The Chief Minister of Madras, Mr. C.N. Annadurai, has expressed the view that if the Centre had only introduced the Official Languages (Amendment) Bill without the resolution as amended in accordance with the Congress Party’s recommendations it would have been certainly of some help to non-Hindi-speaking people. Mr. Annadurai said although the Bill itself was watered down, it was helpful to the extent that it did not try to do away with English within a specified period and it gave the right to the non-Hindi-speaking people to continue using English. This was better than what existed previously. But the resolution in a sense tried to take away by the left hand what was given by the right hand. The provision relating to the use of either English or Hindi for competitive examinations would seriously put the non-Hindi speaking people at a disadvantage. Mr. Annadurai who was talking to your correspondent said that the Government could have solved the problem by a very simple measure providing for the continued use of English. Apparently, a detailed Bill and a resolution resulted in pressure from Hindi-speaking people. What seemed to have been forgotten by those who put pressure and also yielded to pressure was that the Bill was meant only to implement the assurances given by the two former Prime Ministers to the non-Hindi-speaking people. It was because of the Madras Government’s persuasion that the Official Languages Amendment Draft Bill, which was circulated to the States, and which was an elaborate one including almost all the provisions in the resolution on the language policy, was later split up into a Bill and a resolution.
