ABSTRACT
All Gandhi's activities derived from his search for Truth, and not merely those which were clearly religious in character. Gandhi's interest in the development of an Indian national language (rashtrabhasha) had arisen early in his career. After Gandhi returned to India in 1915, his interest in Hindi and his concern for the promotion of rashtrabhasha were both strengthened, and his ideas on the subject gained in clarity. In 1925 he prevailed upon Congress, where opposition to the adoption of Hindi and attachment to English remained strong, to pass a resolution making Hindustani 'ordinarily' the language of Congress proceedings. By the late 1930s, if not before, Gandhi had come to feel that Hindustani was the most fitting synonym for the mixture he believed should be brewed from Hindi and Urdu. In 1900 the British administration gave equal status to Hindi and Urdu: an equality that opened the way to the eventual supremacy of Hindi.
