/Dravidian identity pushed it out of the political corridors in the elections of 1967. Aladi Aruna’s book reminds us of these times when protest was not simply over a political cause but for one’s cultural survival. The story begins in the 1930s and moves to the 1970s narrating a whole lot of developments, which witnessed countless participation of ordinary men and women. The politically charged Tamil films of MGR with scripts written by Karunanidhi had already prepared them for struggles against any form of discrimination and injustice. The history of the 1930s was thus very much revived through the portrayal of Tamilness, one which was very different from the Aryan-Hindu discourse of the Indian nation-state.

Aladi Aruna talks about these times when Tamils tried to protect their language and defeat the domination of Hindi. It is undoubtedly a tale of countless sacrifices which were no less than those of Gandhi and his followers during the independence movement. As an author, he candidly admits that the main purpose for writing the book had been born out of a desire to record the supreme sacrifices made by the Tamilans. The first edition of this book came out in 1966, a year after the language revolution of 1965. The foreword of the book written by the well-known Tamil orator-politician Annadurai, who had once been the most trusted lieutenant of Periyar, a person who had been accused by many of breaking the Dravida Kazhagam. Notwithstanding such criticisms, Annadurai and Karunanidhi were able to lay the foundations of a new political party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (hereafter DMK). Aruna in these years was a student of the Madras Law College, and with many other radical friends and accolades joined the anti-Hindi movement without a second thought. However, the revolutionary mood did not survive for long and it took almost a decade before the fire became visible once more.

The mid-1980s was once more a period of political turmoil with the DMK coming out in the open and burning copies of the constitutional provision on official languages. Karunanidhi who was leading the DMK was jailed by his one-time friend-turned-foe, MGR, who headed the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Ministry (hereafter AIADMK). The matters did not rest there. The MGR government disqualified seven DMK legislators something which was seen as a betrayal to the Tamil cause. The political climate was hot and the belligerence all around also had to do with a lot of unhappy incidents involving the Tamils in Sri Lanka. The greatness of Tamil civilization predating the Sangam age, was extolled in popular rhetoric and in the articles published in the vernacular journals. The second edition of this book which was published in 1986 bears witness to these times of emotional distress and it was natural for the author to present more vivid descriptions of the struggle of the Tamil masses.

The anti-Hindi agitation of the 1980s should be remembered by socially sensitive non-Tamilians for reasons more than one. It was a time when the political leaders of the southern states many of whom, led their own political outfits criticised the homogenizing tendency of the Congress party which ran the country from New Delhi. NT Rama Rao, Ramakrishna Hegde, and K.Karunanidhi often talked in a single political language expressing preference for the idea related to the autonomy of the states. The Centre State relations seemed to be surviving on a narrow thread and disputes over earnings from taxes and sharing of river waters cast a shadow over the future of Indian federalism.

The hegemony of the Indian nation-state dates back to 1925, when the Congress declared Hindustani to be the national language. In consonance with this declaration, there was a reshuffling of its organisational structure. The All India Congress Committee meetings and the Congress sessions had all space for Hindi-speaking delegates but delegates who preferred to speak in a regional language or in English were for all purposes treated as second grade delegates. The Hindu-Muslim discord had far serious implications in this issue, despite Gandhi’s attempts to salvage communal harmony through temporary acts of reconciliation. To douse the fire, Gandhi defined Hindustani as a hybrid born out of the inclusion of words and terminologies from both Hindi and Urdu. Gandhi’s attempts to strike a balance between Hindus and Muslims met with disfavour from Hindi fanatics, who neither wanted to cooperate with the Muslims nor enter into any dialogue with them. The dangers of projecting Hindi as a national language , became culpable after the Indian independence. The advocates of Hindi now turned into Hindu-Hindi fanatics, with their beliefs in a single civilisational past. Aryanic civilisation was showered with encomiums and the other civilisations which had thrived in the soil of India for centuries were regarded as inferior and low in terms of sophistication. The Indian nation-state remained a prisoner to this blatant display of authoritarianism, attired more than often in the robes of Hindi and Hinduism. The greatness of the much older Dravidian civilisation hardly figured in the cultural imagination of the new Indian nation-state.

