Law and Linguistic Justice

NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, NAGPUR

English 1.5

Submitted By
Name-Aanand Singh
UID-UG19-02

Submitted to
Asst. Prof.
Sopan Shinde
1.Introduction
As globalisation and migration produce societies of increasing linguistic diversity, the issue
of how to ensure justice between speakers of different languages becomes a pressing social
concern. Matters of ‘linguistic justice’ are therefore drawing increasing scholarly attention
across a range of disciplines.

This work is mainly focused on linguistic justice in India.

With a populace of more than one billion speaking in thousand varied languages, India surely
is one of the biggest multilingual countries on the planet. With their sources in Indo-Aryan,
Dravidian, Austro-Asian and Tibeto-Burman language families, the plenty of dialects spoken
here speak to consummately India's huge and differing history. Indian pioneers, while making
the Constitution arranged it in this way that Hindi, with the Devanagari script, would be the
most conspicuous language and would advance territorial correspondence and bring together
the various societies of India. Today, be that as it may, English and Hindi both offer a similar
status as official languages.
The write up is a (a)brief analysis of the of India’s language policy and (b)why and how to
ensure linguistic justice in a diverse cultured country India.

1.1 Law and Language

The utilization of language is vital to any legitimate framework, not just similarly that it is
urgent to governmental issues all in all, yet in addition in two exceptional regards.
Administrators typically use language to make law, and law must accommodate the
legitimate goals of disagreements about the impacts of that utilization of language. Political
logicians are not commonly engrossed with inquiries in the way of thinking of language. In
any case, lawful savants are political rationalists with a specialization that gives language
(and theory of language) an extraordinary significance.

1.2 What is linguistic Justice?

As we know this world is very diverse in nature. So many different languages are recognised
and been widely spoken. But all the languages doesn’t get the same treatment or priveleges
like some of the lingua francas like English. So many languages are considered endangered
by UNESCO. Linguistic justice is about giving all the languages same rights and priveleges
and protect the diverse culture and languages of this world. Nowadays centres for linguistic
justice are getting established for the awareness among the people and to protect the
diversity.
s 2. Analysing Language Policy Of India
When we talk about the language policy of India, the main thing to be referenced is the
contrast between the national language and the official language of a nation. While national
language alludes to the language that is most generally utilized in social, political and in
social domains, the official language alludes to the language that is utilized for the majority
of the administration's tasks. The official language is businesslike, wherein the national
language is only symbolic.

Hindi, as today is used, is thought of as a national language because of its being the only
language being used that isn't state or locale specific. Be that as it may, as indicated by the
Constitution of India, Hindi is just the official language of India.

Aside from these two mostly "official" languages, India's statistics records hold that there are
112 languages that are common everywhere throughout the nation. However, just 22 of them
are a part of the Eighth Schedule, which implies that only twenty-four out of a sum of a
hundred and fourteen languages are perceived as national languages. Despite the fact that
these 22 languages originate from all the distinctive language families, there are as yet
various languages like Bhili which are spoken by the most number of individuals in India
barring Hindi which ought to be included in the list. The main likely explanation behind
Bhili, among other such dialects, to be avoided is political intervention.
 3.Linguistic Justice-India
The historical backdrop of language rights in India can be followed back to the time of the
Emperor Ashoka (268 - 226 BC). He was the primary ruler to perceive the language
privileges of the individuals. He requested that his decrees and headings identifying with
administration and equitable living be imparted to the individuals in their language, and not
in his language as it were. Consequently, today we see his engravings in the dialects of the
individuals in various pieces of the nation. That was the point at which the 'law' was regularly
not composed, however was primarily traditional and drilled by the individuals as given
precepts of life for the network and people to pursue. Albeit official requests and choices
were recorded (we see this incident in certain engravings recovered all through the
subcontinent), composed law or codification of laws as an assemblage of writing that was
expected to be clung to and deciphered in legal procedures is right around an advancement,
disregarding the across the board learning of Manu's Dharma Shastra, and Islamic Shari'at.
This was a commitment of the British principle, and it had its very own effect. In the writing,
the term language right is dealt with synonymously with phonetic rights and etymological
human rights. A few researchers consider these as individual rights and some others think
about them as aggregate rights. Various researchers and various nations treat them in an
unexpected way. There are plain essential rights, regularly figured unequivocally, and
auxiliary rights that are clandestine in nature on the grounds that these optional rights are the
results of some other right.1

