A reason for the blunted anti-Hindi resentment is Maharashtra's geographical, cultural, and physical proximity with northern states, and the ability of the locals to adapt to the language.
Located on the cusp of North and South India, Maharashtra has had a love-hate relationship with Hindi. However, the resentment has never taken a disruptive form as it has in the southern states. A reason for the blunted anti-Hindi resentment is Maharashtra's geographical, cultural, and physical proximity with northern states, and the ability of the locals to adapt to the language.
In the Peshwa-era, when Marathas were virtually the masters of Hindustan, with the Mughal emperor at Delhi reduced to being their protectorate, sardars (generals) like the Shindes and Holkars established their fiefs in North India. They were accompanied by Maharashtrians and some of their armies also included people from these regions, who were called 'Purbhaiyyas.'
Working class communities from North India migrated to Mumbai before and after the 1857 war of Independence and this picked up gradually with the city and its prosperity serving as a magnet for those seeking greener pastures.
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The changing demographic landscape of Mumbai and surrounding areas, which reflected in the decline of Marathi speakers, led to the Shiv Sena, which once had non-Maharashtrians in its cross-hairs, adopting Hindutva to reach out to a larger constituency. After a brief and unsuccessful flirtation with the development agenda after its launch in 2006, the rival Raj Thackeray-led MNS attacked Hindi-speakers to rally working-class Maharashtrians.
"A society is nurtured on the basis of language," said MNS general secretary Anil Shidore, adding that making a language like Hindi compulsory at the primary level was akin to forcing a different culture on people.
Shidore noted that Maharashtra had a unique geographical position at the cusp of North and South India and linguistic and cultural similarities with Hindi.
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"Earlier, the Modi script was being used to write Marathi. Later, this made way for Devanagari, which is also used to write Hindi. Plus, Maharashtra has traditionally had a high literary and cultural capital since the British era, which attracted capitalists and industrialists to the state. This cannot be attributed to the development of the port in Mumbai as other states too had ports. People preferred to invest here as the locals were accepting of others," he explained.
Shidore added that the flipside included increased migration from the Hindi speaking belt to Maharashtra. It was also unsustainable for migrant communities to view Maharashtra only as a place for earning money and not integrating with it culturally.
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"According to the Finance Commission's norms, Maharashtra gets back just Rs 13 of the Rs 100 that it generates as taxes. On one hand, we bear the burden of migration, and on the other, our share of resources is diverted to these very states," he rued, calling this a "double-edged sword."
Shidore attributed this to the lack of strong regional parties to amplify the state's voices at the Centre. Maharashtra has traditionally voted for national parties, be it the Congress and later, the BJP.
However, while the Hindi versus Marathi debate shapes up, speakers of Marathi's many dialects rue that their regional and tribal tongues are on the decline. A variety of dialects like Konkani, Bankoti, Malvani, Varhadi, Zhadiboli and Bankoti are spoken across the state.
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Pratibha Shinde of the Lok Sangharsh Morcha, who works among tribals in Dhule and Nandurbar, said pre-primary education should be imparted in dialects. "For three years beginning 2003, we launched a project which imparted which adapted pre-primary education tools to local tribal dialects. This helped students gain confidence when they went to primary school as they could relate their education with local contexts and tools. Our demand that the state government may replicate this elsewhere is pending till date," she explained. Shinde, however, added that imparting education only in local tongues was not possible as the three districts of Dhule, Jalgaon and Nandurbar alone had 22 tribal dialects.
"Standardised or standard languages are used in mass education. This usually leads to the marginalisation of small languages as well as local varieties (dialects) of the language. But providing mass education in local dialects is often not practically feasible in a multilingual country. The world over, successful language and dialect maintenance programmes have been initiated by the communities themselves and run with government support," said Sonal Kulkarni- Joshi, Professor of Linguistics at the Deccan College, Pune, who is leading the first-ever comprehensive dialect survey of Marathi in independent India.
The survey will result in the preparation of dialect maps representing the geographical distribution of some selected linguistic features.
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