Language Barrier

TO THOSE AWARE of the history of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), it wasn’t unfamiliar when a video surfaced on July 1, 2025, showing party workers talk­ing to a man at a restaurant and then one of them casually slapping him. The others follow suit. The victim’s expres­sion doesn’t even change because he is unable to register what is happening. The reason for the assault: he ostensibly didn’t speak in Marathi and argued back when forced to do so.

What happened next wasn’t a surprise either. Those who assaulted were ar­rested but immediately released. The leader of MNS, Raj Thackeray, said during a public address that the mistake his party men made was in making a record­ing, something to avoid in future. The traders in the area where it happened, a locality called Mira Bhayandar in Thane district, went on a bandh. MNS doubled down by calling a bandh of its own. The state government refused permission and detained a number of them. But then one of its own ministers belonging to the Eknath Shinde Shiv Sena faction said he would participate, stating that he was first a Marathi and then a minister.

Marathi pride, as translated into making those from other states who have settled in Maharashtra speak the language, has been woven into its politics for decades. The latest edition has taken the form of opposition to Hindi, and in the process brought back from near political irrelevance MNS, Raj Thackeray and also his politically estranged cousin Uddhav Thackeray, who heads the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray). After Shinde split the party and took its symbol, party office and most of the senior leaders, Uddhav Thackeray was floundering with a disastrous performance by his faction in the last Assembly election. When he and Raj held a joint rally on July 5, 2025, both gleefully hung onto a branch that the state government provided when it passed a policy making Hindi mandatory for students in primary schools. The joint rally was to announce victory after the anti-Hindi agitation was successful and the policy reversed. That same day, in a lengthy post on X, MK Stalin, Tamil Nadu chief minister and leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), wrote, “The language rights struggle, waged generation after generation by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the people of Tamil Nadu to defeat Hindi imposition, has now transcended state boundaries and is swirling like a storm of protest in Maharashtra.” With a dominant Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre, Hindi imposition has become a major political weapon of the Opposition. States like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, where Congress and DMK are in power, have been trying to capitalise on it.

It is a phenomenon that has a long history. Movement against Hindi impo­sition goes back to even before Independence with one of the earliest instances striking in how much it mirrors what just happened in Maharashtra. This was in 1937, when C Rajagopalachari was the Congress chief minister of Ma­dras Presidency. Just as in Maharashtra, a government resolution then made Hindi mandatory in schools of the province. Rajagopalachari’s reasoning was that learning Hindi would be a means for people to get non-government jobs. It was perceived as a vehicle for upward mobility for those lower in the class order. Also, underpinning it was the nationalist instinct that English was a foreign language and therefore Hindi would be a thread that unites India. Except that the Tamilians didn’t feel the same. Just as in Maharashtra, it led to an agitation by the opposition, helmed by Dravidian leaders like Periyar and CN Annadurai, that stretched three years until it was reversed in 1940. Anti-Hindi became a major plank of Dravidian politics from then on, something that has lasted to this day. As the book Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970 by Sumathi Ramaswamy states, “Although Hindi was in effect legislat­ed out of Tamilnadu government schools in 1968 by the DMK, and although all kinds of accommodations with the North have been made since the 1960s, to this day the threat of Hindi has continued to be effectively used to reiterate the autonomy and uniqueness of a Tamil space within a larger Indian whole, to summon up the specter of non-Tamil elements entering the pure Tamil body politic, and to remind Tamil speakers of the dangers that await them if they cease supporting the Dravidian movement and its Tamil cause.”

Language as a political identity remained an emotive is­sue post-Independence not just in Tamil Nadu but across India where Hindi was not spoken. India’s first Prime Min­ister Jawaharlal Nehru was for organising states along the administrative lines of the British and resisted the linguis­tic basis. Momentum began to build otherwise. In 1952, Potti Sriramulu, a freedom fighter and Gandhian, went on a fast demand­ing an Andhra state of Telugu speakers. He died after 56 days leading to massive protests. The Samyukta Maharashtra movement demanded the same for Marathi speakers and one of its leaders was Prabhodhankar Thackeray, the grandfather of Raj and Uddhav Thackeray. States were drawn on the basis of language, but they still had to contend with the recurring idea of Hindi as the pan-India medium of communication.

The latest issue stems from the Centre’s National Education Policy (NEP) that came into force in 2020. One of its themes was the three-language formula to be taught in schools. It explicitly avers that no language will be imposed stating: “The three-language formula will continue to be implemented while keeping in mind the Constitutional provisions, aspirations of the people, regions, and the Union, and the need to promote mul­tilingualism as well as promote national unity. However, there will be a greater flexibility in the three-language formula, and no language will be imposed on any State. The three languages learned by children will be the choices of States, regions, and of course the students themselves, so long as at least two of the three languages are native to India.”

Even so, it has become enmeshed in language politics. Recent­ly, for instance, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah stated that his government favoured a two-language policy. On June 29, 2025, the Karnataka Congress posted on its social media accounts, “South India’s linguistic diversity is a vibrant tapestry, weaving together languages like Kannada, Kodava, Tulu, Konkani, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and many others. However, mandating Hindi as a third language in schools, especially in non-Hindi-speaking states like Karnataka, creates discord.”

The Maharashtra government’s tryst with the NEP began on April 16, 2025, with a government resolution from the Education Department about new curricula that would be phased in from 2025-26 in line with the NEP. A clause in it however made Hindi mandatory for a particular section of students. It said, “Currently, in all management schools with Marathi and English mediums, only two languages are studied from Class 1 to Class 4. In schools of other mediums, three languages, namely the medium lan­guage, Marathi, and English, are studied as per the three-language formula, making Marathi and English compulsory. As per the State Curriculum Framework School Education 2024, Hindi will be mandatory as a third language for Class 1 to 5 in Marathi and English medium schools from now on.”

Later, the government said that the rationale was not to im­pose but for administrative convenience. For instance, Hindi teachers were already available in large numbers. To have other third lan­guages would mean there might not be anyone to teach them. By then the ge­nie had been let out. Protests began to gain momentum. The two Thackerays, who had a falling out decades ago, reached out to make common cause. Not just MNS and Shiv Sena (UBT), which took to the streets, even writers and personalities in the cultural fields began to voice opposition. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis tried to undo the damage by stating that Hindi teaching was optional and not com­pulsory. On June 17, 2025, the government resolution was amended to that effect. But it had no effect on the agitation. The Thackerays announced that they would hold a joint rally against it, which then prompted the government to revoke both the resolutions in total.

The assault on the restaurant owner is the kind of collateral that agitations related to language often cause. Parties like MNS and Shiv Sena have deliberately fomented an image of aggres­sion against outsiders because it gets them both votes and draws locals to become party workers. Hindi imposition is something of a self goal because there is in fact no need for it. The language is already being adopted across the country through a natural pro­cess, driven in part by migrants and Bollywood. In Mumbai, just about everyone, including Maharashtrians, have always spoken it but even in states as far away from the Hindi belt as Kerala, the language is filtering in. Anything resembling imposition is still seen as a threat to one’s identity and gets blowback. And continues to make and salvage political careers.

About The Author

Madhavankutty Pillai

Madhavankutty Pillai has no specialisations whatsoever. He is among the last of the generalists. And also Open chief of bureau, Mumbai  

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