The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently revealed the designs of the new 500 and 2,000 notes. They confirm what many feared - that this design overhaul will be used to push certain iconographies that suit the incumbent BJP government. The difference between the old design and the new seem to be centered on three things - Hindi, Delhi and Modi.
The new currency notes introduce numerals in the Devanagri script, the present script of Hindi. This was not the case in earlier version of the currency notes. Is it the case that the government thinks that only Hindi people should be able to read the numerals in a script they are familiar with while the rest of us, the non-Hindi majority, would not need to read numerals in our languages? Was there any complaint from any quarter than the stand-alone Arabic (or Hindu-Arabic as it is sometimes called) numerals in English script were not being able to do the job? Why was there no Hindi-Devanagri numeral before this? Perhaps because it is actually unconstitutional and in contravention of a Presidential order? Consider that Article 343 of the Constitution of the Indian Union states in no uncertain terms that, “[t]he form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals”. The only modification to this comes in the form of the 1960 Presidential order, which allows for “the use of Devanagari numerals, in addition to the international numerals, in the Hindi publications of the Central Ministries depending upon the public intended to be addressed and the subject-matter of the publication. For scientific, technical and statistical publications… the international numerals should be adopted uniformly in all publications.” The present Government of India and the Reserve Bank of India should explain how all-India currency bank-notes fall within the category of “Hindi publications of the Central Ministries” and how the choice of Devanagari satisfies the clause of “depending upon the public intended to be addressed.” Do the Government of India and RBI exist to serve only Hindi speakers?
10-rupee currency note from 1910, British India
They might believe so. But non-Hindi linguistic groups are bound to Hindi people - and to each other - only by the compact of the Constitution and not by the Hindi imperialist whims or ideologies of the Union government and its agencies. Policies that make a majority of the population feel like second-class citizens in their own homeland have typically had very bitter outcomes. The example of Pakistan’s imposition of Urdu and the marginalisation of Bangla people is close at hand. If the government actually cared about the numerical readability of the numbers, they could have opted for the Euro model. Thus, a proportion of the currency notes could have had numerals in Devanagari, a proportion could have had Bangla, a proportion could have had Tamil and so on, based on the population proportion of citizens using those languages. This is the model of the Eurozone, where there is a single currency, but there are specific variants to accommodate the diverse nations which are stakeholders. But doing that - or even the present usage of Devanagari - would need a constitutional amendment. The BJP, in its efforts to impose Hindi, is reopening the wounds of 1965 struggles against the imposition of Hindi, which have not been forgotten by non-Hindi peoples. In this regard, the British had done a much better job, where numerals all many South Asian languages were given equal footing in font size, vis-à-vis English. Thus English, Hindi, Urdu, Bangla, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, etc all had same font size numerals on bank notes as evidenced in the 10 Rupee currency note of 1910.
The one-rupee note from 1917 suggests that the British colonial administration made sure to give equal space to various linguistic groups of India
The Union government is forcing small linguistic groups to adopt Devanagari as their official script - and withholding recognition if they don't
The new notes also bear the new Indian Currency sign. That sign, derived from the “R” letter in Devanagari, was not chosen with the consent of the people. In my language Bangla and also in Assamese, the word for the currency unit is ‘Taka’ or ‘Toka’. That starts with a ‘T’. How can then the ‘R’ sound be a general stand-in for all the others? And how did this get into the new currency note? How would the ‘R’ people have felt if a symbol for the ‘T’ sound were used instead? How is the sound of the currency name for Hindi people more important than the sound for Bengali or Assamese people? One might argue that it is called ‘Rupees’ in English and that has an ‘R’ of course. But that too is without the consent of non-Hindi people and is a term handed down by the British. In Bengal, almost everyone grows up calling their currency ‘Taka’, the same as what they call it in Bangladesh. Such words are not categories of nationalism but words of everyday use. By downplaying them, a whole people are classified as second-class. While English is a foreign language for all, Hindi is also a foreign language for all non-Hindi people. The historic judgement of the Gujarat High Court in this regard must be remembered, which stated that Hindi was a “foreign language” vis-à-vis the state of Gujarat. While Hindi and English are both foreign to all non-Hindi people, Hindi is foreign only to non-Hindi people but to Hindi people, it is their own. In a diverse, federal Union of States, like the Indian Union, a legendary Tamil Nadu leader and Chief Minister had laid down a principle that every citizen must share advantages and disadvantages equally. The usage of Hindi/Devanagari violates this fundamental principle of peaceful coexistence and cooperation as it is not equidistant from all stakeholders and gives undue advantage to those for whom this is the mother-tongue and standard script. English provides that equidistance. The Indian Union itself is the product of coordination and cross-linking of disparate ethno-linguistic nationalities mediated by Anglicised elites of their respective groups. Most trans-linguistic discussions on political issues in the Indian Union happen in English.
A depiction of the Red Fort on the new bank-notes could evoke memories of autocratic rule from Delhi by various imperial dynasties on non-Hindi-speaking peoples
The example of Pakistan's imposition of Urdu and the marginalisation of Bangla people is close at hand
Thirdly, the actual proportion of area or real-estate on the currency note that is given to Devanagari vis-à-vis other language scripts has gone up. This is a very serious affair. The relative space and size of Devanagari-Hindi things vis-a-vis our non-Hindi mother tongues reflects exactly what New Delhi thinks of the rest of us vis-a-vis Hindi. And there is a temporal pattern to it that has gone from equality to inequality. About 100 years ago, when the British ruled South Asia from their capital in New Delhi, they introduced the One Rupee currency note in 1917.
It is quite unfortunate that the British colonizers treated our languages on a more equal footing than those they transferred power to - this is true for both the post-colonial fragments that came to be known as India and Pakistan. If after 1947, the absence of a British “referee” becomes a reason for Hindi to be imposed by brute force from the Union government majority, nothing can be a greater betrayal of the anti-colonial ideals of the freedom struggle of which resistance to forcibly imposed culture was an important component. This marginalisation of non-Hindi languages has continued unabashed. The equal proportion of space given to all South Asian languages in the 1917 bank note as well as the 1940 bank note was replaced by a currency series that continued for the longest time after the 1947 transfer of power, privileging Hindi over everything else.
New currency notes issued by the Reserve Bank of India
1947, sadly, marks the watershed year for the loss of status for non-Hindi languages. In all the subsequent currency notes of the RBI, the proportion of space given to non-Hindi languages has shrunk progressively. This is not by accident and is the conscious policy of Hindi imposition that is evident in all actions of the Union government and its agencies since 1947. The pace of that has visibly quickened with a militant edge under the present BJP regime in New Delhi. Thus, in RBI-issued currency notes, Hindi-Devanagari words are big and are supposed to carry information. Non-Hindi language scripts are progressively smaller and are basically decoration with no practical use except for non-Hindi citizens to console themselves that ‘diversity’ is alive, though certainly not kicking. The Indian Union might want to take lessons from Singapore where the Chinese ethnicity’s (at 75% of the population) Chinese characters and less than 10% Tamil ethnicity’s (at less than 10% of the population) Tamil characters find equal font size and space on the Singapore Dollar. Hindi speakers in the Indian Union form a minority of the Indian Union population. People with Hindi as their mother tongue consist of about 25% of the Indian population - that number, too, is arrived at after counting various linguistically non-Hindi languages as Hindi, because New Delhi wishes so according to its political agenda.
Fourthly, the new currency notes do not have all the scripts of all the languages recognised in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. Santhali is an example of an Eighth Schedule language with its own Olchiki script that remains unrepresented in the currency note. Sanskrit with less than 20,000 self-reported speakers is represented while Santhali with nearly 7 million speakers is not. The same goes for Meiteilon (Manipuri), which is an Eighth Schedule language with its own script. The new currency note was an opportunity to include Santhali and Meiteilon but clearly Hindi and its expansion is the only driving force in the linguistic changes on bank notes.
It would seem that the Indian Union government considers languages to be a security issue! This could be a reason why language groups and their scripts have to have their official stamp of recognition and approval from the Union Home Ministry. This apparently innocuous practice shows how the Union Home Ministry views the linguistic diversity of the Indian peoples as a security issue where its diktat is law. Deep down, it views diversity as a threat to the “idea of India”, in spite of its public posturing of “unity in diversity”. As we speak, the Union government is forcing small linguistic groups to adopt Devanagari as their official script - and withholding recognition if they don’t agree. Thus, we find the absurd situation where speakers of Bodo, whose territorial homelands are not connected to any Hindi region, have been forced to adopt Devanagari. Thus, Hindi-inclined bureaucrats in the Union government are killing the autonomous choice of a linguistic group in deciding their own future. And then the government has the gall to celebrate International Mother Language Day!
The old currency notes tried to avoid location-based political symbolism except for the Parliament House in the denomination of 50 - that, arguably, is for all. However, the Red Fort of Delhi in the new 500 denomination touches a raw nerve for many. The Red Fort was the political headquarters of the Mughal Empire for a long time. The Indian Union came into existence in 1947. It is not a successor state to the Mughal Empire. The Red Fort is a sign of pre-British Delhi-based imperialism, signifying the power of imperial invaders who attacked the countries of Bengalis, Marathis, Axomiya, Odiyas and many others. Our ancestors resisted such invasions but Delhi won by brute power. Imperial Delhi ruled by posting mostly Hindi/Urdu speaking military people in our homelands. Delusions of civilisational continuity premised on imperial occupation do not help cooperation, slogans of ‘cooperative federalism’ notwithstanding. Of what does the Government of the Indian Union want to remind the people who were conquered and defeated by the forces headquartered in the Red Fort by putting this picture on the bank notes?
Arguably, the use of the “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan” (Clean India Expedition) logo accompanied by its Hindi slogan in Devanagari script crosses all limits of propriety. Never before has a government put one of its own schemes on something as non-partisan and common as a currency note. This mischief would basically result in an advertisement of the present government for all times to come, until these currency notes are withdrawn. This is certainly not illegal - but then a lot of ill-advised, shameless things are not illegal! It sets a very unhealthy precedent. Now, nothing stops any later day Union government from using currency notes as billboards to advertise their pet schemes. The abuse started earlier during the Congress-led administration with the use of the face of MK Gandhi, who was associated with a particular party that is still in business and was opposed by other parties who are also still in business.
Narendra Modi announced the new currency notes after the 500 and 1,000 demonetisation announcement. His address was in Hindi, without any subtitles and then in English, with Hindi subtitles. So, the Union government does care whether Hindi speakers comprehend the English speech but doesn’t care whether the majority of the citizens, i.e. non-Hindi-English speakers, understand anything at all. This imperial attitude, that treats a majority of the citizens as second-class, was furthered by all PSU (that is New Delhi-controlled) banks that mostly did not care to print any information for the public in their mother tongues. Last heard, the new currency notes do not match the structural specifications of the ATM machines all over. Since the top-down imposition of currency notes by New Delhi is sacred, all the ATM machines have to be structurally changed to match and fit what New Delhi has produced. New Delhi won’t change what it produces to match what already exists all over the Union. And that is a good analogy for how New Delhi frames its policies in all matters regarding non-Hindi people, currency notes included!
Garga Chatterjee is a Kolkata-based commentator on South Asian politics and culture. He received his PhD from Harvard and is a member of faculty at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He blogs at hajarduari.wordpress.com
