Originally posted by: Pain-in-ur-Neck
I really don't get it either ... I mean Britishers made us go through hell for decades yet people aren't offended having "English" as one of the official languages ... while all hell breaks loose if one of the Indian languages is proposed to be a "National language" ... 🤔
North Indian states also have various languages ... (-Considering all states besides the 4 in South) Himachal, Kashmir, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, West Bengal, even UP and Bihar (Bhojpuri) ... all 7 sisters have different languages too ... So to think about it most of the states have their own language and "Hindi" isn't their mother tongue!
I don't mind regardless ... I do feel India can do good having a national language which gets communicated by ALL ... If not Hindi be it anything else ... doesn't matter .... May be how PM is elected, a national language can be elected too!
It is always helpful to take a dispassionate look at it and you make very good points. I am not sure if I will add anything valuable but let me try by stating some speculations. The reason many people are fine with learning English is because it seems they think it gives them an important advantage on international level (like say most powerful international media houses seem to be in English, most popular journals and books seem to be in English, major chunk of popular websites use English as their primary language etc.). Since English seems to be playing a major role in connecting different countries then why not let it do the similar task of connecting different regions within India. It does seem "logical" and may be more "efficient" as well. Another reason (may be controversial) is that it seems that people in India (actually it is not just in India) associate a sort of elitism with English. I speculate that we, Indian people, correlate education with English knowledge more often than not. This correlation (which could even be statistically true) sometimes seems to take the form of causation in popular culture and this means that people conclude intelligence and sophistication from English skills. This interpretation, although technically problematic, does affect our general perception of languages and English could have a lead over there. Also, it could be that people just want a third party language to be the common one over something that favors one regional group.
My guess is all these reasons are a good way to explain why many Indians (both North and South) seem to prefer English as the unifying language.
Your second point is brilliant as well. It is definitely a nice academic exercise to reason why most North Indian states, despite having their own languages, do not seem to oppose vehemently the idea of Hindi being a national language. In my interactions with people from various North Indian states, it seems that none of them actually care much, at least not as much as say Tamilians. Maybe, Hindi is naturally more distant from Telugu, Tamil etc. than from Haryanvi, Gujarati etc., if one could define a distance metric between languages (based on script, word overlaps, geographical distance etc.). This could explain why Hindi may be more alien to Tamilians than say Gujaratis. Maybe people in North Indian states already know decent amount of Hindi so they are not that averse to it. Also, language politics has always been strong in southern parts, which explains more resistance by default to Hindi.
It could be argued that we have to have some common language for free and uninhibited flow of ideas across the country. But it remains unclear which language will and should achieve it.