Word: nehru
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...communal riots since the 1947 partition convulsed much of India last week and spread across the border to Pakistan. At least 23 Hindus and Moslems were dead, another 500 injured. The riots ripped the delicate fabric of peaceful Hindu-Moslem relations and dealt a cruel blow to Prime Minister Nehru's belief that in nine years of the "secular" state the ancient religious animosities of his people had been "healed and forgotten...
...wounded in one sanguinary knifing melee. In Khamgaon rioting Hindus broke into Moslem shops and fought with police; when the police opened fire five died. Some Hindu extremists, organizing a boycott of Moslem rug dealers and lockmakers, shouted that Pakistani agents had "cooked up the whole thing" to embarrass Nehru on the eve of his departure to visit King Saud in the Moslem holy land. Police, some of them dressed as Moslem women, prowled the mosques and bazaars and arrested 500 Moslems...
...announced his intention to remain as long as necessary to maintain order. Replied Mayor Clark: "We're having all the people in town sign a petition asking all the teachers to stay out of school until the Negroes get out. We're gonna take a tip from Nehru and those Indians; we're gonna practice non-violent resistance. Of course, we wouldn't want them over here, but we can learn from them...
...Nehru drew the obvious moral: "English is the most important language in the world today. If we start training people in Hindi or any other Indian language, we will only produce persons who are inadequately trained...
...Behind Nehru's pronouncement (which was promptly endorsed by the education ministers' conference) was the knowledge that Hindi has failed to replace English as a national language. With an Urdu base and a Sanskrit script, Hindi is spoken by the biggest single language bloc in all India-roughly 100 million people, most of whom live in Uttar Pradesh, the sprawling area that has traditionally supplied New Delhi with most of its politicians. Hindi has remained largely unknown in southern India, which prides itself on its command of English...