The resentment against Hindi was natural and it has continued to gain popular support at the pan-Indian level, even in the recent decades. The sacrifices of the Dravidianists have time and again been discussed in non-Hindi cultural circles and there has been a hardening of posture against the forcible imposition of Hindi. The Congress leadership is undoubtedly to be blamed for backing out of Gandhi’s line of thought that Hindustani be the national language, which could be written both in Urdu and Devanagari scripts. The top-brass of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan who had opposed Gandhi in his own times, continued to be far more recalcitrant in the years which followed the Indian independence. Political tensions between India and Pakistan provided a greater opportunity to the Hindi hawks to pursue their mission with greater aggression and chauvinism. This was the immediate prelude to the anti-Hindi movements which started in the late 1940s and continued till about the 1980s. This does not rule out the occasional flare ups that one encounters in recent times.

As early as 1930s, Rajagopalachari’s attempts to impose Hindi on the Tamils had evoked very strong public reactions. Thousands of men and women took to the streets in the defence of Tamil as a language and a religion, which defined their everyday experiences of Tamilness. This sort of emotive attachment was not something esoteric, but was perceived to be a divine gift to the Tamil masses, something which remained mired in a different form of devotional ethics. Rajaji was viewed as a trespasser working at the behest of his Aryanic Hindu bosses who were out to exterminate the challenges in the name of civilisational otherness. The Karanthai Tamil Sangam took the lead in voicing protest against this linguistic imperialism and subsequently many other organisations joined to spearhead an agitation for preserving the heritage of Tamil. Police action was unprecedented as much as the public response itself. Emotions ran high with slogans, “Death comes only once, whether you are six years old or hundred years old. Let us protect Mother Tamil.”

The love for Mother Tamil has been something that has transcended barriers of gender, sex and ideology. It remains as much in the past as it holds ground for the present. Periyar was undoubtedly one of the few who had preached to the Tamil masses the importance of Tamil  and to be a protector of Tamil/Dravidian nationalism. His radicalism was one of the unifying factors behind the anti-Hindi agitations which gained ground after independence. The reactions of the Congress ministries in Tamil Nadu, whether headed by Rajagopalachari or Omandur Ramasamy Reddiar were no different, they always seem to act in a fit of arrogance and rage looking for every opportunity to snuff out any political dissent.

The fight waged by the Dravidianists was relentless and it continuously put pressure on the Indian nation-state to uphold federal values. Waiving aside the state repression and the red eyes of the Congress “Hindiwallahs” and their Tamil cronies, Annadurai instilled a new thought among the Tamil masses, something for which he owed much to his political guru Periyar. The division between the DK and the DMK did not stand in between when both Periyar and Annadurai led the anti-Hindi volunteers in the early 1950s. The interesting point is that Annadurai despite his differences with Periyar, remained keen more than ever to project Periyar as the Thalaivar (leader) of the Tamil masses. There were obvious reasons behind this, dictated very much by the realities of the post-independence years. Periyar continued to be adulated by the Tamils and his columns in the Viduthalai provided a rational justification as to why Delhi’s authoritarianism needed to be challenged. Annadurai’s oratory skills undoubtedly moved the Tamil audience, but the radicalism of Periyar gave them the energy and the courage to defy death, when it came to defending their Tamil mother. There were occasional blemishes when Periyar himself congratulated Kamraj as one who was perhaps the only Congressman who could fulfil the aspirations of the Tamil masses. This expectation was based on an element of romanticism and other than curbing down some police excesses, the Kamraj ministry remained very much like its predecessors.

The battle over the imposition of Hindi has been discussed at length by Aladi Aruna. The fact remains that the native speakers of Rajasthani, Maithali, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Chattisgarhi and Awadhi had frequently expressed their resentment against the blatant supremacy of Khari Boli. There had been intellectuals who had always emphasized on the diversities that had remained embedded in the linguistic tradition represented by Hindi. The number of Khari Boli speakers, who were supposedly representing the cause of Hindi was miniscule and possibly has continued to be so even in recent times.

Hindi did not have sufficient number of literary and scientific texts in the 1950s, something which remains evident in recent times too. Nehru himself had admitted that Hindi did not have the kind of a rich vocabulary as well as literary, artistic and scientific elements like Tamil, Telugu and Bengali. There were many who have argued that Hindi was bereft of a rich culture and history of its own. This made it somewhat of an outsider in the literary world. Hindi fanatics however, time and again have created an impression that Hindi could be a binding force and could serve as a tool for bringing about national unity. C. Subramaniam, a Congressman had admitted that parties like the DMK had not been in any way involved in activities that could lead to a disruption in national unity. Rather the linguistic chauvinism of the Hindi speakers was much to be blamed for the political turmoil. It was clear that the entire jingoism over Hindi as the national language was bound to destroy India’s unity. Ivor Jennings, a constitutional law expert had once commented that if Hindi was made the official language, Hindi speakers in the North would become dominant, just like the English speakers who dominated India politically and culturally after the independence. The Official Languages Commission despite offering concessions to non-Hindi speaking applicants in government jobs kept the doors open for Hindi literates to enter through the backdoors. Bureaucrats and politicians in post-colonial India simply failed to realise that this forceful imposition of a language could only lead to greater dissent within the Indian nation-state.

