- Rajesh Tyagi and Rajinder Kumar/ 18.11.2017
India has been home to a variety of reactionary and
sectarian movements based on identities that relate to caste, religion,
language etc.
Recent in the chain is the campaign by ‘Students for Society’
(SFS) in Punjab University, appealing to state and local authorities, to impart
prominence to Punjabi language on the campus as against English and Hindi.
SFS is a nationally oriented student organization influenced
by the program and politics of Stalin and Mao.
In the not so distant past, a similar diehard linguistic campaign
to reinforce Punjabi language as against Hindi and English was launched by the
communal reactionary Khalistani movement. SFS is echoing the same while basing
itself upon similar intransigent sentiments of the backward mass.
This campaign, in essence is an appeal to spurn English and
Hindi in favour of local language, Punjabi.
The impulse for the campaign comes from the regressive sentiment
that envisages an aversion to internationalism, convergence of peoples and cultures
and in opposition to it calls for adherence to regionalism.
