question_answer

?Within the Constituent Assembly of India the language issue was intensely debated?. Examine the views put forward by the members of the Assembly on this issue.

Or

How did the Constituent Assembly of India protect the powers of the Central Government? Explain.

Answer:

The language issue was intensely debated in the Constituent Assembly.

Language issue has been very hot in India. In India besides the languages included in the eighth schedule there are several languages. And the speakers of all those languages are very proud of their languages.

Before independence there was consensus among the national leaders that Hindi should be the national language of Independent India. Mahatma Gandhi was for Hindi in Devnagari script. After Independence the Constituent Assembly was equally divided between English and Hindi. At the time of independence only one percent of Indians knew English but still it had been the language of the administration as the language of the rulers. It was President Dr. Rajendra Prasad?s vote which decided that Hindi would be the national language of India.

In the debate Mr. Dhulekar argued in favour of Hindi. Mr. Frank Antony spoke in favour of English. He said that English was his mother tongue and it could not be called a foreign language.

Many members took part in the debate. Hindi is no doubt a language of a big majority. Members argued that it was the lingua franca when people from different parts of India communicated with each other. There were references to Urdu which was to be the national language of Pakistan. The members said in Uttar Pradesh the court proceedings were in Urdu. Some member like Pandit Mitra talked in favour of Sanskrit also.

At one point Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru was irritated. He was English educated. Most of his books were penned in English. He favoured Hindi.

Frank Antony said that he had been familiar with Hindi and he had no problem with it. He talked proudly about English. He felt that to communicate with the world we need English. He strongly felt that English was one of the Indian languages. South Indian members were in favour of English. They opposed Hindi.

Krishnammachari gave a warning on behalf of the people of South against imposition of Hindi.

It was decided that English would continue till Hindi takes its place.

The official communication from the government would be in both the languages.

Or

The powers of State Governments and Central Government were also debated in the Constituent Assembly.

A member from Mysore had fears that the powers would be with Central Government only.

Another member from Madras felt that the provincial governments must have full power to look after the welfare of their states.

The Constituent Assembly prepared three lists.

The first list was called the Union list in which tax, defence and foreign affairs were main, was exclusively for Central Government.

The second list was State list in which education, health were the main issues was to be looked after by the states.

The third list was a Concurrent list in which forest agriculture were main, were to be jointly looked States and the Central Government In this way the Constituent Assembly protected the powers of the Central Government.