Hindi Hegemony in Modi’s India

Human Rights Research Center
7 hours ago
13 min read

May 22, 2025

This is the third installment of a multi-part series on the intersection of language rights and human rights. Read the first and second article.

A chalkboard with the question "Do you speak Hindi?" [Image credit: Shutterstock]

Introduction

Post-independence from the British, Hindi filled a linguistic power vacuum as the new national language of India, to the detriment of other Indian languages. Current-day nationalistic movements oppress Indigenous peoples and inflame anti-Muslim sentiment. Like Mandarin Chinese in China, Hindi is used to push an artificial notion of one flattened national identity across the Indian subcontinent and its population of 1.4 billion people. 1 2

Languages of India

As the most populous country in the world, India is unsurprisingly very multilingual. 1 However, the constitution of India only officially recognizes 22 languages. Estimates of the actual number of languages vary greatly depending on how language is defined. 3 Ethnologue, a reference publication which catalogues the languages of the world, estimates the accurate number at 454. 1 This estimate would earn India the title of fourth-most linguistically diverse country in the world. 3 In contrast, India’s most recent national census in 2011 counted 123 languages and 1,369 mother tongues. To be counted as a language, 10,000 speakers are needed. 4 This discrepancy points to a larger global issue of the state demoting languages perceived as lower status into dialects, not worthy of national recognition or support by the government. It’s not difficult to see where this trend leads - currently over 40% of India’s languages are considered endangered. 3 While the 2011 census claims 44% of Indians speak Hindi, the reality is more complex. Hindi is actually a group of languages, some of them completely distinct from each other with millions of speakers. This grouping is subject to change - from 10 languages in 1961 to 48 in 1971 and finally 55 in 2011. As many as 12 of the languages currently grouped under Hindi since 1971 are being petitioned to be officially recognized. If these languages were to no longer be classified as Hindi, then that would make only 34% of Indians Hindi-speakers. Other estimates claim the accurate percentage of Hindi speakers is even lower at 27%. 5 26

History of Language Policy

As Ganesh Devy, a cultural activist and professor, would write in his 1992 book “After Amnesia,” the imposition of English was not so much “to civilize India as to institutionalize the British view that India was uncivilized.” 2 By 1947, newly independent from the British and plagued with religious conflict between Hindus and Muslims, Indian leaders faced the thorny task of choosing a national, unifying language for India. Mahatma Gandhi advocated for Hindustani, which encompasses a group of mutually intelligible languages spoken in northwest India. Hindustani had the advantage of including both Hindi and Urdu. The languages differ in their written script and vocabulary influences. Urdu had at this point in history become associated with Muslims, as had Hindi with Hindus. This association was solidified when the British granted independence to the subcontinent and simultaneously partitioned it into India and Pakistan, causing large-scale violence and deaths, as well as the migration of at least 10 million Muslims to Pakistan and nearly as many Hindus and Sikhs to India. The hasty withdrawal of the British created a power vacuum which extremist groups seized, worsening existing tensions. Hindus, Muslims, or Sikhs who remained on the “wrong” side of the border experienced violent repercussions, while refugees grappled with the anguish of divided families and communities. 6 29 Pakistan then adopted Urdu as its national language, adding to the “foreignness” of Urdu in India. 7 The wounds of the partition remained fresh in 1950, pushing conciliatory measures out of favor. Thus, the Indian constitution decreed Hindi and English as the “official languages” of the federal government, allowing state-level governments to use their own official languages. 2

English’s status as an official language was given a fifteen year expiration date; by then, India would shed the language and with it the reminder of its colonial past. 8 Ironically, English became a kind of “neutral ground” in this period, in the sense that its foreignness did not directly favor one region or religion of India over another. 2 Tamil Nadu, one of India’s southernmost states, had a fierce reaction to the imminent possibility of the removal of English as an official language. Riots, destruction of trains, and self-immolations underscored the sense of injustice and exclusion that many Indians felt at the possibility of having Hindi as their sole official national language. 2 Even Gandhi’s initial suggestion of Hindustani as national language, a move to establish compromise between Hindus and Muslims, was centered on the Indo-Aryan language family of north India, excluding any representatives of the Dravidian language family in south India 9 . In response to the protests against the imposition of Hindi, the Official Languages Act of 1963 allowed for indefinite usage of English. 10

