From: Khaleej Times
Move for Hindi-only policy turned down in India
Mahesh Trivedi / 10 October 2013
Almost a month after the ‘Hindi Diwas’ (Hindi Day) was celebrated throughout the country to commemorate the declaration of Hindi as the national language of India on September 14, 1949, the Gujarat High Court has rejected a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking directions to the Centre to conduct all its administrative work in Hindi.
In his PIL, Amrutlal Parmar from Rajkot wanted the court to order the federal government to do away with English and carry out all its functions in Hindi as it was the national language.
His lawyer argued that though India became independent 60 years ago, people were still obsessed with the Queen’s language but Hindi was neglected.
The court, however, turned down the PIL and ruled that it could not ask the Centre to adopt a particular language if there was no infringement on the petitioner’s legal or fundamental right. The judges explained to the petitioner that Section 3 of the Official Languages Act, 1963, enacted by parliament in exercise of powers conferred on it by Articles 343(3) and 120(2) of the Constitution, provided that the English language might be continued to be used in addition to Hindi for all purposes.
Earlier also in one case, the high court (HC) had made it clear that Hindi was not the only national language of this country but was one of the 22 official languages.
Meanwhile, the HC has ruled that the compulsory Teachers’ Aptitude Test (TAT) for appointment of headmasters and teaching staff cannot be made applicable to the Hindi-medium minority education institutes in Gujarat run by mostly Muslim charitable organisations.
The state government recently introduced additional qualification for appointment of headmasters in the grant-in-aid educational institutes and made it compulsory for candidates for the post of headmasters to clear TAT.
But 15 trusts running Hindi-medium schools approached the HC seeking exemption from this rule.
Earlier, they were exempted from this procedure but the Bharatiya Janata Party government, through two recent resolutions passed, withdrew the exemption granted earlier to minority institutes in deciding qualifications for appointments of teaching or non-teaching staff.
Lawyers of the petitioners who had questioned the two resolutions contended that the state government could not change the rules by merely passing resolutions and the recent provisions were in violation of the parent Act. Hence, the amendments should go, they said.
The high court accepted the arguments that the change in the rules could not affect the schools established and administered by the minority institutions, either linguistic or religious.
mahesh@khaleejtimes.com
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