New Delhi: A 25-year-old amendment introducing Urdu as the second official language in Uttar Pradesh was upheld by the Supreme Court on Thursday, paving the way for a more democratic approach to the use of languages in states.

“In the absence of direction issued by the President under Article 347 of the Constitution, there is no restriction, restraint or impediment for the state legislature in adopting one of the languages in use in the state as an official language under Article 345 of the Constitution of India," ruled a five-judge constitution bench comprising Chief Justice R.M. Lodha and Dipak Misra, Madan B. Lokur, Kurian Joseph and S.A. Bobde.

Article 347 lays down a “special provision relating to language spoken by a section of the population of a state" and confers on the President the power to recognize a language spoken by a “substantial proportion of the population" within the state or in any part of it.

Article 345—on official language or languages of a state—allows state legislatures to use “any one or more of the languages in use in the state" or Hindi for its official purposes.

The case, which was originally filed by the Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sahitya Sammelan before the Allahabad high court, sought to challenge the constitutionality of the Uttar Pradesh Official Language (Amendment) Act, 1989, which made Urdu the second official language for purposes to be notified by the state.

The order, which also had upheld the constitutionality of the law, was challenged before the apex court in 1997. It was referred to a five-judge bench in 2003, as there were important questions of interpretation of the Constitution.

While the Allahabad high court had three limited questions with regard to the Uttar Pradesh amendment to consider, the apex court ruling gives a wider perspective.

Speaking of states where Hindi is already an official language, it holds that this doesn’t bar other languages from being notified as official languages. “If Hindi is in use in a particular state, then it does not foreclose the state’s power or discretion to adopt any language other than Hindi as the official language provided such language is ‘in use’ in that state," the judges said.

“Nothing in Article 345, in our view, bars declaring one or more of the languages in use in the state, in addition to Hindi, as the second official language...," they said.

In effect, it nullified the Sammelan’s argument that if a state opts for Hindi as its official language, it prevents other languages being declared as official language.

“This is a very welcome judgement and the Supreme Court has put its finger on the right spot. Today, there is no longer time to revive the Hindi-Urdu debate," said Abhay Kumar Dubey, director of the Indian languages programme at the New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), a think tank.

“The Eighth Schedule of our Constitution clearly states that all the languages in the list are to be considered as national languages, then why not the states, too? I think that the language issue should not be used to polarize at all because on the ground there is not much contention. But we need to be careful because languages have the potential to divide as much as to unite," he added.

But Shiv Sena leader Diwakar Raote, who a few years back had launched an agitation for having name plates outside the cabins of officials and ministers in the state secretariat written only in Marathi, said: “The Supreme Court’s decision is unfortunate. In Maharashtra, we will not tolerate any attempt to make other language the official language of the state other than Marathi."

In Tamil Nadu, Gnani Sankaran, a political commentator who contested local elections as an Aam Admi Party candidate, said: “Although Tamil Nadu has a sizeable Telugu- and Malayalam-speaking population, both the languages are not as prevalent as English, which is spoken as well as written, so English can be considered as a second official language other than Tamil."

“There is an advantage in having English as the second official language," said E.V.K.S. Elangovan, a former member of Parliament and a member of the Congress party. “Since it is a global language, it helps in development."

Congress party leaders were not reachable for comment, while Bharatiya Janata Party leaders said the party will study the judgement before giving its comment.

“The judgement upholds the spirit of the Indian Constitution. In 1946, when the Constituent Assembly was debating the framework of the republic of India, the language issue dominated the debate. A governor of a state has the power for introducing more than one official language," said Ganesh Devy, a linguistic expert. “Sometimes, however, states overlook the need for introducing more languages and the court has to intervene."

Devy heads the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre based in Vadodara, Gujarat, that carried out the country’s largest linguistic survey in 2013.

Devy’s survey identified 780 Indian languages and said there were 70 more that were not included since they were out of the organization’s network. According to the survey, 480 languages were spoken by tribal and nomadic tribes and about 80 were coastal languages.

There are 22 scheduled languages in the Constitution and a hundred other languages under non-scheduled languages.

Devy said that while he has not gone through the apex court’s verdict, there are many states that have more than one official language.

“Jharkhand has the highest number of official languages—eight. Gujarat has Urdu and Hindi as its official languages. The northern belt is predominantly Hindi-speaking, but in states like UP (Uttar Pradesh) and Bihar, there is a large Urdu-speaking population. A state also has to grant funds for the official language that sometimes leads to a tussle," Devy said.

With increasing inter-state mobility, “large cities are no longer monolingual. Take the example of Mumbai where there are more than 300 different languages spoken today", he said.

Makarand Gadgil in Mumbai, S. Bridget Leena in Chennai, Anuja and Gyan Varma in New Delhi, and Maulik Pathak in Ahmedabad contributed to this story.

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