meeting, outside the Constituent Assembly,
in all probability in the Congress Assembly
Party.- As there is no official record on the
proceedings of the Congress Assembly
Party meetings, confusion prevails. But it is
clear that voting took place in the Congress
Assembly Party meetings on different days
and on different issues. - As the demand for Hindustani lost its
strength after partition, there is no chance
of voting on the issue of Hindustani vs.
Hindi. - The view that voting took place on
the question of whether Hindi should
become the official language of the Union
immediately or after fifteen years is not
acceptable, because all available evidence
points to the fact that Hindi came out
successful in the voting, and if so, Hindi
might have become the official language of
the Union immediately. But, the fact is that
it had to wait for another fifteen years. - On seeing the confusion and conflicting
pieces of information on the one-vote
majority issue, L. Krishnaswamy Bharathi, a
member of the Constituent Assembly, came
forward to clear the misconceptions.
L. Krishnaswamy Bharathi was a Gandhian and
an acclaimed Congress leader, who participated
in the Civil Disobedience Movement along with
his wife and sentenced to six months rigorous
imprisonment. Thirty-five years after the
adoption of the Constitution, on 15 March 1985,
L. Krishnaswamy Bharathi narrated in detail the
events leading to the resolution of the official
language issue on a special lecture delivered
at the Tamil University at Thanjavur, in Tamil
Nadu. According to him, heated discussions
in support of Hindi and English took place in
the meetings of the Congress Assembly Party.
Passions matched with passions; sentiments
matched with sentiments, amidst a lot of noise.
“At one stage, Nehru rose from his seat with his
eyes turning red in anger, and shouted at the
members “the way, in which the discussions
are going on, shows that it will not be a wonder
if it ends in murder. But I don’t want to see
such a horrible scene and so I am walking out”.
Then he picked up the files and left the Hall in
frustration. Party Whip Satyanarayana Sinha
immediately followed Nehru in another car, met
him in the office, pacified him and brought him
back to the Hall. With Nehru calmness returned
to the Hall and on the advice of Nehru, it was
agreed to decide the issue by secret voting.
Accordingly, members were given white pieces
of paper, in which they had to write down the
name of the language of their choice. When the
votes were counted at the end, both English
and Hindi secured 44 votes each. Then Nehru
suggested that this very important issue should
not be decided in a smaller meeting like this
and hence this issue could be decided in a
larger meeting attended by all members. As
the members agreed to Nehru’s suggestion, the
meeting was postponed.
After an interval of some days, the Congress
Assembly Party again met to resolve the official
language issue. At the very outset Nehru
demanded an assurance from the members that
they would abide by whatever decisions taken
in the party meeting on the language issue and
support them unanimously in the Constituent
Assembly.
Al the members offered such an assurance,
and then voting took place. At the end, votes
were counted and to the astonishment of all,
this time also both English and Hindi secured
equal votes, that is 77 each. Then the Chairman
of the meeting, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, exercised
his casting vote in favour of Hindi and declared
that Hindi was elected by 78 votes against 77.
L. Krishnaswamy Bharathi further informs
that as the party discipline was so strong that
members were not allowed to divulge the
details of the proceedings of the Congress
Assembly Party meetings, the discussions and
the details of voting on the language issue were
not reported in the newspapers elaborately.
This version of L. Krishnaswamy Bharathi
seems to be very close to the events and more
acceptable.
Courtesy: ‘Struggle for Freedom of
Languages in India’The Modern RationalistJuly 2019