For Global Peace with Social Justice in a Sustainable Environment

Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad and Mahatma Gandhi

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

Contact No. – 09404955338, 09415777229

E-mail- dr.yadav.yogendra@gandhifoundation.net;

dr.yogendragandhi@gmail.com

Mailing Address- C- 29, Swaraj Nagar, Panki, Kanpur- 208020, Uttar Pradesh, India

Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad and Mahatma Gandhi

I am here neither for a brief while for the limited purpose I have told you, but you may know that my heart is neither here nor even in Wardha. My heart is in the villages. For days I have been striving with the Sardar to let me go to a village near Wardha. He is still unconvinced, but my mind won’t rest, and God willing, I hope to go and settle in a village near Wardha in a short while. But that does not mean that I will not do the work I am doing now, or that I shall cease to be available for consultation to friends, or for advice to those who will seek it. Only my address will be a village where I would be living ordinarily. I have been asking all my co-workers who are doing village work to go and settle in villages and to serve the villagers. I feel that I cannot do so effectively until I go and settle in village myself.

We must not only seek to know the picturesque language of the village folk, but also to spread knowledge of modern useful literature among the villagers. It is a shame that Chaitanya’s lyrics are a sealed book to people outside Bengal and Orissa. Few of us here may know the name of Thiruvalluvar. People in the North are innocent even of the great saint’s name. Few saints have given us treasures of knowledge contained in pithy epigrams as he has done. In this context, I can at this moment recall the name only of Tukaram. If we were to enter the vast field of Indian literature, should we stop somewhere? In my opinion there should certainly be a limit. I never had the temptation of increasing the number of books. I do not consider it necessary that every book written or published in the language of every province should be introduced to all the other languages.

Even if such an attempt were possible, I think it would be harmful. Such literature as fosters unity, morality, valour and such other qualities, and science, should profitably spread to every province. Today a plethora of highly objectionable erotic literature seems to be in evidence in every province. Indeed, there are some who say that barring the erotic there is no other rasa worth the name; and because the erotic is at a premium, those who insist on restraint in literature are held up to ridicule as devoid of all rasa. They forget that even those who are said to sacrifice everything do not sacrifice rasa. Each one of us feeds himself on some rasa or sacred passion. Dadabhai Naoroji sacrificed everything for the country, but he was fired by the sacred passion of patriotism. That gave him all his inner happiness. To say that Chaitanya was devoid of rasa is to confess innocence of all rasa. Narasinh Mehta, the poet-saint of Gujarat, has described himself as a bhogi, but his bhoga was that of single-minded devotion to God. If you will not be annoyed, I would go to the length of saying that the erotic is the lowest of all ragas, and when it partakes of the obscene it is wholly to be eschewed.

If I had the power I should taboo all literature calculated to promote communalism, fanaticism and ill will and hatred between individuals, classes or races. How can all this be achieved? Munshiji and Kakasaheb have cleared our way to a certain extent. Literature of wider appeal can only be spread by a widely spoken language. Hindi-Hindustani is such a language compared to the other languages. The reason why Hindi is qualified by the word Hindustani’ is that words originating from the Persian idiom may not be shunned in that language. The English language can never become the medium for all the provinces. If we sincerely hope to enrich Indian literature, to carry the gems hidden in the different languages to the crores of Indian masses, we can do so only through Hindustani. It was with this end in view that Munshi started the monthly Hans with the help of the famous writer Premchandji. It is necessary to make it a success. 1

I have before me a number of cuttings from various Urdu papers severely and even bitterly criticizing the proceedings of the recently formed Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad and there anent Babu Rajendra Prasad, Babu Purushottamdas Tandon, Pandit Jawaharlal and me. They attribute motives and designs to which, I know, we are all strangers. The writers have not taken the trouble of even understanding what was said or done by us or at the Parishad. Thus they think that the design at the bottom of the Association is to push Hindi at the expense of Urdu, and so to Sanskritized Hindi as to make it almost impossible for Mussalmans to understand it. They also infer from a speech of Babu Purushottamdas Tandon delivered at Allahabad at the time of the opening of the Literary Museum of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan that he distorted facts when he claimed that there were nearly 23 crores of Indians who spoke or at least understood Hindi. There are in these writings other innuendoes which I need not notice, my purpose being simply to remove if possible the misunderstandings that have led to the innuendoes. 2

As for the Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad, it aims at making through Hindi as above defined available to the whole of India the best thought in the provinces. Surely there is in this nothing sinister or communal, as suggested in some writings. The adoption of ‘Hindi-Hindustani ‘was at my instance. It was adopted in order to bring out in a compound word the meaning of the definition of Hindi. Moulvi Abdul Kadar Sahib had suggested the use either only of Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu instead of Hindi-Hindustani. I should personally have no objection to either course, but the Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad could not ignore its own origin. The idea was born at the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan at Indore and took a definite shape at Nagpur under its aegis. The retention of the word ‘Hindi ‘was therefore necessary in the nature of things. The substitution of Urdu would have been bad for the reasons I have already stated. But as I have endeavoured to show, Hindi, Hindustani and Urdu are synonymous terms and refer substantially to the same language. 3

