Towards One Indian Official Language

No need to doubt more, India has a prodigious diversity, as the seventh largest country based on the areal, and the second largest country based on its population, India has so many languages ​​spread across its 29 states with more than 1600 spoken languages ​​with different official languages ​​in each state. There are total 23 official languages; Assam, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmir, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Meitei (Manipuri), Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.

It is totally precious in the term of its richness of language and culture. By having such plurality, people are trained to be more tolerant to others. However, sometimes by having  many languages ​​in only one country, segmentation, the lack of unity and patriotism sense will be existed. There will also be a lot of misunderstanding every time a conversation happens in everyday life.

Nowadays, the Indian government continues to campaign the use of Hindi as an official language. The decision on choosing Hindi is based on the consideration that it is easy and simple, it also has many users in India. On the other hand, the government does not want the multilingualism in India to be lost. By using Hindi, the government hopes that people can easily learn the language itself, people then will be able to talk to each other easily, without losing their own language. The goods and bads to make Hindi as the official language must have been considered before it was published. By having Hindi as the official language of India does not mean that they should always use Hindi. They can always have the chance to speak their own local language, while for conversations with people from different states, they can easily use Hindi.

However, many Indian citizens can not really accept this decision. There are many reasons to refuse it, like worries about the difficulties in learning Hindi, worries about the extinction of their own language, and so on. For example, many people in the Tamil Nadu refuse to use Hindi as their official language, because they think that Tamil is their official language now, much older than Hindi. They have been using Tamil for a very long time, and they do not think that they will ever change it. They also think that by using Hindi, the Tamil language will be in danger of extinction.

Till now the Indian government continues to campaign the use of Hindi as its official language. By using one official language, the possibility of misunderstanding will be reduced, the education system will be much more efficient, the sense of unity, patriotism, and love of the homeland among Indian citizens will be increasing, etc. Perhaps public awareness will increase if there are more interesting campaigns using billboards, street signs, and slogans that show that having one official language can give so many benefits, as we feel in Indonesia. Dear Indian friends, enjoy the process! (Anggita Getza Permata)