LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 6 : 3 March 2006

Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Associate Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.

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    B. Mallikarjun,
    Central Institute of Indian Languages,
    Manasagangotri,
    Mysore 570006, India
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Copyright © 2004
M. S. Thirumalai


 
Web www.languageinindia.com

THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE POLICY IN THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY OF INDIA
M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.


Jawaharlal Nehru Signing the Constitution

EARLIER ARTICLES ON THE SUBJECT

I (Thirumalai) undertook a project some years ago to prepare a descriptive and narrative history of the evolution of India's language policy since the inception of the Indian National Congress in 1885. This is an ongoing project, but I thought that some of the preliminary writing that I have done may be shared with the researchers interested in this important aspect of India's Freedom Struggle. Earlier articles published in LANGUAGE IN INDIA can be accessed using the links given below.

THE CONGRESS PARTY IN THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

Elections to the Constituent Assembly were held in July 1946. These were not based on direct adult franchise. Members were elected indirectly on a limited and communal franchise. The Provincial Legislative Assemblies were treated as the electorate following the then existing pattern.

The Indian National Congress won all but 7 of the 210 General seats, and All India Muslim League all but five of the 78 Muslim seats.

The Muslim League refused to participate in the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly and, thus, when the Constituent Assembly was finally convened on December 9, 1946, the Assembly had only the representatives of the Indian National Congress and a small number of other delegates representing non-Congress ideologies.

REPRESENTATION OF INTELLECTUALS AND PROFESSIONALS, AND OTHER POLITICAL PARTIES

The Congress had ensured that its representatives in the Constituent Assembly should not only be the practical politicians from its own rank and file but also those intellectuals and professionals, who, although they were not members of the Indian National Congress in the strict sense of the term, were considered to be nationalist in their outlook.

The Indian National Congress also nominated members of some other political parties to the Constituent Assembly with a view to ensuring participation of all shades of opinion in the constitution-making exercise.

The intellectuals and professionals thus elected on the Congress ticket were expected to help the politicians in their pursuit of a Constitution that would fulfill the dreams of the nation as a whole, as reflected in the various policy resolutions of the Indian National Congress.

WE CAN BE PROUD OF OUR LEADERS

Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru

Indians can always be proud of their leaders who led them to freedom. It was mainly to the influence and unreserved support of the towering personalities of statesmen like Jawaharlal, C. Rajagopalachari, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Abul Kalam Azad, G. B. Pant, Kripalani, and others that the intellectuals and civil servants like Alladi Krishnaswamy Aiyar, K. M. Munshi, Gopalaswamy Ayyangar, B.N. Rau, and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar could have a more or less free hand in formulating the provisions in the Constitution.

Behind all these efforts in 1946 was the Indian National Congress, which had a history of sixty-one years of deliberate activity in the political life of India.

FREEDOM TO EXPRESS INDIVIDUAL OPINIONS

Within the Constituent Assembly, the Indian National Congress assumed the responsibility for framing up a Constitution for Free India only in an indirect manner in the sense that partisan politics was kept to the minimum by giving enough freedom to the members of the Constituent Assembly to express their own independently considered opinion on all issues before them.

It was possible because, somehow the Congressmen of yester-years were relatively more disciplined and had been imbued with a greater sense of duty to the nation and were endowed with a perception that always insisted upon a consensus; and hence the unwritten law of accepting finally the less explicitly stated commands of leadership at the top carried the day. Fortunately for the nation, the leadership at the top - Jawaharlal, Abul Kalam Azad, Vallabhbhai Pate, C. Rajagopalachari, et al. - were men of great foresight and forbearance.

PARTY LOYALTY AND SUBMISSION TO LEADERSHIP

In a nutshell, although the Congress Party always kept its presence not explicitly felt within the Constituent Assembly, most of the members of the Assembly were influenced and guided by the policies of the Indian National Congress, and when conflicts arose, These were settled by following the Congress guidelines, meetings of the Constituent Assembly members of the party in closed door sessions.

PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR A PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION OF THE ENTIRE PAPER.

M. S. Thirumalai
B. Mallikarjun


Attitudes Toward Hindi | A Survey of Language Preferences in Education in India | News Translation and the Concept of Equivalence - A Discourse Analysis Perspective | Who Is the Indigenous Sri Lankan? | An Overview of Orwell's Animal Farm | Speaking Versus Communicating in Business English | Linguistic Manipulation in Political Advertising | Some Limitations of Corpus-based Language Study | Hegemony, C-Semiologically | The Evolution of Language Policy in the Constituent Assembly of India | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR


M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Bethany College of Missions
6820 Auto Club Road, Suite C
Bloomington, MN 55438
U.S.A.
thirumalai@mn.rr.com

B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
Central Institute of Indian Languages
Mysore 570006
India
mallikarjun@ciil.stpmy.soft.net
 
Web www.languageinindia.com
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