The Samyukta Socialist Party has accepted as its language policy a two-language formula to replace English as the medium of education and administration in the country. The policy emphasised the need to learn one of the regional languages other than Hindi by the people of Hindi States and Hindi by the people of non-Hindi States. Use of English, by the non-Hindi States, has been favoured only for the time being, in case they wanted to use it in their correspondence with the Centre. The language policy resolution was yesterday [December 31, Lohianagar (Gaya)] discussed at the delegates session of the party’s National Conference. The resolution got overwhelming support from the delegates of almost all the States, specially from the South. Mr. Dorai Babu of Tamil Nadu, who seconded the resolution, and Mr. Chandrasekharan of Kerala, who supported it, said the language policy as embodied in the resolution was the only solution to the language controversy. The resolution favoured knowledge of one of the State language mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution along with Hindi as essential for recruitment to Central Government services and of candidates from Hindi States. It said “This conference wants to clearly declare to the people of the country that all the languages mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution such as Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Sindhi, Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, etc., are all national languages and there can be no conflict among them and their progress is inter-dependent. The real conflict is between English and the State languages. Once English is removed all these languages will grow in their status and richness.” Mr. S.M. Joshi, SSP Chairman told a Press conference that Hindi alone could be the link language of India. But he warned against fanaticism or rigidity on the part of Hindi zealots and said that no language could be imposed on the people against their wishes. He pleaded that people in the North should learn at least one South Indian language to win over the sympathy and affection of the people of the South. The SSP and the D.M.K., Mr. Joshi said, had no difference over the language issue and both of them wanted to oust English and develop the regional languages.
