Correct Answer - Option 2 : According to Official Language Act, English is the permanent “associate official language” of India
English as "associate official language": Post-independence, the adoption of an official language for the Indian Republic was a highly debated issue during the framing of the Indian Constitution which came into effect on 26 January 1950. In the Constituent Assembly, Hindi was voted as the official language by a single vote. However, it added that English would continue to be used as an associate official language for 15 years. Also:
- Efforts by the Indian Government to make Hindi the sole official language after 1965 were not acceptable to many non-Hindi Indian states, who wanted the continued use of English.
- The Constitution did not declare Hindi as the national language and rather accorded Hindi the status of official language along with English (Article 343).
-
Official Languages Act, 1963 was passed and now Hindi is one of the 22 scheduled languages contained in the eighth schedule of the constitution.
- In India, English plays a basic role. The British Colonial administration employed it and encouraged its use as it wanted to an elite, "Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and intellect" (T.B.Macaulay).
- In a country in which sixteen national languages (Assamese, Bengali, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu) and 1,652 dialects coexist, Hindi, spoken by one-third of the population, is the official language and English is defined as the "associate official language"
- The Education Commission (1964-1966) suggested a new language policy for school education and recommended another version of three language formula. The recommended three-language formula includes
- mother tongue or regional language
- official language of the union (i.e., Hindi) or associated official language (i.e., English) as long as it had that status
- any modern Indian or foreign language not covered in (1) or (2).
Hence, we conclude that English is accorded the status of associate official language at the national level in India.