The disenchantment was fuelled by those Hindu fanatics and the Congress, who were equivocal in their support for the Devnagari script. Gandhi had expressed the opinion that to keep the flames of the national awakening glowing there had to be an attempt towards creating a common script for the entire country. The strong resentment of the Muslims, the frequent outbreaks of communal riots and religious tensions put brakes on the common language issue. Aruna makes it clear that it would be wrong to assume that Hindi supporters had given up their plan of imposing Devnagari and if at all it became a reality that itself would spell a disaster for the great Indian languages and literary traditions represented by Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Odiya and many others. The three language formula failed to pacify the speakers of the south Indian languages. Students were made to learn Hindi in all schools from the ninth standard onwards. In the 1960s, the Congress Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M. Bhaktavatsalam had insisted that there was no question of imposition of Hindi on the school students. The students learned Hindi on their own wishes and there was no compulsion. This was absolutely a great lie. The anti-Hindi agitation of late 1960s would not have gained the momentum had not the students played a leading role in demonstrations and picketing of shops, burning of Hindi books, carrying out self-immolations and falling prey to the bullets fired by the police. The Congress claiming to represent the nation had turned a blind eye to the cultural pluralities that were inherent within the Indian nation-state. The basic foundations on which federalism existed were rickety and it was simply dangling on two language or three language formulas which lacked public acceptance.

The anti-Hindi agitation of the late 1960s exposed the false claims of the national leadership of the Congress. The increasing participation of students in the anti-Hindi movement and the criticisms over the state governments’ repressive policies failed to convince them that a quick solution was needed. There was no sign of assurance of justice to the non-Hindi speaking people. The Congress government in Tamil Nadu adopted the ‘divide and rule’ tactics to quell the anti-Hindi feelings among the students. A leader of the stature of Kamaraj under the pressure of the Congress High Command failed to provide any assurance that was sought by the students.

The Congress government’s failure to read the popular resentment was responsible for the unprecedented radicalisation of anti-Hindi politics. While picketing in front of railway and State Transport Corporation depots continued without any break, there was also damage caused to public property. The strong-arm tactics of the police only added fuel to the fire. Aruna has stated that the behaviour of the police was very similar to the one that had been noticed at Chauri Chaura during the freedom struggle. The possible result of this unrelenting state-sponsored resistance was the escalation of violence, which sometimes seemed to go out of the hands of both the Dravida Kazhagam and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leaders. Their indirect support to violence in the name of people’s anger would definitely put a question mark on the rightful struggle of the Dravidians. In other words, it has to be acknowledged that infiltration of anti-social elements were definitely responsible for this wanton violence and arson, particularly in the urban localities. This only led to more and more of senseless repression of civil rights by the so-called democratic state. The reluctance on the part of Union Cabinet to provide the expected justice incited the popular discontent, which was responsible for the rebelliousness of the younger generation of the Tamils. The state retaliated by imposing the Defence of India Act. Kalaignar Karunanidhi was himself arrested possibly under the instructions of Chief Minister who had a running political battle with him. Many of the people who were arrested along with Karunandhi had been closely associated with the Anti-Hindi agitation of the late 1930s. In this sense, there was a generation who were dedicated to the cause of Tamilian/Dravidian culture. The Tamil Press and the Tamil intellectuals including college professors was an eyesore for the Congress government which unabashedly favoured the use of force on the intellectuals. Aruna has rightly pointed out that this was indeed a black chapter in the history of Congress in post-colonial India.

