Justice G.R. Swaminathan of the Madras High Court said recently that B.R. Ambedkar wanted to make Sanskrit the official language of the Indian Union. He is not the first person to say so. Some time ago, the former Chief Justice of India, Sharad Arvind Bobde, had expressed the same view. Predictably, the ecosystem of the current ruling establishment has latched on to these statements to further its appropriation of B.R. Ambedkar.
It is true that on September 10, 1949, B.R. Ambedkar submitted an amendment in the Constituent Assembly that proposed Sanskrit as ‘the official language on the Union’. There were 16 signatories who included, apart from B.R. Ambedkar himself, T.T. Krishnamachari, Dr. P. Subbarayan, G. Durgabai, and Dakshayani Velayudhan. All signatories were from non-Hindi speaking provinces.
Many newspapers of September 11, 1949 published news of this amendment. They also reported B.R. Ambedkar testily saying, “What is wrong with Sanskrit”, when questioned by the PTI the previous evening about his initiative. This remark suggests something to the amendment other than what Justices Bobde and Swaminathan are implying.