3.1Importance Of Linguistic Justice/Linguistic Rights

Linguistic rights protect the individual and collective right to choose one’s language or
languages for communication both within the private and the public spheres. They include the
right to speak one’s own language in legal, administrative and judicial acts, the right to
receive education in one’s own language, and the right for media to be broadcast in one’s
own language. For minority groups the opportunity to use one’s own language can be of
crucial importance, since it protects individual and collective identity and culture as well as
participation in public life.
Although Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ensures that
linguistic minorities can use their own languages in their community, problems often exist at
national level. Whilst states are permitted to adopt a national language, and may adopt more
than one, they cannot discriminate against minority languages that are not officially
recognised. States have often restricted official use of minority languages due to the idea that
it is ‘necessary’ to use only specified languages. This can create a distinction between groups
that do have their languages recognised – who are often ‘majority’ groups – and those that do
not. This is exactly what anti-discrimination measures aim to prevent. Yet it has taken a long
while for restrictions on language to be viewed as discrimination, and the protection afforded
to minority groups is still inadequate.2

1
Mallikarjun B, Language rights and education in India
2
https://minorityrights.org/law-and-legal-cases/linguistic-rights/
Restrictions on language rights can also impede minority groups indirectly. Rules may
prevent those who do not speak the national language from running for political posts, thus
contradicting international obligations guaranteeing free elections. They may also result in
court proceedings being grossly unfair, as they can be conducted in a language which certain
people are not familiar with. During consultations with the state, minority groups may also
suffer as the government may insist that discussions are carried out in the national language,
often resulting in lack of dialogue and understanding for the minority. So it is very important
to recognise all languages and to ensure its speakers that their rights are not being violated
because they are linguistic minor.

3.2Instruments of Linguistic justice

The "Lingua franca", "Character Principle", "Territoriality Principle" and "Subsidiarity
Principle" could be said as instruments of phonetic equity. The character and territoriality
guideline are instruments of rights devolution at the size of people and domain separately.
That is, the character guideline shields a person's etymological rights and the territoriality
standard tends to particular regional semantic rights relating to official language status,
mechanism of guidance or learning of regional language as a mandatory subject. While,
subsidiarity guideline delivers the privilege to utilize nearby language just barring worldwide
language in everything that should be possible through neighbourhood language yet permits
the utilization of worldwide most widely used language just in the circles where
correspondence is between multilingual elements (gatherings or people).3

3.3How To Ensure Lingustic Justice?

In the country like India it is almost impossible to provide education in the regional
languages and also it will be very inconvenient to communicate to the people of different
states if they communicate in their native languages. So their is a concept of “lingua franca”
identified as one of the important instruments of linguistic justice by Phillipe Van Parijs in
his book, Linguistic Justice.
In North India, Hindi and English is a common language used by the people and where as in
South India English is common for communication.
Van Parijs advocated the need of a lingua franca for the linguistic justice but the supremacy
of the lingua franca like Hindi and English in India leads to the extinction of many regional
languages.
The awareness among the people about their own native languages and proper centres for
linguistic justice will help in ensuring all languages their rights.

3
https://roundtableindia.co.in/~roundta3/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9302:union-of-
india-s-lingua-franca-debate-an-introduction-to-linguistic-justice-regime&catid=119&Itemid=132%20%20%20
4. Conclusion
Globalization has made worldwide correspondence a need issue in sociolinguistic discussion.
English is progressively merging its matchless quality position as most widely used language,
however the outcomes of this procedure are questionable for other significant languages.
In India the language policy is like such, which has recognised only 22 languages from more
than recognised one hundred fifty languages. These are the reasons we see in the surveys
conducted by the organisations like UNESCO, every year some of the regional languages
come into the category of endangered languages, which are tangsa,tarao,kui,etc.
The establishment of the centres for the linguistic justice for the awareness among people
about languages are a significant work in this field.
Organisations like UNESCO are also doing great work to ensure linguistic justice.