Language of law must be unambiguous to mean the same thing to all people who sue that language. Interpretation becomes inevitable because of the very nature of language which is constantly changing, sometimes extending, sometimes restricting and sometimes substituting meanings of words and expressions.

Two judges may write judgement either concurring or differing with an issue, but their judgements may be different in language use. One may use scathing language and exhibit an emotion, the other may use a flourish to subdue emotions. Many concerned with justice and justicing believe that “changing the letter of the law does not of itself cure one social ill. It merely changes the scenery on the stage, the play goes on” (Iyer, 1980). Therefore, less attention has been given to the letter of the law than its social implications. People forget that it is the letter of the law which embodies its spirit. As T.S. Elliot said “sensibility changes from generation to generation, but it takes a man of genius to change the expression” (Ibid.). It is only through expression that one can have proper apprehension of social relations and the distortions which create legal inequalities.

When language becomes a barrier between the accused and justice, when the accused cannot participate in the due process of laws because of ignorance of the language used in the courtroom then justice and equity are not meted out to the accused. When equality of opportunity is not provided to different language speaking groups in education, employment and mass communication, then social justice is denied to them. One language selected out of many for administration when provided with linking strategies leads to cultural domination of one group by another. Language planning or lack of it in the Indian multicultural situation provides many examples for studying this phenomenon.

There was a time when English was used even at the Panchayat level. This not only created a conflict between the customary laws and the body of law sought to be imposed from outside but also created many distortions. It denied advice and consent of the people in the process of governance and thus stopped implementation of a participatory democracy. Even when regional languages became the language of courts in different regions they also inherited the same attitude as the English elite. The regional elite sought to impose their language without consideration of the linguistic minorities in their respective states.

Language of law cannot be entirely divorced from the language of education. The medium of higher education continues to be English in India although from time to time different regions have taken steps to introduce regional language as medium. They have failed because:

1) Language of education was not made compatible with language of administration and mass communication thus denying employment opportunities to people passing through the regional language media. Gujarat and Tamil Nadu switched over to the regional language media in higher education but as qualifications for employment required or preferred English, the experiment failed.

2) Sufficient attention was not given to production of adequate number of books which not only restricted knowledge but also forced the learners to reject this medium as otherwise their showing competitively with the English medium students was poor.

3) No effort was made to link the competence in the regional language with adequate competence in English so that it could be used as library language. This caused educational and social inequality.

As regards language use in administration there has been a definite move towards making the regional language, the language of state administration. The proponents of the state languages took a limited view and ignored the linguistic minorities in their state. This resulted in identity assertion movements which led to the recognition of sub-regional languages of the State as associate official languages of states. Thus Andhra Pradesh has recognised Urdu and Oriya among others as sub-regional languages as West Bengal has recognised Nepali. It also opened up avenues for further political manipulation by groups large enough to have the potentiality to be so recognised. The Konkani and Khasi movements are cases on the point.

At the central level considerable progress has been made to implement the Constitutional directive to make Hindi the national official language. However, the progress has been slow because of the pressure from the English lobby and the regional language lobbies. Hindi has not been able to forge partnership with the regional languages and provide them with leadership to replace English as official language and language of law at different levels. It has not worked out procedures for balanced Centre-State communication. It has also not stored out its internal problem in developing a standard which would take into account different regional Hindis. Article 351 of the Constitution has been observed in breach.

Mass communication in India has attained tremendous progress technologically. Almost 85% to 95% of the country is covered by different media. When English is the only media of communication, it is accessible to 2% to 4% of the population. There has been continuous objection to the variety of Hindi used in radio and television. The Sanskrit style used as standard is far from the spoken varieties of Hindi and is not easily accessible to people at large. The same is true of regional languages within their respective regions.

Since language of law cannot be seen in isolation from the use of language in other domains and language of law fundamentally affects social relations, it also affects the political structuration of the state in important ways. Making a single language compulsory in a plural society can only be done in a centrally structured Government system. Societies which give greater emphasis to the economics of living rather than to the quality of living argue many languages being uneconomic and thus are against pluralistic formulation of social and political principles and practices. Needless to say that the language of law divorced from the language used in other domains distances the ruling elite from the ruled and accentuates contradictions between the two. This leads to identify assertion movements on linguistic, religious and ethnic lines. Unless complimentarity of languages in a plural society is recognised and language planners accepts plurality as a point of departure there is bound to be conflict challenging the very foundations of the nation state.