(This is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George. The Political Line newsletter is India’s political landscape explained every week. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)
The recent Winter Session of Parliament saw the government build some clever Hindi acronyms in lawmaking, with no option but to use a few English words. It is in the nature of languages to mix and spread.
Parliament’s Winter Session, which concluded on December 19, witnessed an unusually intense political confrontation over what would normally be a procedural matter: the naming of Bills. At the centre of the storm was the government’s growing preference for Hindi titles and slogan-like acronyms for major legislation, most controversially the Viksit Bharat–Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill, 2025, popularly called the VB-G RAM G Bill, which replaces the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005. The title of the Bill had two English words: Guarantee and Mission. Etymologically, ‘guarantee’ has French origins, and ‘mission’ is from Latin. For all our language passions, VB-G RAM G needed two English words to give its shape!
Theek hai, in Hindi, means ‘alright,’ and this is a signature phrase in a 2025 Malayalam film Odum Kuthira Chaadum Kuthira, with Fahadh Faasil in the lead. The film has a wide range of characters who share a propensity to land in trouble. Theek hai becomes a reassurance of sorts. The central characters of the film have returned to Kerala after spending time in northern India and the Hindi they picked up stays with them. Even a marriage in the film is conducted with the groom arriving on horseback, not part of Kerala tradition. The movie has flopped and my colleague S.R. Praveen thinks there is good reason, but the theek-hai Malayalis that I come across in every part of Kerala are a commentary on how the linguistic landscape of the country is changing.
I am writing this in Kochi on a Friday evening. The FM channels play Hindi and Malayalam songs in turn; many people that you come across — the driver, the hotel staff, farmers — all speak Hindi. Many of them are not from Hindi-speaking regions; they are from Assam, West Bengal, Odisha, apart from Bihar. I see them in my village, in towns, and of course in Kochi. I meet them in Chennai, in Hyderabad. In all these places, Hindi has become the link language. My grandmother, who died in her mid-90s a decade ago, had learned what theek hai, and thoda thoda meant, by then.
The Assamese and the Malayali will converse in Hindi without any promotion by the government. But despite the government’s declared hostility towards English, the language is not going to vanish anytime soon from administration or public usage. In the Hindi heartland of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, words such as husband, exam, cheating, and confusion have become ghar ke. Everyone goes, or at least wants to go, to a “beauty parlour”; there is no Hindi equivalent used.
Several MPs raised a language and constitutional argument. DMK MP Kanimozhi and RSP MP N.K. Premachandran objected to the growing use of Hindi titles such as Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, saying the terminology was inaccessible to non-Hindi speakers and departed from long-standing legislative convention. Mr. Premachandran pointed out that Article 348 of the Constitution provides for English as the authoritative language of legislation unless Parliament decides otherwise, warning that names like adhishthan were difficult even for members to understand. Congress leader P. Chidambaram similarly argued that replacing clear English titles with Hindi names or acronyms amounted to a quiet rewriting of parliamentary norms.
The government went several extra miles, in English, to arrive at an acronym that it wanted, in Hindi — SHANTI or Sustainable Harnessing of Atomic Nuclear Technologies and Innovations Bill! But it need not: Hindi theek hai in Kerala and elsewhere.
I have not yet seen a Kerala groom arriving on a horse outside of films and poems, but these days, a lot of northern practices are now part of weddings in Kerala, thanks to event managers and couples that want good social media footage of their marriages. We now have the sangeeth, haldi, mehendi, and more,which ensure that Kerala weddings are not a strict, formal, and quick affair. Events go on for several days; event managers make some money; the youth make Reels, and parents empty their savings. Theek hai ya nahin? I don’t quite know!
Published – December 21, 2025 11:38 am IST