In the educational sphere, a linguistic hierarchy began to emerge. Shortly after independence, Urdu was all but eliminated as a medium of instruction in schools across vast areas of northern and central India, including Uttar Pradesh. In 1949, the Forty-Ten Plan stated that the medium of instruction in primary schools should be the students’ mother tongue, instructing that if a school had at least forty students claiming a language as their mother tongue, then one teacher must be appointed to teach it. The policy was not consistently applied, especially in Urdu-speaking regions where contradictory measures were subsequently taken. 11 28 A 1968 policy called the Three Language Formula further solidified English’s presence in India. The policy encouraged schools to teach Hindi, English, and an additional major Indian language, presumably one of the major languages of the region or one of the official languages of the state government. 2 Tamil Nadu opposed it, adopting a two-language policy and teaching only Tamil and English. 12

The country's language policies also affected statehood. Colonial-era borders often drove later political conflicts because these boundaries divided or forcibly united different ethnic, religious, or cultural groups without second thought, or sometimes with the intention to weaken a region. The land that is now the state of Haryana was previously part of Punjab under British rule, a fairly illogical union, in this case between the Punjabi-speaking Sikhs and the Hindi-speaking Hindus. Post-independence, the 1966 Punjab Reorganization Act eventually created separate states for Hindus in Haryana and Sikhs in a smaller portion of Punjab. 13 As a “rebuff” to the new Punjabi state, Haryana government officials decided to assign any language except Punjabi as their second official language, thus landing on Tamil despite the region having no Tamil speakers at the time. This remained the status quo for 4 decades until it was changed to Punjabi in acknowledgement of the significant number of Punjabi speakers still living there. 14 Haryana is one of multiple other Indian states formed or “reorganized” along linguistic lines. Bombay split into the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra for Gujarati and Marathi speakers, respectively. East of India, Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan in 1971, partially motivated by the desire to retain the Bengali language. 2 In fact, a deadly protest in 1952 by students in support of including Bengali as a state language in Pakistan is the inspiration for what is now remembered as International Mother Language Day by UNESCO. 15

Hindu nationalism under Modi

In 2002, Hindu rioters led a pogrom targeting Muslims which resulted in the death of over a thousand people in the state of Gujarat. The Chief Minister of the state at the time, Narendra Modi, left the violence unchecked. He was later accused of supporting the rioters, as was the party in power - Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 2 In 2014, Modi, now Prime Minister, brought his beliefs and loyalty to the BJP to the national stage, making fringe Hindu nationalist beliefs mainstream, largely at the expense of Muslim and indigenous Indians.

Ten years later, he is currently serving his third term in office, and continues to blur the lines between church and state with his promotion of the Hindutva agenda, a movement aiming to cement the dominance of Hinduism and Hindu culture in India. 16 Modi’s fervent embrace of Hindu nationalism dates back to his membership in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a paramilitary right-wing group created in 1925 from which the BJP draws its ideological roots. In contrast to Gandhi’s advocacy for nonviolence and inter-faith unity, the RSS sought to transform India into a Hindu nation by any means necessary. In 1948, shortly after India achieved independence, a former RSS member assassinated Gandhi. 17

In the decade that Modi has been in power, the budget of the Department of Official Language, charged with the promotion of Hindi, has ballooned to almost triple its size at about 15 million dollars. 2 In 2020, the National Education Policy (NEP) was updated to recommend that schools teach students three languages, two of which should be Indian. Clearly reminiscent of the 1968 Three Language Formula, the policy is being implemented in stages but has been met with backlash, particularly in Tamil Nadu. The education policy is accused of being politically motivated in favor of Hindi speakers. For example, most non-Hindi speaking states teach Hindi, while most Hindi-speaking states choose Sanskrit as their third language. Sanskrit is the language from which Hindi is derived, but is no longer used commonly outside of religious rituals. It tends to be taught in a simple, formulaic way that drives up students’ scores in the subject. 27

While Hindi is not explicitly specified as one of the three languages, Chief Minister MK Stalin refused to implement the NEP in Tamil Nadu, claiming that this policy would open the door to the imposition of Hindi in schools in the southern state. He also accused the federal government of punishing his state for his refusal by withholding funding. Leaders in Tamil Nadu argue that having children learn three languages is an unnecessary burden and that learning in their mother tongue of Tamil ensures students understand their subjects well, while English opens up improved job opportunities. Tamil Nadu has one of the most successful education systems of India, with an 82 percent literacy rate compared with the 73 percent national average. The Chief Minister also pointed to the domination of Hindi over languages in the north, like Bhojpuri and Awadhi, as a harbinger of things to come. In 2023, he denounced the federal government for renaming laws dating back the colonial era with Hindi names. For example, the Indian Penal Code has become Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. 18

