A Vision Of Hindistan

Given that our political life has become a masterclass in Machiavellianism, it is difficult to know what to make of Amit Shah’s explosively casual suggestion about Hindi being, or becoming, the national language.

- Alok Rai

It could, after all, be an innocent distraction, an attempt to manipulate the news cycle and divert attention from the bad news that keeps piling up. A few violent anti-Hindi demonstrations in Tamil Nadu and points south, and the distress of the Valley will fade from public memory, lapse into, what they are pleased to call, “normalcy”—ubiquitous rolls of concertina wire and deserted streets patrolled by AFSPA-protected soldiers with guns. The economic crisis, again, is unlikely to abate anytime soon—mere pedestrian maths will not save us, but railways and commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal’s “quantum economics” might— with a little help from Hindi.