The trope that reiterates that language gives specific and unique identity to its natural speakers is well-known. But one can also assert without fear of contradiction that language is power. It is power per se because it embodies immeasurable potential of human expression and magic of articulation. But it’s also power in another important sense as it is reflected in its being used as a concealed means to negotiate power relations between groups and communities.

In other words, it yields itself to be employed as an instrument that can express both domination and subjugation. Domination as intended in such a phenomenon spans political, economic, social and cultural dimensions albeit in a surreptitious manner.

Subjugation implies being made to accept what is given, the status quo for the weaker ones. The reason is that language comes handy in the process of othering; otherness of an alien linguistic group provides impetus to the hegemonic urge of a predator culture to at least appropriate the other if it’s not able to destroy it. It means destruction through appropriation which involves imposition of a powerful group’s way of life on the one that is powerless. But it is apparently not done for the motive that actually drives it. It is done in the name of things higher; cultural advancement, social cohesion, integration, homogeneity and national unity etc.

Ideals actually are a shell that conceals the kernel. So the politics of language in so many cases reflects that the real nature of conflict between different groups is not merely linguistic. It encapsulates much bigger multi-faceted phenomenon. It hides in its innards the power struggle that expresses itself through other means, the language in the case in question. We find some highly relevant examples not in the distant past which represent power struggle between different groups that appeared couched as if it was a language conflict.

After the colonisation of the subcontinent, the British chose Urdu as their preferred local language. It was language of Uttar Pradesh’s urban centres which was also spoken in the Mughul court along with Persian which was itself a vestige of imperialistic Iranian culture. It was greatly patronised by the ruling elite ensconced in Delhi and Lucknow which largely comprised Muslims of foreign extraction, mostly from Central Asia, Iran and Arabia.

The elite, alienated from the local ethos, despite being a tiny minority enjoyed exclusive privileges as they held the reins of politico-military power. Acting according to the historical dictates of power, the British put to use the cultural tools of power bequeathed by the preceding structure as their choice to promote Urdu as lingua franca of the subcontinent amply showed. They conveniently forgot that no single language could represent the highly diverse Indian linguistic landscape. They started developing project Urdu in the Fort William College in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in the 19th century. We witness a backlash against this hegemonic project by Hindu intelligentsia who spoke a variant of a similar language called Hindi in the last three decades of the same century. It developed into what is known as Urdu-Hindi conflict and peaked in third decade of the 20th century when Urdu partisans urged Muslims, even those who did not speak Urdu, to declare it as their natural language in the census in some parts of North India while Hindi partisans tried in a similar manner to persuade their Hindu community to declare Hindi as their mother language. Advocates of both the groups lied and lied blatantly to hide the real conflict that emanated from the centuries long Muslim rule. It signified renewed power tussle when the playing field under the British became comparatively even between the historically deprived Hindu majority and dominant Muslim minority. The first clearly visible manifestation of the wider power conflict emerged as a language conflict. Both sides to the conflict brushed the fact under the carpet that a language had its roots in the region, not in the faith.

Urdu is not Islamic as Hindi is not Hindu. We come across Urdu speaking Hindus and Hindi speaking Muslims, Jains and Buddhists in India. Both the languages are spoken by diverse faith communities in the land of their birth. The real conflict had its origins in the mutual animus. The language conflict in reality reflected the historical chasm between Muslims and Hindus which both failed to bridge. It was like the classic case of peace being continuation of war through other means.

Language was an emblem borrowed to wage a war for safeguarding the self-interest of the parties concerned.

It is disquietingly interesting to note that though Hindu-Muslim conflict offered a sort of resolution in the emergence of a new Muslim homeland called Pakistan, the language conflict, a form of thinly concealed power struggle, did not come to end. It transformed itself from inter-group conflict into an intra-group one. Previously it was between Hindus and Muslims, now it transmuted into a clash between Bengali and non-Bengali compatriots.

Non-Bengalis though a minority were dominant as they, a motely group from Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and present day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa which was at the forefront of the Pakistan movement in crucial years, came to monopolise power to the exclusion of Bengalis who were the initial vanguard. Here again language was used as a political ploy by West Pakistan’s non-Bengali elite coterie to perpetuate its domination.

Mr. M.A.Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, who knew no indigenous language than his own Gujrati, was ill-advised by his Uttar Pradesh’s immigrant advisers on the matter. He declared emphatically in a political meeting in Dhaka in 1948 that Urdu and only Urdu would be the sole national language of Pakistan which greatly injured the pride of Bengali majority and evoked immediate retaliatory response. Politically conscious Bengalis took it as what it was; a simmering attempt at domination. The independence, they rightly realised, only seemed to have changed masters; the brown landlords and bureaucrats, both civil and military, in place of white Brits. And the former were as alien as the latter if not more. They saw through the political game of sloganeering; national integration as an instrument of subjugation. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, December 20th, 2021