Impact on Indigenous people

Roughly 8.6% of the Indian population are Indigenous people, or Adivasis, and 705 Scheduled Tribes are recognized by the government, likely an underestimation. About 90% of indigenous populations are rural. 3 They’re most highly concentrated in northeast India in the “central tribal belt.” 19 Indigenous people often experience displacement, sometimes accused of living on reserved forest land. These forced evictions can occur without warning. Some indigenous land defenders die in the act of protecting their homes against a land grab. In 2020, crimes against Indigenous people jumped up by 9.3 percent from the previous year. 3 25 Indigenous land also faces the threat of development - in that same year, 38 plots of land were sold by the government to coal mining companies under the guise of its COVID recovery plan. Most of the mines are located in forests essential for indigenous survival in the states of Jharkland, Maharashtra, and Odisha. 3 Additionally, the criminalization of livelihood practices, like gathering wood or hunting deer, has led to the wrongful detentions and deaths of indigenous people. 19

Human rights defenders have increasingly come under fire under a 2019 amendment to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act established under Prime Minister Modi. One such example is indigenous rights activist and academic linguist Hany Babu, who wrote critically of Indian language policy, describing it as being “informed by a pull towards unilingual identity, inspired by the European model of nation state that is predicated on the homogeneity of its people.” 20 Babu was arrested in July 2020 by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) on grounds of inciting violence at a public gathering of activists a day before riots broke out between Dalits and Hindu nationalists almost two and a half years prior. Babu, an advocate for greater protections of marginalized languages, was not present at the location at that time but is still being held in prison. 21

Ganesh Devy, an academic and professor who spearheaded a sprawling survey compiling sample texts of 780 languages across India, was confronted with pushback to his commitment to championing marginalized communities. An anonymous university official described a hesitance to provoke Modi, the BJP, and the RSS. External pressure prevented Devy’s access to a nearly 2 million dollar grant to preserve Adivasi languages and culture. Acknowledgement of indigenous people clashes with the RSS dogma that native Indians should be easily categorized into their strict definition of the Hindu identity. Other institutes of endangered languages at public universities have similarly lost their government funding. 2

Emphasis on the Hindi language has extended to a renewed focus on its linguistic ancestor: Sanskrit. The Central Institute of Indian Languages, part of the Ministry of Education, is working on a “unifying” project in which theories are developed linking languages originating from Sanskrit with those belonging to other language families. Suddenly, the exact amount of Sanskrit influence is being quantified in languages like Malayalam, a southern language with resemblance to Tamil, all in support of this theory of an “Indian macrofamily.” Sanskrit, conveniently, is the sacred language of Hinduism, used in religious rituals and classical texts. 2

Impact on Indian Muslims

Hindu nationalism implies an explicit enmity with Muslims, as made clear by a consistent rollback of protections for Muslim citizens. Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority region, was stripped of its special status, constitution, and flag in 2019. 17 Previously semi-autonomous since 1954, the region has been divided into two federal territories, Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir. Both are run by non-elected government officials. This move marks the first time in India’s history that a state lost its statehood to become a federally-administered territory. 22 A new citizenship law facilitated naturalization for non-Muslim refugees who fled Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan before December 31, 2014. Muslims make up a majority in each of the three nations listed. 22 Most recently, while campaigning for re-election in January 2025, Modi opened a newly-constructed Hindu temple built on the ruins of the Babri mosque, demolished by Hindu mobs in the 1990s. 17 23

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), part of the federal education ministry, released a new syllabus for textbooks removing or shortening chapters referencing the Mughal era of India history. This dynasty of Muslim emperors ruled India from 1526 to 1761, making arguments that this period is overrepresented in history books unconvincing. Similarly, undergraduate courses in Delhi university have downplayed the impact of this historical period. Mentions of the RSS ties of Gandhi’s assassin and the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat are also noticeably absent. In the eastern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath instructed that the Mughal Museum in Agra be renamed after Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, a Hindu king who helped defeat the Mughals in the 1600s. The renaming of a Mughal museum in Agra, a city built by a Muslim ruler and located near the world-famous Taj Mahal, built by another Muslim ruler, sends a clear message. The cities of Mughalsarai and Allahabad were similarly changed to Hindu names under Adityanath. 16

