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Every year on 14 September the entire country celebrates ‘National Hindi Diwas’ with great pride and joy. But do you know that the path to establishing Hindi as the communication and administrative language of independent India was not easy? today i.e. 14 September 1949 After nearly three years of intense deliberations, heated debates and linguistic differences, the Constituent Assembly took a historic decision to introduce Hindi in the Devanagari script as the official language of the Union of India. ‘Official Language’ Was accepted as. Article 343(1) of the Indian Constitution is the gift of this historic day, which declares that “The official language of the Union will be Hindi and the script will be Devanagari.”
When the Constituent Assembly was formed in the year 1946, the biggest question facing the country was in which language the governance of independent India would be run after centuries of slavery. During the British rule, all official work was done in English, whereas during the freedom struggle, leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Lokmanya Tilak and Subhash Chandra Bose had advocated ‘Hindustani’ (a mixture of Hindi and Urdu) or simple Hindi to unify the country.
Three major ideas regarding language came openly face to face in the Constituent Assembly:
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Hardcore Supporter Group: Veterans like Purushottam Das Tandon, Seth Govind Das, Sampurnanand and Babu Kaka Kalelkar wanted that Sanskritised Hindi should be immediately declared the ‘National Language’ of India and English should be completely ousted.
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Stance of non-Hindi speaking states: Representatives of the South Indian states (Madras Province) and Bengal—such as T.T. Krishnamachari, N. Gopalaswami Iyengar and Durgabai Deshmukh—argued that imposing Hindi on non-Hindi speakers could harm national unity. He was in favor of continuing English in administrative work.
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Perspective of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad were in favor of ‘Hindustani’ language with a common culture, so that every section of the society could be taken along.
When it seemed almost impossible to reach a consensus on the language and there was division within the Constituent Assembly, then two eminent scholars—K.M. Munshi (KM Munshi) And N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar (N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar)—drafted a historic compromise proposal that will go down in history ‘Munshi-Ayyangar Formula’ It is said.
The main points of this formula were as follows:
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Status of official language, not national language: To calm the controversy, Hindi was given the status of ‘Official Language’ of the Center instead of ‘National Language’, so that there is no impact on the existence of regional languages.
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Continued use of English for 15 years: From the implementation of the Constitution (26 January 1950), arrangements were made to continue the use of English in all official works of the Union for the next 15 years i.e. till 1965.
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International form of numbers: A big controversy was regarding marks. On the suggestion of South India and other provinces, it was decided that only the international form of Indian numerals (1, 2, 3…) would be used officially, and not the Devanagari numerals (1, 2, 3…).
There is also a very inspiring personal contribution behind the choice of the date of 14 September. Famous Hindi litterateurs, scholars and cultural workers Beohar Rajendra Singh Along with Kaka Kalelkar, Maithili Sharan Gupta and Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, he had launched an intensive nationwide campaign to get Hindi an official place in the Constitution.
14 September 1949 was the 50th birthday of Vyawar Rajendra Singh. Honoring his tireless efforts and dedication towards Hindi, the Constituent Assembly unanimously passed the resolution to adopt Hindi as the official language of the Union on the same day.
To underline the importance of this decision of the Constituent Assembly and to give impetus to the propagation of Hindi across the country, Rashtrabhasha Prachar Samiti, Wardha had requested to fix a special day.
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On the initiative of the then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Government of India Since 1953, every 14 September is formally celebrated as ‘National Hindi Day’. Announced to celebrate as.
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Since then, every year on 14 September, ‘Rajbhasha Kirti Puraskar’ and ‘Rajbhasha Gaurav Puraskar’ are presented at Rashtrapati Bhavan, which are given to Central Government Ministries, Public Undertakings and citizens for excellent work in Hindi.
Today in the 21st century, Hindi is not limited to government files or literature only, but it has become the third most spoken language in the world. The demand for Hindi content on the Internet, Artificial Intelligence (AI), search engines, social media and e-commerce platforms has increased thousands of times in the last decade. Thanks to that historic brainstorming in the Constituent Assembly, today Hindi is moving towards becoming the language of global knowledge and technology while preserving its democratic and multilingual identity.