India should have a national language?

I know this opinion might not sit well with everyone, but I hope people can hear the intention behind it. We are proud of our legacy, heritage, languages and cultures. But at the same time, the very thing we are proud of can sometimes create distance between us. We grow up speaking different languages, consuming different media, and often staying within the linguistic or cultural bubble we were born into.

Because of this many Indians feel more connected to English (which isn’t even our own) than to those who simply speak a different Indian language. And that disconnect, in subtle ways, affects how unified we feel as a nation. I’m not saying diversity is a problem, it’s our strength. We just need to get rid of North vs South vs Northeast etc topics.

Having one language which is ours would be good for us. Not as a replacement for anyone’s mother tongue, and not as an erasure of linguistic identity, but simply as a common ground we can all share.