The Urdu language, while not synonymous with being Muslim, has increasingly been categorized as such. In 2019, a clothing brand received backlash for giving their clothing collection for the Hindu festival of Diwali an Urdu name. While the Urdu name was perfectly understandable to Hindi speakers due to the very similar grammatical structures and day-to-day vocabulary of Hindi and Urdu, it was replaced with a Hindi name. Hindi and Urdu could actually be classified as “registers” of the same language, meaning they are used depending on the situation or identity of the speaker. Their differences are more political and cultural than linguistic. Urdu borrows more from Persian while Hindi borrows from Sanskrit. Persian was actually the administrative language and lingua franca of the Indian elite from the beginning of the Mughal era in the early 1500s until the 19th century, when it was replaced by Urdu. Both Muslim elites and certain Hindu castes historically associated with Mughal bureaucracy would speak Urdu.

By the late 1800s, a new Hindu elite emerged and sought to convince the British government to include Hindi as an official language in northwest India, in addition to English and Urdu. This would allow them to access government jobs currently occupied by Urdu speakers. Urdu’s historical Persian influence is what may give it a whiff of luxury in certain circumstances, like the advertisement for the clothing brand. It also appears in Bollywood films, often underscoring passionate emotions like romance and patriotism. At the same time, Urdu is rarely a medium of instruction outside of some poor religious Muslim schools. 24

Recent cases of discrimination against Indians with names of Persian or Arabic origin when applying for jobs or seeking to rent or purchase a home indicate how normalized islamophobia has become in everyday life. Bearing the “wrong” kind of name can also have deadly consequences. In 2019, a young Hindu man intervening in a fight was lynched after the crowd heard his Muslim-sounding name, “Sahil.” A few years earlier in 2016, two Muslim artists joined a local competition to have the chance to paint poetry honoring Delhi on various walls in the city. While painting their poem in Urdu, members of the RSS threatened them, angered by the mere sight of the Urdu script, despite it being one of the four official languages of Delhi alongside English, Hindi, and Punjabi. After defacing the art, they forced them to paint over it with a Hindi slogan and Modi’s name in the colors of the BJP flag. One of the artists later described telling the RSS members his nickname, “Shabbu,” which they seemed to mistake for the Hindi name “Shambhu.” They turned their attention to his colleague, a Frenchman, and demanded he go back to Pakistan. 7

Conclusion

The undeniably pluralistic nature of India has become unacceptable to a government marching to the beat of “Hindu, Hindi, Hindustan.” BJP rhetoric purports to harken back to an older Indian identity, in line with decolonizing efforts. However, the imposition of any language is an act of oppression, not resistance. It’s also a threat to a proudly secular and democratic nation. Political theorist Jyotirmaya Sharma says that to bring about true democracy, “you must know the country—you must know its past, and therefore its languages.” The linguistic past and present of India cannot be boiled down to Hindi. Its future shouldn’t be, either.

Glossary

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP): a right-wing Hindu nationalist political party of post-independence India broadly supported by members of higher castes and in northern India.
Caste: a social system in South Asia, particularly Hindus in India, in which people are born into fixed social groups which define their future work and social opportunities.
Dalit: a person belonging to the lowest caste in the traditional Indian caste system, facing historical oppression and exclusion.
Hegemony: leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over another.
Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan: a slogan describing the belief that Indian culture is identical to Hindu culture and that Hindi should be the dominant language of India.
Islamophobia: the fear of or prejudice against Islam and Muslims.
Lingua franca: language used as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different.
Mahatma Gandhi: a key leader in the Indian independence movement and advocate for nonviolent resistance.
Official Languages Act of 1963: made English and Hindi the official languages of the federal government, allowing for the continued use of English in Parliament and in communication with non Hindi-speaking states.
Pogrom: an organized massacre or riot of a specific ethnic or religious group.
Punjab Reorganization Act: in 1966, this act created the state of Haryana from the existing state of Punjab. Haryana was primarily made up of Hindi speakers.
Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA): an Indian law which aims to prevent activities that pose a threat to India. Created in 1967, it was amended in 2019 to allow the government to designate individuals, not just organizations, as terrorists and detain them for prolonged periods without trials.

Sources

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Hindi Hegemony in Modi’s India

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