The debate on language is always in news these-days. Each linguistic group has its own reason for claiming superiority.However, history tells us that no civilization is ever remembered merely for its language. Civilizations are remembered for their ‘collective intellect’.Collective intellect refers to the ability to foster and nurture ideas in matters of science, art ,literature or individual progress.A perfect example of this is India’s own golden age , a period under Gupta dynasty, which saw unprecedented progress in the field of arts , science and literature.Interestingly, during this period , Sanskrit was the official language while Prakrit continued to be popular language among folks.Also, this era has no record of conflict over language but is well known for works of Pingala,Patanjali, Aryabhatta etc.

Language in India has become a political construct and a way to mobilize numbers.Regional parties use regional pride to mobilize numbers against national parties whereas national parties use official language to mobilize numbers against regional parties.This is nothing but a side-effect of democracy where numbers are what you need to come to power and language provides a convenient way to mobilize the numbers.But unfortunately, young Indians are falling prey to such type of superficial mobilization by internalizing language as their identity. India has more than twenty popular regional dialects and each has its own rich traditions and literature that it is never possible in India for one language to overwhelm other languages.However, many Indians have yet not experienced cultural diversity of India and thus, get opinionated to get stuck to language which they love.

It is at this time that India must set its own benchmark of civilizational greatness by be-litting the role of language and encouraging the role of intellect in our society.Gupta period was marked by such great advancements because of few important administrative reasons.One of them was that there was immense administrative support for scholars and their ideas beyond the fact that the ideas were politically acceptable or not.For example, Aryabhatta explained that earth rotates on its own axis rejecting the popular belief that sun revolves around earth.He was not cornered instead he was respected for his work and his works were preserved.Similarly, Nalanda university was a place where Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and even early materialist schools of philosophy like Charvakas used to debate freely.These illustrations shows that intellect is away from language but more important in determining fate of civilizations.The respect for intellect is way to greatness and linguistic pride is no replacement for it.

India which aims to become ‘Sone ki Chidiya‘ should learn from its golden age and strive for Collective Intellect and drop the idea of herding around languages.The greatness of India will be evaluated based on advancement in science and technology, promoting gender equality and creating safe environment for its citizens.Future of India lies on its resolve to built collective intellect embedded in our history and our constitution. Therefore, it is a call and a wish that the popular narrative in India should reject linguistic jingoism and move to internalize to ‘collective intellect’ to make India a Golden Bird again.