The anti-Hindi movement in Tamil Nadu found its supporters in other parts of India as well. In Kerala, Karnataka, and Bengal, the student protestors blackened the hoards in Hindi. The popular mood in Kerala was very much similar to that in Tamil Nadu. The only difference being that the students in Kerala fought “without the cooperation of any political party and without the moral support of any political leader”. The protests by the students remained largely peaceful and there were hardly any incidents of violence. In Karnataka, students and DMK volunteers and councillors were in the forefront of popular demonstrations. Hindi signboards in Bangalore were destroyed and there were similar incidents in Kolar which saw a huge turnout. Large sections of the Tamilian labour force employed in the Kolar Gold Fields provided an extra momentum to the anti-Hindi agitation in Karnataka. The anti-Hindi movement in Karnataka came at a time when matinee idols like Raj Kumar became intensely involved with the Kannada agitation. The anti-Hindi movement did not remain confined to South India. The movement also turned eastward and tempers ran high in Bengal. In some places of Calcutta, students took out processions and clashed with the police. Both the Congress and the Communist leaders fearing the escalation of public anger quickly passed a resolution in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly pleading equal status for all national languages. This however failed to put a check on the resentment amongst the younger generation of Bengalis who took part in demonstrations held in North and Central Calcutta. The screening of Hindi films was also stopped in several cinema halls of the city. But this agitation did not last long, though there was a clear public opposition to the imposition of Hindi. In Andhra, the resentment against Hindi found a cultural expression through the extolment of Telugu as a mother language. The advocates of Telugu made public statements that it was the only medium through which Telugu speakers were capable of expressing their emotions. The Sri Venkateswara University in Tirupati was one of the epicentres of the movement in Andhra. There were disturbances in Kurnool and Nellore and also in parts of Chittoor. Hindi signboards were removed from post offices, railway stations, telephone exchanges and police stations. Sometimes this popular mood met with strong police action. The police’s violent retaliation led to more of public anger leading to loss of lives from bullet injuries.

The anti-Hindi movement was sustained by the masses, despite the state-sponsored brutalities that were unleashed on them. The masses resisted with all their energy and enthusiasm. Their assertion forced many of the Chief Ministers to urge the Government of India to amend its Official Languages Act, for ensuring the continuance of English as the official language and giving legal status to Nehru’s assurances. Congress stalwarts from South India like S.Nijalingappa and K.Brahmananda Reddy felt that amending the act would satisfy people. Even the Chief Minister of West Bengal, P.C.Sen offered a five-point formula to resolve the language issue. It was stated that Hindi should not be imposed on non-Hindi speaking states unless the assemblies there accepted Hindi by a three-fourth majority. It was also emphasised that All India recruitment examinations had to be conducted only in English. This entire pressure from the side of the Tamil devotees and the common people from different parts of India finally forced the Central government to change its language policy. All this actually came through a legally binding agreement.

Significantly, the anti-Hindi movement prepared the ground for re-interpreting the existing laws like the Defence of India Act. The Act it was alleged, had been used indiscriminately to justify the Congress’ position on the language issue and for the defence of its own brand of politics. There was a clear warning to the government that if it continued with such Draconian pieces of legislation, the Tamil masses would prefer to die rather than surrendering as meek people. There was also a reshaping of political alignments and the DMK seemed to be drawing support from both the left and the right in Tamil Nadu. The Congress’ tyranny possibly had been the main reason for the coming together of political ideologies represented by different political organizations in the state.

The debate over the introduction of a new bill exposed the cracks in India’s polity. The Congress forcefully tried to safeguard the interest of the Hindi fanatics. But many of the left-leaning parliamentarians strongly criticised the government for deliberately delaying the introduction of the bill before the Parliament. It took a rather long period of time before the issue could be sorted out. In Tamil Nadu, there were apprehensions in the political circles that the Chief Minister was acting on the advice of Rajagopalachari. It was natural that the DMK would remind the Tamilians of the incidents of 1937 when the first anti-Hindi agitation was launched in Madras Presidency. The DMK remained undeterred by all allegations that it was encouraging political separatism. The reins of the government had changed by this time and despite the political split in the DMK’s ranks, language politics continued to be its major political agenda. M.G. Ramachandran who had broken away from the DMK to establish the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (hereafter AIADMK) was more interested in maintaining a delicate political balance with the ruling regime in New Delhi. In the 1980s, MGR’s reluctance to adopt a radical position on the so-called “Hindi imperialism” brought back political incendiarism in Tamil Nadu. The DMK successfully thwarted MGR government’s plan to play a second fiddle to the policies adopted by the Congress ministry under Rajiv Gandhi. Karunanidhi was able to galvanise public opinion within a very short time, making use of both practical politics and emotional evocations. It once more revived the public interest over the language issue. The central government was reminded that fourteen languages including Tamil had to be adopted as official languages in India. But till the time it was done, the government had to continue English as the official language.

The battle has not stopped and there are continuous efforts by a dominant political party to define the Indian nation-state in terms of the Hindu-Hindi discourse. This is also a cultural imposition which denies India of all its plural past(s) and present(s). The reactions are getting sharper and sharper raising doubts about the future of the citizens. Aladi Aruna’s grand narrative is only a reminder that a blind-headed imposition of cultural values would only lead to people’s resistance defying the boundaries of order and sanity.