The most prominent obstacle to cultural unity is the variety of languages. When told that there are fourteen regional languages and many more dialects belonging to four different linguistic families in India, foreigners are inclined to think that Indians are not one people but, like the inhabitants of Europe, a motley group of peoples with different cultures showing some common elements. There can be no doubt that on account of linguistic barriers, people from different parts of India generally meet as comparative strangers on all levels other than the religious one. Unless he happens to know English or Hindi, a man from the non-Hindi speaking regions finds it extremely difficult to make himself understood outside his own linguistic area. No doubt if he spends some time in a new place, he can pick up enough of the local language to get along but in spite of a common background of religious beliefs and thought in general, he cannot come in intimate contact with the people around him because there is no common medium for the exchange of deeper thoughts. So until there is a link language and it is known throughout the country, an effective cultural unity is not possible.

But more variety of languages could not be a positive danger to the unity of India if it were not accompanied by linguistic communalism amounting in many cases to chauvinism. It is this poison in our social organism that makes the movement for linguistic states, which is perfectly justified on rational, historical and practical grounds, an object of great concern to all who have the good of the country at heart.

To avoid any misunderstanding we should make it clear what we understand by the term “linguistic communalism". The consciousness of a group of people speaking the same language that makes them form a distinct community is natural and legitimate. But if it is associated with the feeling that those sons of the country living in the same area or an adjacent area who speak a different language are outsiders in the worst sense of the term and should be treated as such, then it assumes the ugly shape of linguistic communalism which is harmful to national unity and is highly objectionable. Far more harmful and objectionable, however, is the tendency in a linguistic majority to withhold from the minority the safeguards guaranteed by the Constitution for preserving and promoting its language and culture, including the primary education of its children through the medium of the mother tongue, or to discriminate against individual members of the minority in state services and other matters. It is this chauvinism, unfortunately present in India, which has created a painful situation after the states were reorganised on a linguistic basis, the cultural and other rights of linguistic minorities in each state have been disregarded in many cases. So when the question of redefining the boundaries of linguistic states comes up for consideration, one finds the worst tensions and conflicts in the border areas where each of two or more language groups agitates for the inclusion of the area of its domicile in the state where its own mother tongue would be the official language. If groups living in each border area could be assured that to whichever state the area went they would all receive equal treatment and their constitutional rights would be safeguarded, a major difficulty besetting the problem of linguistic states would be removed.

Q.(i) Why are the foreigners inclined to think that Indians are not fone people'?

Q.(ii) "So until there is a link language and it is known throughout the country, an effective cultural unity is not possible." Elucidate.

Q.(iii) What according to the author is linguistic communalism'? When is it 'harmful to national unity?

Q.(iv) What happens when the question of "redefining the boundaries of linguistic states' crops up for consideration ?

Q.(v) How could the major difficulty besetting the problem of linguistic states' be solved ?