Ranji Trophy Clash Between Baroda And Karnataka Gets Entangled In 'Hindi Imposition' Controversy

The Baroda vs Karnataka Ranji Trophy 2019/20 clash at the M Chinnaswamy stadium was poised nicely. Karnataka, needing to win by a big margin and hoping other results go their way, notched up 233 and soon dismissed Baroda for 85 with Abhimanyu Mithun and Krishnappa Gowtham taking three wickets apiece. Forced to follow on, Ahmadnoor Pathan and Deepak Hooda both smashed fifties as Baroda looked to stage a fightback against Karnataka. Pathan was dismissed for 90 and Hooda was sent back for 50 as they ended on 208/5, leading by 60 runs after the end of day 2.

However, during the course of the Ranji Trophy match, there was a big controversy. Abhimanyu Mithun was bowling to Kedar Devdhar and he bowled a full ball which was defended back to the bowler. However, the on-air commentator raised a storm. It all started when he said, "I liked the fact that Sunil Gavaskar is commentating in Hindi and is giving his valuable in the same language. I also loved it that he called the dot ball as a 'bindi' ball."

To which, the other commentator replied, "Every Indian must know Hindi. This is our mother tongue. There is no bigger language than this. In fact, I look at those people with a lot of anger who say that we are cricketers still we should talk in Hindi? You are staying in India then you will obviously speak its mother tongue," he said. This raised a massive storm on social media with people coming from the non-Hindi speaking regions speaking strongly against the commentators suggestion that Hindi should be known. The irony is also in the fact that this match featured teams which did not speak much of Hindi.

Hindi Is National Language?

According to the Constitution of India, there is NO official national language. English is used in official purposes such as parliamentary proceedings, judiciary, communications between the Central Government and a State Government. States within India have the liberty and powers to specify their own official language(s) through legislation. In addition to the official languages, the constitution recognises 22 regional languages, which includes Hindi but not English, as scheduled languages. These are not to be confused with official status of the Union.

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The Indian constitution, in 1950, had declared Hindi in Devanagari script to be the official language of the union. Unless Parliament decided otherwise, the use of English for official purposes was to cease 15 years after the constitution came into effect. The prospect of the changeover, however, led to much alarm in the non Hindi-speaking areas of India, especially states like Tamil Nadu whose languages were not related to Hindi at all. As a result, Parliament enacted the Official Languages Act, 1963, which provided for the continued use of English for official purposes along with Hindi, even after 1965.

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