Word: shastri
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...Samuel Johnson A land of vastly mixed pedigrees, India has been forced to concede again that its own indispensable language is English. After meeting with the chief ministers of India's 16 states, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri reaffirmed in Parliament last week that English would continue to be an "associate" official language. By this promise Shastri hoped to calm the linguistic strife in South India, which has cost at least 60 lives and threatened to bring down his government...
...went into effect in January, South India's non-Hindi-speaking people feared that henceforth they would be discriminated against in government employment and in other ways. Riots flared (TIME, Feb. 5), and the Cabinet ministers from South India threatened to resign unless English was fully restored. But Shastri also faced angry pressure from the Hindi side of his verbally violent party. Last week 106 Congress Party M.P.s from North India petitioned the government-in English-to uphold Hindi as the only official language. Fanatics of the pro-Hindi Jan Sangh Party prowled the streets of Delhi, blotting...
Caught in the crossfire, Shastri temporized, upheld Hindi while at the same time promising that there would be no anti-Hindi discrimination. There will be equality in confusion: all civil-service applicants will probably be given exams in Hindi, English, and one of the other 13 major languages of India. In his small, dry voice, Shastri promised "a study of all aspects involved." Critics complained of his lack of leadership, but Shastri's very weakness and vagueness stopped the violence at least for the time being...
...Cabinet meeting, non-Hindi ministers backed the demand of Food Minister Chidambaram Subramaniam that English also be given statutory recognition as an official language. When they were voted down, Subramaniam and another minister resigned, shaking confidence in Shastri's leadership. As the death toll in the riots rose to 60, Shastri made a nationwide broadcast appealing for law and order. Though he did not promise to restore English to parity with Hindi, he did assure the nation that jobs and opportunities for advancement were in no way endangered by Hindi's becoming the official language...
Next day Madras was quiet, but violence flared in Bengal and the former French colony of Pondicherry. Indira Gandhi, daughter of the late Jawaharlal Nehru, said that Shastri was ready to compromise, and the Law Ministry was reportedly preparing a draft proposal for presentation next week to the chief ministers of India's 16 states. That would not necessarily end Shastri's troubles. Hindi fanatics might well generate an even more violent whirlwind if their dream of language supremacy is shattered...