M N RAVICHANDRAN Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS writ petition has been preferred as a public cause litigation. The petitioner in his affidavit states that he is a citizen of India by birth. He knows only English and Tamil and no other language. He is an Advocate by profession practising in the High Court of Madras. As a responsible citizen of the country and to discharge his fundamental duty enshrined in Art.51-A of the Constitution, he is filing this writ petition for a declaration that the Official Languages Act of 1963 is unconstitutional to the extent it authorises the use of regional Hindi as found in Schedule VII as one of the Official languages by its vague definition of Hindi under Sec.3 instead authorising the Hindi of AH India character as per the requirement of Art.351 of the Constitution for the purpose of official use of the right type of Hindi as mentioned in Art.343 (1) of the Constitution. The Constitution of India has given a special directive under Art.351 as to how' to develop, promote and spread Hindi so as to serve as a common medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India. In spite of this special directive, Hindi language had not been developed by assimilation of different languages nor was it developed by drawing words from other languages. According to the petitioner, today's Hindi used by the Union of India is called 'Kariboli' Hindi. It is this dialect which was arbitrarily chosen by the Union of Hindi among other forms of dialects that are written in Devanagiri script.

(2.) IT is this kind of regional Hindi's development and progress that was made. the subjeet of scrutiny by the Official Language Commiseion that was appointed on 7.6.l955. IT' is a pity that nor even a work was mentioned in that terms of reference to the Commission to find out to what extant on degree, the regional character of Hindi had taken place before ever it was found suitable for its use at, All India level as per the guidelines laid down in Art.351 of the Constitution.

(3.) THE petitioner in his affidavit would aver that the enforcement of the Official Languages Act would be a real threat to National unity. After averring so, he traces the history of socio-political condition in the context of the Indian Constitution. Ultimately in Art.343 (1) it came to be laid down that the official language of Union shall be Hindi in Devanagiri script.THE word 'shall' thereon, on a proper interpretation, would mean that it is used in a directory sense.THE framers of the Constitution had made a provision under Art.343 (3) in tune with its main policy of mono-linguism for official language to provide for a law to be made for the continuous use of English notwithstanding anything contained in Art.343 only to meet a situation if Hindi is not fully developed as envisaged in Art.351. This only shows that they had their own serious doubt whether an All India Hindi could be evolved within 15 years period. In so far as even after the 15 year period the continuous use of English was contemplated, the framers of the Constitution empowered the Parliament to make laws to continue the use of English alone to serve the people of India for ever. If the intention was to adopt official mono-linguistic policy, the enactment of Official Languages Act of 1963 introducing bilinguism of Hindi along with English will be unconstitutional. It is on these averments, challenge to the Official Languages Act is made and the grounds of attack against the Act as unconstitutional INTER ALIA, are as follows: