The Bharatiya Janata Party-led (BJP-led) West Bengal government has rekindled the age-old language debate in India with its announcement that all official communication will be in either Bangla or Hindi. This announcement has led many of the native speakers of Nepali in the Darjeeling and Kalimpong hills, the Terai, and the Dooars to express their uneasiness with ‘this again?’ as less than a decade ago (2017) the whole region was rocked with protest and many people lost their lives resisting the then government decision to impose Bangla as the only official language. The proposed ‘language’ policy once again raises the deeper question of how the state views its heterogeneous groups and their languages, and how people from these varied communities understand the government’s intentions. The linguistic uneasiness is part of a larger struggle over identity, belonging, and democratic in(ex)clusion. As Stephen May writes in Language Rights as Human Rights, ‘Any policy favouring a single language to the exclusion of all others can be extremely risky… because it is then a factor promoting division rather than unification.’This has also raised serious concerns among the native speakers of Santali, Rajbanshi, Kurukh, Sadri, and other indigenous communities, such as Mundari, Koda/Kora, Toto, Lodha, and others that are equally affected by the proposed language policy announced by the West Bengal government. Anthropology honours the significance of language in culture and society to the extent that language is studied as one of the four major branches – Linguistic Anthropology. The discipline of anthropology also engages with culture. We are taught that cultures are handed down from one generation to another. This seemingly implausible task is achieved through language. Humans have complex language structures. A child’s first language is called the mother tongue. Languages transcend themselves to become part of a group’s identity, reflect its culture, and shape its worldview. It is not a surprise that many ethnicities are named after the languages they speak (Nepalese, Tamilians, Santals, Malayalis, Bengalis, English, French, Japanese, etc.). Language thus emerges as a primordial sentiment and identity for many groups. Anthropological understanding of the rise of the modern state, market, democracy and institutionalisation of education through schools tells us that we are interacting with different discourses altogether. It was the communities that educated their citizens in their respective languages. Post World War II, as colonialism in its vulgar form had ceased to exist, the new phenomenon of countries or nation-states with heterogeneous populations began to emerge. Self-rule in these heterogeneous states faced another question: which among the varied groups (also linguistically) would have access to political power? This was answered by the concept of Democracy – ‘Government of, by and for the people.’ However, time and again, some linguistic minorities have raised objections to an apparent threat posed by the hegemonic language and cultural imposition of other languages. India has witnessed various language movements since the birth of our nation as an independent country. History of language movementsFollowing the death of Shri Potti Sreeramulu after 58 days of fasting to demand a separate state for Telugu-speaking people carved out of the then Madras, the Telugu speakers erupted in mass protest voicing the same demand. This resulted in the formation of the Andhra State in 1953 by the then-Nehru government. It was otherwise so reluctant to entertain the possibility of any further language-based fragmentations. But it took the death of Potti Sreeramulu for the then government to learn and understand the importance of language and the primordial sentiment attached to it. This also led to the formation of a commission, chaired by Fazal Ali in 1953, to address similar demands, resulting in the States Reorganisation Act of 1956 and the subsequent reorganisation of states primarily on linguistic lines through the seventh amendment of the constitution in 1956.The Telugu speakers of the erstwhile Madras felt that they were being treated as secondary citizens by the Tamil speakers who occupied the political space of their current state. The same Madras State, under the leadership of chief minister C.N. Annadurai, fondly known as Anna, went on to rename the state through the legislature as Tamil Nadu (The nation of Tamils) in 1969. His speech discussing the ‘Official Language Bill, 1963’ in parliament also reminded the Congress government of the Union of India that ‘democracy did not mean majority rule.’ The Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu that have stemmed from the Dravidar Kazhagam, founded by E.V. Ramaswamy, fondly known as Periyar, have cemented their role in regional politics through anti-Hindi imposition resistance movements. The anti-Hindi imposition resistance started in 1937 under the leadership of Periyar. However, recent parliamentary debate between Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who evoked Periyar, without naming him, and said that he dismissed Tamil as a ‘barbaric’ language, and actor-turned-MP Kamal Hassan’s response criticising Sitharaman went viral in Tamil political discourse, and needs to be seen through the political prism of Periyar. Periyar vehemently opposed any imposition, any discrimination or exploitation, and his famous quote on oppression sums up what Periyar’s politics stands for. It is evident that Periyar opposed the imposition of Hindi or Brahminic hegemony in the socio-political sphere, but the same Periyar will not demean himself by romanticising the greatness of Tamil as a language either. He was a thinker and philosopher who could not be bracketed within these narrow definitions and understandings. He was against oppression of all forms, and he supported the oppressed. Bangla, as a language, has a long history of being intertwined with popular movements across many parts of eastern and north-eastern India. In 1960, the Bongal Kheda (Drive out Bengalis) movement by Assamese speakers against the perceived dominance of Bengali speakers in local jobs and livelihoods was strongly resisted by the ‘Bengali language movement’ in 1961. The Bengali speakers, mainly of southern Assam, fought against the imposition of Assamese as the official language.The Bengali intelligentsia also undermined the importance of the Odia language and attempted to make Bangla the official language in areas dominated by native Odia speakers. This gave rise to a strong language movement in Odisha in the 19th century, resisting the attempts of Bengali imposition. We are aware that the partition of Pakistan from India was for religious reasons. The primordial sentiment of religion couldn’t withstand the test when the language (another primordial sentiment) of the Bengali speakers of East Pakistan was threatened. On February 21, 1952, martyrdom of Bengali-speaking students protesting the imposition of Urdu as the official language and medium of instruction by Pakistan is always considered and remembered as a historic event in the formation of Bangladesh as a separate country in 1971. Furthermore, to honour the sacrifice of the martyrs of this language movement in East Pakistan by Bengali speakers, UNESCO recognised 21st February as ‘International Mother Language Day.’ Why does Tamil Nadu resist Hindi imposition and doesn’t seem to make Telugu speakers safe enough in the erstwhile Madras State? Why did coastal Andhra Pradesh Telugu speakers mock and vilify the Telugu spoken by people in Telangana (mostly through popular culture and political discourse), which became one of the major points of discussion and unifying factor of Telangana people during the separate Telangana movement? Why did Bengali speakers in East Pakistan fight against Urdu imposition, but went on to suppress Odia speakers in the erstwhile Bengal presidency? Why do we keep witnessing language conflicts between different language groups in Mumbai and Karnataka? Why do the languages (Hindi and Sanskrit) promoted by the Union government constantly undermine the other beautiful languages (Maithili, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Angika, Bajjika in Bihar and Awadhi, Braj Bhasha, Bundeli, Kannauji and Khariboli in Uttar Pradesh) to the brink of extinction? Why does the recent West Bengal government seem to be ignoring other native-language speakers in the state? The answer seems to lie in the concept of ‘hypocrisy.’Nothing short of cultural genocide Articles 29 and 30 of the Indian constitution guarantee its citizens the right to culture and language. Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples constantly reaffirm the right to practice one’s culture. Language is one of the fundamental markers of culture that evokes primordial sentiment. Language provides identity to a person. Systematic destruction of a language by proclaiming the ‘official language’ for communications and medium of instruction in the government-run schools is one of the many ways a minority language and its speakers are subjected to discrimination. Languages are not merely a medium of communication; they hold secrets of origin stories, the classification and categorisation of the world around them, ethno-sociological terms deeply entwined with culture and environment, perceptions of the supernatural, beautiful words describing animals, plants, rivers, and the very nature. No language should be considered superior and should merit the state’s patronage over the other. No language speaker should be put in a position, experientially, where their language is seen as less, and they are considered and treated as inferior because of it and refuse to encourage their children to learn their mother tongue. Creating an ecosystem where people stop speaking a language should be considered an erasure of the complete culture, denying the identity of a person or group, and a deliberate attempt to erase part of thousands of years of cultural history and humanity in total. This is nothing short of cultural genocide. When the government in a democratic set-up seems merely to voice, behave and normalise the rule of majoritarianism, the democracy dies a slow but sure death. Democracy is not majoritarianism. Every group has to be respected. Every language should be appreciated. People in the minority should be assured that they are seen and understood, and not further excluded or marginalised. Thus, any attack on language should be considered an attack on the very political concept of democracy. Riya Gurung is a Research Scholar at the Department of Anthropology, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. Sipoy Sarveswar teaches anthropology at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan.