Union Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Jitendra Singh had said in June that Hindi needed to be promoted a lot more in the country, especially in South and Northeast India. He also said that Hindi, in addition to easily lending itself to be used as a medium of communication across the country, could help youngsters in search of jobs, as it carried additional weightage in selection processes.

On the question of Hindi being given additional importance over other regional languages, C Rajagopalachari wrote persuasively in the January 1968 edition of Swarajya. Here is his article:

...It is well known by now that Hindi is not the language of the majority of our people. Even if Hindi had been the language of the majority of our people, that majority would not have had the right to coerce the minority into acceptance in a matter of this kind. Hindi is, at best, the language of a large minority, even as Tamil is the language of a medium-sized minority, and Tulu of a small minority of our people. Apart from this, Hindi cannot claim to be a fully grown and integrated language. Its many dialects prevent its being called a language in its own right. Even in its most advanced form, Hindi as a language is inadequately equipped with the technical terms required for conveying modern knowledge. To sit down now to devise technical words for administrative and academic purposes in Hindi for the sake of gradually improving it, would be as futile as it would be difficult, and would mean, interfering with the required pace of administrative, academic and judicial work. I make this observation after a genuine and strenuous effort on my part more than half a century ago to devise an improvement and expansion of the Tamil language for these purposes. I came finally to the conclusion that it would be a waste of national effort.

Taking into consideration the facts that (1) Hindi is, strictly speaking, only a regional language and not the language of the majority of our people spread evenly all over the country, and (2) Hindi is technically incapable of handling the work-load which is now being handled efficiently by English, singling out Hindi for any special status would amount to giving one regional language the right of conquest over other regions. The unpleasant history of the British East India Company would have to be repeated by an attempted Hindi regime, which would be most unfortunate.

The English language was introduced to Indian society by the British regime with all its nationwide machinery of administration. English, therefore, struck roots in our country and grew with the growth of the British power which it represented. The British regime in India was the result of fraud and aggression and was an exploitation of our weaknesses. The introduction of English into our system was, no doubt, unnatural. But adaptation and usage over more than a century transformed this instrument of communication into a great good, linking the elite of all the regions of our country into a single body of people and giving us our stock of words for the expanding administrative, educational and commercial horizons of our country. It linked us with progress and civilization in the rest of the world.

This natural development is now sought to be destroyed. A well-developed and long-adapted medium is sought to be replaced by one of our many regional languages, which are all more or less unsuitable for the requirements of our times. I may say here that the popular notion that only the people of the South came to know English well, and are therefore keen on its retention, is wrong. I know quite a number of people in the North who speak better English than the best of the English-knowing people in Madras, and Allahabad, where the Hindi-loving students have been creating such a stir, was a great centre for English studies in my younger days. The country as a whole had the same reasons and equal opportunities for absorbing English, and therefore, if we accept the continuance of English for the purposes of official work, there will be no discrimination whatever. If it is now enacted that any one regional language should take the place of English, our people being politically conscious they will oppose such far-reaching discrimination. We must remember that job opportunity is intimately connected with the official language.

The Constituent Assembly was in a mood of exhilaration over the attainment of Freedom and felt that it should demonstrate that we could easily overcome all objections raised hitherto based on diversities of language and religion, and without a true national discussion of this difficult and important question, it wrote down an article in the Constitution that Hindi shall be the official language of India after a certain period. The period fixed having passed, without adequate and successful preparation for the consummation, we are faced with the reality of the difficulties of the question and are now seeking to solve them. An attempt is being made by various provisions in the Language Bill really to modify the Constitution in several respects in order to fulfil the assurance very justly given by two Prime Ministers to the non-Hindi people of India. I have to state that the Bill is nothing but deception. If the UPSC examinations can be answered in Hindi and all the many regional languages, our Indian Administrative Service will break up into many provincial services, giving rise to the worst kind of parochialism, and the most important limb of the administration of India will lose its mobility and its traditions - inherited unbroken from the Indian Civil Service.