A short video clip of actor Kiccha Sudeep set social media on fire this week. Due to this a heated debate has started on a sensitive issue like language. On the one hand, while this Cold War has been like a revamp of the old melody, on the other hand, it has also managed to bring to the fore the facts which are generally forgotten by the common people. The whole controversy started with Kichha, who, perhaps excited by the phenomenal success of South Indian films, especially KGF-2, said that ‘English is no longer the national language’. If seen, the fact remains that English was never a national language. It is the official language of the central government like English. But since Kichcha did not read any written script, his words lost their meaning. Perhaps he wanted to say that the days of the English film industry are over and films made in other Indian languages have eroded its dominance.
However, actor-producer Ajay Devgn from Mumbai reacted sharply to it. He tweeted, ‘English was, is and always will be our mother tongue and national language.’ But while saying this he forgot that the Indian Constitution recognizes 22 languages and English is one of them. However, English enjoys privileges as it is the official language of functioning of the central and several state governments. Other Indian languages are also official languages, but they are limited to their respective states or regions.
Ajay Devgan should differentiate between mother tongue, official language and national language. As far as mother tongue is concerned, it is different for everyone. English is widely spoken in the English belt itself, but different languages like Brij, Awadhi, Bhojpuri are also in this region. Apart from this, there are also thousands of dialects in India, which we are not discussing here. As for the official language, India does not have an official language, nor is it unusual. Many countries do not have an official language. America is also one of them.
On social media, where these two stars drew swords against each other, politicians also started mixing in it. While Omar Abdullah reminded everyone of Kashmir that India is a country of diversities, politicians in Karnataka, with an eye on next year’s assembly elections, came out in support of Kichcha and praised his statement. Some news channels even started making comparisons between English and English on the basis of false arguments. One anchor suggested, ‘Since 44 crore Indians speak English and only 10 crore are comfortable in English, why should English not be made the national language?’ In fact, he was forgetting that English was considered as a link language like English, because all Indian languages had been demanding status like English. In other words, all Indian languages aspire to be recognized as the working language of the central government. Now that it is possible to communicate in multiple languages simultaneously with the advent of artificial intelligence software that does translation work, the language dispute can be resolved by giving equal status to all languages, if the government shows its will.
This development also reveals the limitations and dark side of social media. Many of its users become victims of misinformation. The truth is that language is an emotional and sensitive issue, which should be left to the cinematographers to interpret. We must remember that it was linguistic and identity disputes that led to the civil war in neighboring Sri Lanka. Of course, there is newness in South films like Bahubali, Pushpa, KGF-1, KGF-2, but we should enjoy them and not hurt the English chest with the success of these films. Cinema viewers of our country do not want to get involved in such baseless comparative debates.
(These are the author’s own views)