The Mahamahopadhyaya’s speech has whetted my appetite for a study of Tamil, which neither age nor desire would deter me from undertaking, but only the want of time makes difficult. The object of this conference is to collect gems from all provincial literatures and to make them available through Hindi. For this purpose I would make an appeal to you. Of course everyone must know his own language thoroughly well, and he should also know the great literature of other Indian languages through Hindi. But it is also the object of this conference to stimulate in our people the desire to know languages of other provinces, e.g., Gujaratis should know Tamil, Bengalis should know Gujarati and so on. And I tell you from experience that it is not at all difficult to pick up another Indian language. But to this end a common script is quite essential. It is not difficult to achieve in Tamil Nad. For look at this simple fact: over 90 per cent of our people are illiterate. We have to start with a clean state with them. Why should we not start making them literate by means of a common script? In Europe they have tried the experiment of a common script quite successfully. Some people even go the length of saying that we might adopt the Roman script from Europe. After a good deal of controversy there is a consensus of opinion that the common script can be Devanagari and none else.

Urdu is claimed as a rival, but I think neither Urdu nor Roman has the perfection and phonetic capacity of Devanagari. Please remember that I say nothing against your languages. Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada must be there and will be there. But why not teach the illiterate in these parts these languages through the Devanagari script? In the interest of the national unity we desire to achieve, the adoption of Devanagari as a common script is so essential. Here it is a question of just shedding our provincialism and narrowness, there are no difficulties at all. Not that I do not like Tamil or Urdu scripts. I know both. But service of the motherland, to which all my life is being given and without which life would be insupportable for me, has taught me that we should try to lift unnecessary burdens off our people. The burden of knowing many scripts is unnecessary and easily avoidable. I would appeal to men of letters of all provinces to resolve their differences on this point and be agreed on this matter of prime importance. Then and then only can the Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad be a success. Then you have to think of ways and means for carrying on our work. Hans is now defunct. Its founder was Premchandji who is no more. Unfortunately Premchandji did not leave anyone to take his place. Indeed, there was none that could adequately fill his place, for he was an unrivalled writer. But that was not the reason for the stopping of the Hans. It ceased even when he was alive. Its cessation was due it was a pity–to the paucity of the number of men who sympathized with or took sufficient interest in the method of work adopted by the journal.

All the articles there were drawn from different provincial languages and were written in the Nagari script. If you accept the ideal of a common script, it would be your duty to earnestly work for this objective of the Parishad. Kakasaheb has told you that he is issuing periodical booklets now, but the whole thing cannot yet be said to have caught on. I want you to shed your apathy and lend a helping hand. You must remember that the whole work falls on the shoulders of the chief workers of the Sammelan. Our work suffers not for want of funds, but for want of workers. We want them from every province. Kakasaheb said that we had limited the number of our governing body to 50 members, but that does not mean that it does not want more workers. Today our literature is in the interest of the few, i.e., of the few literates. Even among the literates there would be few who are really interested in literature. Our country lives in the villages, but we have not gone to the villages to do the country’s work. What I saw in Segaon is to be seen in every Indian village. You will be surprised that out of about six hundred villagers in Segaon, not two can read good literature.

Every day a gentleman goes to the village to read out to them the day’s news from the dailies. But it is with great hardship that he is able to get two villagers to listen to him. You can very well understand from this what a stupendous task it must be to carry good literature to their door. It is the aim of the Parishad to remove that defect. I am not mad after any particular script, but I want you to take a considered and dispassionate view of the question. I appeal to you to give this Parishad as much assistance as you can. Kakasaheb has told you the kind of literature to which we have limited ourselves. I am not fond of literature for its own sake; I do not make a fetish of literacy either. Literacy must be one of the many means for intellectual development, but we have had in the past intellectual giants who were unlettered. That is why we have confined ourselves only to literature of the cleanest and healthiest kind. How can we have this, unless we have your hearty co-operation and unless you are prepared to select suitable literature in your respective languages?

If the Congress went on as usual while we passed resolutions in support of Hindi as the common language, our work would be painfully slow. This resolution appeals to the Congress to exclude the use of English as a language of inter-provincial communication. English, it says, should not be allowed to take either the place of the provincial languages or of Hindi. If English had not ousted the languages of the people, the provincial languages would have been wonderfully rich today. If England had adopted French as the language of her national deliberations we should have had no English literature today. French was the language there after the Norman Conquest. But then the tide turned in favour of ‘English-undefiled’. That created the great English literature we know. What Yakub Hussain Saheb said was quite right. The Mussalman contact had a great influence on our culture and civilization, so much so that there were men like the late Pandit Ajodhyanath who were perfect scholars in Persian and Arabic. If they had given to their mother tongue all the time that they gave to the study of Arabic and Persian, the mother tongue would have made great progress. Then English came to occupy the unnatural position it does until this day.

