1 | Page THE FUTURE OF THE PANJABI LANGUAGE AMIDST INDIA’S NATIONALISTIC CALL FOR ‘ONE NATION, ONE LANGUAGE’ Kiranpreet Kaur Baath (ORCID ID: 0000-0003-3629-4242) Research Associate, Centre for Sikh and Panjabi Studies University of Wolverhampton Contact of Contributing author: kpkaur629@gmail.com Abstract Even though most Indian states, like other former colonies, are undergoing linguistic challenges, the situation in the Northern Indian state of Panjab is distinctly unique. English, being a colonial language has, according to post-colonial studies scholars such as Frantz Fanon, become a symbol of status and intelligence across the world, including in India. The preference of English over Panjabi may also be attributed to the exploits and failures of the Green Revolution, which not only propelled brain drain but also exemplified the notion that the Panjab state is a wasteland, and therefore its language is ineffectual. These historical and socio- economic factors have given preference to the teaching and learning of the English language over Panjabi through the educational and social system of the Panjab state of Northern India. Moreover, the Indian nationalist agenda of ‘One Nation, One Language’ advocates uniformity of a linguistic identity across India through the promotion of the Hindi language over regional languages. The Panjabi language has, therefore, experienced a decline in its spoken and written form due to administrative policies and allocation of funds. All these factors have necessitated a sense of urgency, especially from Panjabi writers and Panjabi language activists at a global level to ensure the Panjabi language is preserved for future generations in both its spoken and written form. This paper discusses in detail the colonial effects and the effect of Hindi language nationalism on the Panjabi language. Keywords: Colonialism, Green Revolution, Hindi, India, Linguistic identity, Nationalism, Panjab, Panjabi. Introduction UNESCO classifies languages, based on intergenerational transfer, into four groups on a scale between safe (not endangered) and extinct (no living speakers) as: 1) vulnerable (not spoken by children outside the home); 2) definitely endangered (not spoken by children); 3) severely endangered (only spoken by older generations) and 4) critically endangered (spoken by a very limited number amongst the oldest generation) (Moseley and Nicolas, n.d.). A report published by UNESCO in 2011 labelled 577 languages as ‘critically endangered’ (Moseley, and Nicolas, n.d.). According to another report by the Organisation on Endangered Languages, almost 230 languages became extinct between 1950 and 2010; and almost 90% of remaining languages are predicted to disappear by the next century (Strochlic 2018). Furthermore, out of 7151 spoken languages worldwide, almost 40% are on the verge of extinction s (Eberhard 2022). Two dozen ‘language hotspots’, a term that refers to places where languages are both abound yet also endangered, have been identified globally (Harrison 2010, 5). India, due to its linguistic diversity and risk of endangerment, has been highlighted as a ‘language hotspot’ by K. David Harrison, a linguist and language activist (Ghosh 2021).