To speak of the linguistic question in India today is to risk immediate mischaracterization. Let me state my position without ambiguity: I have nothing against Hindi. It is a magnificent language, rich in literary inheritance, vast in its expressiveness, and spoken by millions of our fellow citizens. I have argued for decades that more of us in the South ought to learn it, both to appreciate its depth and to converse seamlessly with our North Indian countrymen, especially since they are coming to our state in large numbers, both as workers and as tourists.

My objection is not to Hindi; my objection is to imposition. The distance between those two concepts is not a minor semantic distinction—it is the entire argument.

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When the Republic confronted the linguistic anxieties of the 1960s, it forged an elegant settlement: the Three-Language Formula. The logic of that compromise was simple, balanced, and deeply federalist. Non-Hindi-speaking states would teach the regional mother tongue, English, and Hindi. Hindi-speaking states, in reciprocal goodwill, would teach Hindi, English, and one modern Indian language from outside the Hindi belt—preferably a Southern tongue.

Had that solemn compact been honoured, we would today have a generation in Lucknow, Bhopal, and Patna comfortably reading Malayalam, Tamil, or Bengali. Instead, the burden of national integration was left to be carried on a single shoulder. Most of us in the South (with the exception of Tamil Nadu) faithfully learned Hindi, while virtually no one in the North was asked to........

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