“Bharat, I understand. Nyaya, I understand. But what is Sanhita? I do not know,” said NR Elango, Rajya Sabha member from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, explaining why he and his party colleague have challenged the “sanskritised titles” of India’s new criminal laws in the Madras High Court.
One of the laws is the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which replaced the Indian Penal Code on July 1. The other two share similar dense Hindi titles – the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, which supplanted the Indian Evidence Act, and the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, which replaced the Code of Criminal Procedure.
While introducing the new laws as bills in Parliament last year, Home Minister Amit Shah had claimed they are anti-colonial – a claim that Elango, a practising lawyer, dismissed. “By and large, the old laws have been kept intact with some modifications and restructuring,” he said. “The real intention seems to be renaming the laws.”
But it is not just the three new criminal laws – under the Bharatiya Janata Party, many Central government schemes have also been given Hindi names. A centrally-sponsored scheme to establish schools is called PM-Shri, public health centres are called Arogya Mandirs, the housing scheme is PM-Awas, farmers are given income support under the PM-Kisan initiative, free foodgrain is given under PM Garib Kalyan Yojana.
The list is long. At least 14 schemes initiated by the previous United Progressive Alliance government, titled in English, have been re-branded in Hindi by the Narendra Modi-led government.
Elango described the renaming of laws and schemes as the BJP’s “discreet method” to impose Hindi on Indians who have other native languages. “Naming laws in Hindi means that a lawyer will have to use the language every time he refers to the law in a court,” Elango said. “That is the problem that now non-Hindi speakers will have to necessarily learn the language.”
Aazhi Senthilnathan, a writer and language rights activist from Tamil Nadu, explained that naming government schemes, laws, public institutions and offices in Hindi made it possible to make the language mandatory for non-Hindi speakers without passing explicit government orders.
“If they pass an order or make a law mandating the use of Hindi, it will result in immediate backlash,” he said. “This is a way to impose Hindi incrementally. If a law or government scheme is named in Hindi, you have to use that name.”
In its first two terms, the Modi government steadily pushed Hindi in official nomenclature, to the extent that last year, the masthead of a dinner invitation from the president’s office sent to G20 summit delegates described Droupadi Murmu as the “President of Bharat” instead of the usual “President of India”.
At the summit, the country tag kept in front of Modi also read “Bharat”.
Modi was described as the “prime minister of Bharat” even in an official note about another international summit. Adding to the chorus, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma demanded that India’s central bank should be called “Reserve Bank of Bharat”.
The trend continues into the third term of the Modi government. Earlier this month, the civil aviation minister introduced a bill to replace the British Era Aircraft Act, 1934. It was called the Bharatiya Vayuyan Vidheyak, 2024. One of the MPs who opposed it, NK Premachandan of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, from Kerala, said he did so because it was difficult for him to pronounce its name.
Naming the bill in Hindi was against Articles 348 and 120 of the Constitution, Premachandan contended. Article 348 1B states that the “authoritative texts” of all bills and amendments introduced in Parliament or state Assemblies should be in English. Article 120 states that a legislator can express herself in her mother tongue if the Speaker permits.
Notably, Elango also cited Article 348 of the Constitution in his court petition, one of the many filed in South India. All share the same central argument: that the new laws will create confusion among lawyers and judges in South India as they are not familiar with Hindi and Sanskrit languages.
Premachandan argued that Article 120 was also violated when the speeches of some MPs speaking in their mother tongue in Parliament were dubbed into Hindi while being broadcast on the government-run Sansad TV. This included two speeches that Scroll watched – the Telugu speech of YSR Congress Rajya Sabha MP Yerram Venkata Subba Reddy, and the Tamil speech of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam legislator P Wilson. Both were overlaid with Hindi dubbing on Sansad TV on July 2.
Social media users flagged that even the English speeches of Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and Trinamool Congress MP Sagarika Ghose had been dubbed into Hindi.
Nationalist Congress Party MP Supriya Sule, one of the first to flag this trend, said it “suppresses the MP’s voice, [and] denies elected members the right to be heard in their chosen language”.
Senthilnathan, the Tamil writer, said by pushing Hindi, the Central government wants to please Hindi-speaking voters. “Hindi speakers feel proud when they see their language being given more importance,” he said.
Even though Congress governments in the past had pursued a similar agenda, he said, there was more space for regional languages. He gave the example of Life Insurance Corporation, India’s public insurer, which is identified with its Tamil name in Tamil Nadu. “People either say LIC or Ayul Kapitu Niruvanam,” said Senthilnathan. “That is what we want…that there should be multiple names for a public organisation. The primary one can be English and every state should have their own name in the regional language.”
Senthilnathan pointed out that let alone regional languages, under the Modi government, with schemes and initiatives being named in Hindi, even the English titles were disappearing.
Over the past decade, Opposition parties have criticised the Modi government’s actions, whether it is the use of the word “Bharat” or the naming of new laws in Hindi, but they have not been able to block these decisions due to lack of numbers in Parliament.
Even though the BJP no longer has a majority of its own in the Lok Sabha, and is dependent on allies, it is still able to pursue its Hindi agenda. In fact, the Bharatiya Vayuyan Vidheyak, 2024, was introduced by civil aviation minister Ramamohan Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party. Despite being from Andhra Pradesh, Naidu evidently did not see anything odd about tabling a bill with a Hindi title.
However, in the states, Opposition parties have tried harder to resist the use of Hindi.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has resorted to Bengali nationalism on the basis of the Bangla language to counter the BJP. But she has had to balance out her stance to ensure that Hindi speakers do not feel distanced.
States like Tamil Nadu that have much fewer Hindi speakers and a prominent history of language identity politics have been more vocal against Hindi imposition. In 2022, the Tamil Nadu Assembly adopted a resolution against a recommendation of a Parliamentary panel that Hindi should be the medium of instruction instead of English in higher educational institutions, including in Central universities.
In the North East too, at least three states – Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya – have refused to follow the Centre’s decision to rename the government-run Ayushman Bharat Health and Wellness Centres to Ayushman Arogya Mandirs. In November, the Union health ministry had urged all state governments to finish the rebranding process by the end of 2023. In July, The Hindu reported that the Christian-majority states had not yet taken to the new name.