Open in App
Open in App

The State Language for India: Prabhupada's Choice

Gargamuni Dasa: During the early 70s, it was being discussed in the Parliament the state language for India. Should it be Hindi? Should it be English? Or should it be Sanskrit? So there were great debates, because the country was split. In South India, there was no country voting for Hindi. They wanted either English because that would unite all the southern states under one language because in the south, there's different languages in different states. So either English could be used or Sanskrit could be used because it's a Devanagari script.

So Prabhupada had written a letter to the Parliament saying that he suggested it should be Sanskrit because it's the mother of all languages and it would be highly appreciable by the Indian people to maintain its mother tongue because Hindi is not the mother tongue. Hindi was brought by the Moguls from Persia. It's a mixed language, and it's not mentioned in any of the Vedas, there's no Devanagari word, "Hindu" or "Hindi." 

So Prabhupada always said, "There's no such thing as Hindu religion, it's called Sanatana Dharma in the Vedas. There may be a Hindu culture but there's no Hindu religion." So when he was in India, he didn't give much Hindi lectures, maybe 30 or 40. Sometimes he talked between English and Hindi in his room conversations, but he didn't speak much because he was speaking for his American and European disciples, and neither did he write in Hindi. He didn't write any books in Hindi, and some people criticize Prabhupada, "Why don't you write in Hindi?" So Prabhupada used an example in a room conversation, he said, "Well, Gandhi who was the father of the country never wrote in Hindi. He wrote only in English. Nehru also never wrote anything in Hindi. He wrote in English. Dr. Radhakrishnan also never wrote anything in Hindi, he wrote in English." So Prabhupada said, "Why I could not? The leaders of India didn't write in Hindi, they wrote in English because they wanted to address the international diaspora, not just the local diaspora."



Reference: SPF Interviews