MGNREGA renaming sparks Opposition charge of Hindi imposition

The Union Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is learnt to have approved a Bill to rename the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) as Pujya Bapu Rashtriya Gramin Rozgar Yojana.

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There was no official announcement in this regard by Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw at the cabinet briefing, on Friday (December 12). Sources in the government, however, said the Bill to rename the UPA-era flagship scheme and increase the number of days of promised employment under the existing MGNREGA is likely to be tabled in Parliament before the winter session concludes on December 19.

TN, Kerala and Bengal see a plot

At the outset, the change of name is merely to replace the English title of the Act with a Hindi one while simultaneously ramping up the minimum days of employment guaranteed under the scheme, possibly to 125 days against the current limit of 100 days. The Opposition parties, particularly those from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Bengal, however, see the move as yet another attempt by the Modi regime to impose Hindi and widen linguistic faultlines.

Also Read: TMC claims Centre owes Bengal Rs 52,000 crore under MGNREGA

Several Opposition MPs The Federal spoke to said their parties would articulate their respective stand on the Centre’s decision “once the Bill is brought to Parliament” or “after an official announcement is made” in this regard but agreed that the move “cannot be dismissed as some harmless name-changing exercise”.

“For the last 10 years, they (the government) were busy changing names of cities and roads under the guise of erasing Islamic influences and now they want to rename laws and schemes from English to Hindi because the Prime Minister has had a sudden brainwave that British influences need to be removed too. The common thread that runs through this entire mindless exercise is of creating divides; one was done to polarise on religious lines and humiliate Muslims and this new phase is about widening linguistic divides by imposing Hindi titles on people who are not conversant in the language and see English as an easier ‘bridge language’… the people in Tamil Nadu, in Bengal, in Kerala and so on,” a senior Opposition MP from a southern state told The Federal.

Modi's speech a hint?

The BJP, sources say, is expected to pass off the renaming exercise as a “step in the direction of fulfilling the Prime Minister’s pledge to rid India of the ‘Macaulay mindset’ by 2035”, the year that would mark two centuries of Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education, which substantially defined the English Education Act, 1835, the British imposed on India in a bid to replace Indian vernaculars with English as the language of instruction, and eventually administration.

Last month, delivering the Ramnath Goenka Lecture, Modi had said, “I want to appeal to the entire country: over the next decade, we must resolve to free ourselves from the mindset of slavery that Macaulay imposed on India.”

The Prime Minister had likened the education reforms Macaulay scripted for India in 1835 with a “major campaign to uproot India from its own roots”, which in his Modi’s view, “broke our self-confidence and filled us with a sense of inferiority”.

Also Read: What MGNREGA and PM-KISAN need: Inclusivity, more funds, less red tape

“Macaulay threw our entire way of life into the dustbin in one stroke. That was when the belief took root that Indians must adopt foreign ways to achieve anything. This mindset only strengthened after Independence.”

A section of Congress leaders believe the “language reset” Modi plans to make is also “another attempt at painting Nehru and the Congress leadership that led India post-independence as ‘slaves of a British mentality’ and not Indian patriots who carried on British-era practices like the use of English as the medium of instruction in schools as well as the language of administration and the judiciary.”

'Another cheap move by Modi'

A Rajya Sabha MP of the Congress told The Federal, “It is another one of his (Modi’s) cheap shots; his petty politics… we know he will blame Nehru again for carrying on with English after Independence and try to project himself as a true patriot who is bringing Hindi back and he obviously doesn’t care that for a large part of India; Hindi is neither a mother tongue nor a primary bridge language. Tamil Nadu had a vibrant and at times militant campaign against Hindi imposition, in BJP-ruled Maharashtra people are beaten up for speaking Hindi instead of Marathi; from Bengal to the entire North East, Hindi is not a primary language; even in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, Gujarati and not Hindi is the mother tongue.''

A DMK MP from Tamil Nadu pointed out that the “trailer” of this “deliberatively divisive project” to use Hindi titles for central legislation had come when Parliament passed the rebooted versions of the Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act as well as the women’s reservation law in 2023.

The reservation law’s title, Naari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, had drawn flak from many Opposition MPs from non-Hindi speaking states; particularly from Tamil Nadu and Bengal, who had objected to the Centre deviating from the constitutional mandate of using English for the common title of laws. The BJP had, even back then, mocked those taking issue with the Hindi title by playing the linguistic pride card. Modi himself had asserted on multiple occasions that the Hindi title of the law equally celebrated and venerated ‘women power’ (naari shakti).

The Hindi titles for the three criminal laws – the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (formerly the IPC), the Bharatiya Nagarik Surakhsha Sanhita (formerly the CrPC) and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (formerly the Evidence Act) – had triggered a similar opprobrium. A Lok Sabha MP from the Trinamool Congress slammed the Centre’s bid to rename the MGNREGA as “another diversion, rooted in petty politics, that will serve no other purpose than to widen linguistic faultlines while doing nothing to address the many flaws in the implementation of the NREGA itself.”

Dues not cleared yet, says TMC

The Trinamool has been engaged in a pitched battle with the Centre for months over “unpaid dues” owed to Bengal from the central coffers towards payment of MGNREGA wages in the state.

“For the last three years, the Centre has not been releasing funds owed to Bengal for NREGA. The amount owed to us is now over Rs 50,000 crore. Our leader, Mamata Banerjee, and our party have been writing to the Centre to release funds almost every month; we have been protesting about it in Parliament for several sessions and on the streets, but the Centre has refused to release the funds. The situation of many other Opposition-ruled states is the same and even the minimum 100 days of employment is not being given because the Centre is not paying. Now they are doing this new drama to change the name. If you really respect Gandhi, you don’t need to change the scheme’s name or replace Mahatma Gandhi with Pujya Bapu; you need to pay the states what is rightfully owed to them, so please just stop this drama,” the Trinamool MP said.