University professors can wax eloquent in English but will not be able to express their thoughts in their own mother tongue. Sir C. V. Raman’s researches are all contained in his papers in English. They are a sealed book to those who do not know English. But look at the position in Russia. Even before the Revolution they resolved to have all their textbooks (including scientific) in Russian. That really prepared the way for Lenin’s Revolution. We cannot establish real mass contacts until the Congress decides to have all its deliberations in Hindi and of its provincial organizations in the provincial languages. This resolution becomes as much a business of the Bharatiya Parishad as of the Sammelan, for the Bharatiya Parishad is intended to advance the cause of the provincial languages, and if the Congress does not adopt the resolution its object will be to that extent frustrated. It is not that I am making a fetish of language. It is not that I would refuse to have swaraj if I could have it at the cost of our language, as indeed I should refuse to have it at the cost of Truth and Non-violence.

But I insist so much on the language because it is a powerful means of achieving national unity, and the more firmly it is established the broader based will be our unity. Don’t be alarmed at my proposal of everyone learning Hindi plus a language of other provinces, besides his mother tongue. Languages are easily learnt. Max Muller knew 14 languages; and I know a German girl who knew 11 languages when she came here five years ago and now knows two or three Indian languages. But you have created before your mind’s eye a bugbear and somehow feel that you cannot express yourselves in Hindi. It is our mental laziness that we have made no progress in spite of Hindustani being adopted in our Congress constitution these 12 years. Yakub Hussain Saheb asked me why I insisted so much on ‘Hindi-Hindustani’ and was not content with having simple ‘Hindustani’ as the common language. I must take you through the genesis of the whole thing. It was as early as 1918 that as President of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan I suggested to the Hindi-speaking world to broaden their definition of Hindi to include Urdu. When I presided over the Sammelan once again in 19352 I had the word Hindi properly defined as a language that was spoken both by Hindus and Mussalmans and written in Devanagari or Urdu script. My object in doing so was to include in Hindi the high-flown Urdu of Maulana Shibli and the high-flown Hindi of Pandit Shyamsunderdas Then came the Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad, also an off-shoot of the Sammelan. At my suggestion the name Hindi-Hindustani was adopted in the place of Hindi. Abdul Haq Saheb stoutly opposed me there. I could not accept his suggestion. I should have done violence to myself and to the Sammelan if I had given up the word ‘Hindi’ which was the word of the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan and which I had persuaded them to define so as to include Urdu.

We must remember that the word Hindi is not of Hindu coinage, it was coined after the Muslim advent to describe the language which Hindus of the North spoke and studied. So many Mussalman writers of note have described their language as Hindi. And why now this quarrel over words when Hindi is defined to include the variations spoken and written by Hindus and Mussalmans? Then there is another factor to be considered. So far as South Indian languages are concerned it is only Hindi with a large number of Sanskrit words that can appeal to them, for they are already familiar with a certain number of Sanskrit words and the Sanskrit sound. When the two Hindi and Hindustani or Urdu amalgamate and really become the all-India language, daily augmented by the introduction of provincial words, we shall have a vocabulary richer even than the English vocabulary. I hope you now understand why I insist on Hindi-Hindustani. And then I would give a tip to such of you as dread the advent of Hindi-Hindustani as the only language of the Congress. Invest in a Hindi daily or a good book, read aloud part of it regularly even for five minutes, select passages from well-known Hindi writings and speeches and repeat them to yourselves, for correct intonation, make a point of learning a few Hindi words every day, and I assure you that such regular practice will be enough to enable you to express yourselves well in Hindi-Hindustani in six months’ time and without putting an undue strain on your memory. 4

The performance of the Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad was nothing to be proud of. And how could it be that you, the father of the Parishad, did not attend? I was only in the background and Kaka was busy at that very time with many other things. In these circumstances, I feel that it is nothing but sinful to propose a big scheme. Personally I would be ready to wind up the Parishad even on my own responsibility. Or we should remain satisfied with whatever we three can achieve with our own sincere efforts. 5 I had no intention at all of rebuking you but about the Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad when we meet. From the 16th to the 22nd I shall be in Hudli near Belgaum. On the 24th I shall be back at Wardha. We can meet thereafter. 6 I served the cause of Urdu, if it may be distinguished from Hindi, when at Indore the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan at my instance accepted the definition given in Clause I, and when at Nagpur at my instance the Bharatiya Sahitya Parishad accepted the definition and called the common language of inter-provincial intercourse Hindi or Hindustani, thus giving fullest scope to both Mussalmans and Hindus to identify themselves with the effort to enrich the common language and to interpret the best provincial thought in that language. 7

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