The Union Home Minister Amit Shah made a remark about the use of English Language that “those who speak English in India would soon feel ashamed” & “without Indian languages we cease to be truly Indian”.
I would like to share a few paragraphs of an article with the readers of Radiance which expose the imperial mindset of the minister and his tribe by an eminent writer Mr. Sudeesh K., assistant professor in the department of English and Cultural Studies at CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Yesvantpur Campus, Bengaluru.
“The pertinent question, then, is not whether English is India, but who gets to define what “Indian” means in the first place. What truly makes a language “Indian”? Is it geography, ancestry, script, emotion, place of origin or something more elusive? Rejecting English as “foreign” is like rejecting the Constitution itself.
After all, the Constitution was written in English, debated in English, and continues to function in English. By the same logic of opposing English as a foreign language, one can also reject Arabic numerals, Persian poetry, Sanskrit grammar, and even the very idea of the modern nation-state, none of which is purely indigenous.
You can speak Konkani at home, study in Marathi, watch Tamil movies, text in English, and recite Urdu poetry, you can still be called “Indian”. To a great extent that’s what being Indian means: stitching together a life from many threads. An Indian who speaks Bhojpuri at home, codes in Python, and negotiates in English is not suffering from cultural shame: they are the living proof of a rich history, contradictory and complete in its very incompletion.
“The resilient future of global India lies not in choosing between English and Indian languages, but in embracing both, which is to say, accepting and strengthening a multilingual vision of India that dethrones the very foundation of monolingual mission upheld by Hindi hardliners.” (Source: The News Trail Daily, Bengaluru, dated July 4, 2025)
Kudos to respected Mr. Sudeesh K. for enlightening the readers and giving befitting reply with concrete and logical arguments to Hon’ble H.M. and his tribe.
May his tribe increase.
Farooq AbdulgafarBawani
Rajkot, Gujarat, India
Is UN’s Existence Needed Anymore?
No country can claim that it is devoid of human rights violation. Unfortunately, in recent years UN’s role seems like that of a henpecked husband. As has been established, the Council is an innately selective political state-driven body and with every member intent on preserving its own interest, these interest-based concerns will almost always override any deference to altruism or universal values.
The case of much extreme violation of human rights at Gaza where over 15000 innocent children were deliberately killed and the cases of Ukraine-Russia, Libya, Syria, Yemen and other parts of the Middle East or Sri Lanka in 2014 and now Iran, provide a perfect example of the Council’s total failure in regards to the operationalisation of the third pillar of the Responsibility to Protect.
On the evidence of Council action over the past 75 years the UN has declined remarkably its integrity in a wider global context and it is irrational to expect the unswerving application of the Responsibility to Protect into the future due to double standard or biased approach while dealing with increasing human rights violation issues. Inopportunely lofty expectations unrealised may contribute to the erosion of the concept in the eyes of many; and moreover, may shrink the concept to the status of a tool of ethical leverage or advocacy.
Dr. Majeed Mulla
Pune, Maharashtra