LINGUISTIC UNITY

IN THE FREEDOM
STRUGGLE OF
INDIA
[With reference to the chapter The Last Lesson]

By : Aashka Rawal
Class : XII-A
Roll No. : 1
Guided By : Mr. Biswanath
Panda
 THE LAST LESSON
THE LAST LESSON
The ‘Last Lesson’ by Alphonse Daudet is mainly about the longing
to learn the mother tongue and love for it. It has a sense of
patriotism. Alphonse Daudet’s “The Last Lesson” is set in Alsace, a
territory that Germany annexed from France during the Franco-Prussian
War. That war, also known as the Franco-German War or the War of 1870,
was fought between the Second French Empire and the North German
Confederation.
 THE LAST LESSON
The narrator of the story, Franz is a young school boy in the French region of
Alsace-Lorraine in the nineteenth century. Franz is a dawdler when it comes to
schoolwork, preferring to spend time in the woods or by the local river over going
to class. He doesn’t like learning his French grammar lessons and he is terrified
that his negligence will be found out by his teacher , the stern M.Hamel . M.Hamel
is portrayed as a typical schoolmaster. He wielded his dreadful ruler under his arm.
Even outside on the street, everyone could hear the knocking of the ‘mighty ruler’
on the table. Franz recalls M. Hamel’s “crankiness” but after receiving directives
from Berlin, this stern-hearted teacher evolved into a peaceful human being.  
 M.Hamel’s Startling Announcement
THE LAST LESSON
Apart from his frightening demeanor, M. Hamel also has a gentler side which was revealed on the day
when he announces to those gathered in his classroom that Prussian authorities have banned the
teaching of French in the schools of Alsace-Lorraine. On this day of the last lesson, M. Hamel not only
reveals his empathy and kindness, but also his dignity and patriotism, lecturing the gathered crowd on
the importance of protecting their language and culture in the face of foreign occupation . .M. Hamel’s
shocking announcement reveals the lengths to which the occupying Prussian authorities are willing to
go to control and subjugate the French citizens of Alsace-Lorraine. Not only have they gained military
control of their land, but they also desire to control the villagers’ means of self-expression, by banning
the French language and imposing German instead. This Prussian order, therefore, indicates that the
Prussian authorities seek to subjugate not only the villagers’ physical existence, but also their minds.
THE REALISATION…
THE LAST LESSON
The colonizers took away the basic rights of the people. When the
students could not learn their own language, they sensed a feeling of
being restricted and being forced to not do something that they enjoy
doing and find their solace in. People of Lorraine and Alsace were
the victims of linguistic chauvinism.They were forced to learn
German. Franz, a school student who was always reluctant in his
French class and never took it seriously, saw how important it was to
learn his mother tongue. This quality of people displays that humans
respect things more when they see it going.On the other hand,
M.Hamel regards French as the world’s most coherent and beautiful
language. M. Hamel seemed to have been emotional at this point. He
said that knowing one’s language is a way to break free from
slavery’s grip. M. Hamel faltered from his stern and calm appearance
and choked while expressing his gratitude in his very last class. He
expressed his strong emotions for his motherland by writing on the
blackboard, “Vive la France.”
 VERDICT OF THE CHAPTER:
THE LAST LESSON
‘The Last Lesson’ revolves around the language and its
importance to the citizens of the country. It is the duty of every
citizen to safeguard the language of the country.The story
reinforces the fact that we value something more when it is lost.
It emphasizes the importance of our mother tongue and the need
to realize the fact that it is our language which gives us our
identity , respect and freedom.
LINGUISTI
C
DIVERSITY
IN INDIA
In India we celebrate
the commonality of
major differences ;
we are a land of
belonging rather
than of blood.
• There is a popular aphorism that depicts India’s linguistic diversity rather well:  Kos-kos par badle
paani, chaar kos par baani  (The language spoken in India changes every few kilometres, just like
the taste of the water).
• India is one of the most linguistically diverse countries, ranking 4th in terms of the number of language spoken,
according to the Ethnologue Language Catalogue of the world. Yet, enumerating its languages has been contentious,
given the implications of legitimising and delegitimising linguistic identities. The Census of 2001 provided only a
partial demonstration of this multiplicity when it said that our country has 30 languages that are spoken by more than
a million people each. These 30 languages by themselves only provide a linguistic window through which we can view
the 122 languages that are spoken by at least 10,000 people each. Then we have the 1,599 languages, most of them
dialects, restricted to specific regions, many of them on the verge of extinction.
 INDIAN INDEPENDENCE : FINEST EXAMPLE OF UNITY IN
On 15th AugustDIVERSITY
1947 India gained its independence. The fact that in spite of India being home to a diverse population it was the coming together of all
different movements that finally led the way towards total Indian Independence. On one hand most nations that seek independence do so on the basis
of a particular unifying factor, be it language, literature, area or culture, the Indian freedom struggle finds contributions and uprising from all quarters
of its diversity. India is a nation having many languages, cultures, religions, castes, essentially means that we have different thought processes, myriad
methods of execution, ideologies that differ, yet the freedom struggle acted as the common plank, the final goal that was aimed by all. At the time of
Independence a large part of the population was considered illiterate. Yet, language and literature have played an immensely large role in the freedom
struggle. Poets and authors from across the country wrote in their individual mother tongues, lashing out at the colonial rule and inspiring millions to
fight for their freedom. Hindi, Bengali, Marathi poets made the pen a mighty warrior, penning down spectacular lines that cut across language and
region barriers and resonated in one single sound. India’s state boundaries were partially determined along linguistic divides, something that occurred
after Independence. States have the power to set their own languages. For example, the state of Gujarat uses Gujarati as an official
language, but the state of Assam has Assamese as its first official language and also recognizes
Bengali as an additional state language.
India is not only the home to some of the world’s rarest and most endangered languages, it also contains some of the
biggest language groups on the planet. It’s difficult to manage a country with such an array of languages and language
issues have historically been deeply political ones. A recent decision by the government to replace German with Sanskrit
(closely linked to the Hindi language and Hindu religious scripture) was seen a political move to favor Hindi and Hindu
nationalism. India doesn’t recognize a single national language as its official one but Hindi and English are used as the
language of government. The question of whether to recognize a single language as the country’s official language still
remains in active debate in the country.Part of the problem is that Hindi, or any other language for that matter, isn’t even
spoken by a majority of the population. Whilst Hindi is spoken widely across a central clump of states this isn’t the case for
border states or those in the south, who have historically put up resistance to any proposals to incorporate it as
the dominant national language.
Rather than designate any one language as the nation’s
standardised tongue, it makes more sense to invest in
the development of other regional languages and thus
preserve India’s multiculturalism through
multilinguism.
We need to learn to recognise some cities as
"multilingual cities" just like "smart cities", those
needing a different legal framework.