The Linguistic Power Shift in India:
A Moment of Symbolic Transformation
At the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit (HTLS), a striking scene unfolded. Shobhana Bhartia, chairperson of HT Media and representative of India’s English-speaking elite, delivered her speech in Urdu. She was visibly struggling through it. This wasn’t merely a linguistic choice. It was a window into the tectonic shifts reshaping India’s power structures.
Shobhana Bhartia’s speech reveals about India’s changing elite.The context matters. Prime Minister Modi insists on speaking only Hindi on most events, forcing the traditionally English-dominated establishment to accommodate him on his linguistic terms. After 200 years of English as the language of power in India, the hierarchy is being reversed.
The Power Reversal
For two centuries, English served as the language of India’s elite. A legacy of Macaulay’s 1835 educational system designed to create “a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.” Now, Modi’s linguistic assertion forces this elite to meet him on his terms, not the reverse.
The Visible Struggle
Bhartia’s difficulty speaking in a language other than English reveals how thoroughly Macaulay’s system succeeded. Her struggle itself becomes evidence of how disconnected the English-educated elite became from indigenous languages.
The Irony
An event ostensibly showcasing Indian leadership still defaults to English for much of its programming. It reveals how deeply colonial patterns persist in independent India’s elite spaces, even as those patterns are being challenged.
The Timeline of Institutional Change
The shift at Hindustan Times didn’t happen overnight:
- 2014-2023: BJP in power for nearly a decade, yet HTLS remained largely English-medium
- 2024: Bhartia’s speech was partially in Hindi which signified a transitional moment
- 2025: Her entire speech delivered in Urdu is complete linguistic accommodation
This delayed adaptation is revealing. It took the BJP over ten years in power before HT’s linguistic presentation changed, demonstrating how entrenched the English-speaking, Congress-era establishment was.
Historical Congress Connection:
Hindustan Times wasn’t just any media house. It represented:
- Old establishment money (Birla family connections)
- Close alignment with the Congress Party while claiming neutrality
- Deep integration with Nehruvian power structures
The paper’s editor Durga Das, who authored “India from Curzon to Nehru and After,” was a friend of Nehru. He has written that Prime Ministers would send him overseas for back-channel diplomacy. This illustrates how intertwined the media-political elite network was during the Congress era.
The “Deep State” Shifts
The term “deep state” here refers to India’s interconnected network. It consist of media houses, English-speaking elites, corporate leaders, cultural institutions, and bureaucratic power centers. This network historically aligned with Congress. This network is now fundamentally recalibrating around the BJP as the new center of gravity.
When an establishment institution like Hindustan Times makes such a complete pivot, it signals something profound: the elite have accepted that BJP is not a temporary political aberration but the new permanent establishment.
The stages of institutional adaptation tell the story:
- Years 1-5 (2014-2019): Resistance, treating BJP as an anomaly
- Years 6-10 (2019-2024): Grudging accommodation, partial adjustments
- Year 11+ (2024-2025): Full institutional pivot—the establishment rewires itself
The Strategic Calculation
These elites don’t respond merely to election cycles. They respond to structural power shifts. They have access to deep political connections, private polling data, corporate intelligence networks, and understanding of funding flows. Their complete linguistic accommodation suggests they see no viable path for Congress revival under current leadership in the foreseeable future.
If they believed Rahul Gandhi’s current electoral strategy had even medium-term success potential, they would hedge their bets and maintain English as the default while claiming “international standards.” Instead, the complete shift signals their assessment that BJP dominance will extend indefinitely.
The Subtle Resistance: Urdu vs. Hindi
Here’s where it gets more nuanced. Bhartia delivered her speech in Urdu, not Hindi. For a media house that understands linguistic subtleties intimately, this is deliberate. It implies surface compliance with deeper signaling.
While appearing to accommodate Modi by not speaking English, the use of Urdu (the Congress-secular elite’s preferred register) instead of Hindi represents a form of cultural resistance. The choice signals:
- Allegiance to Nehruvian secular traditions
- Connection to Muslim constituencies
- Sophistication and refinement (Urdu’s cultural capital among elites)
- Distance from BJP’s “Hindi-Hindu” cultural project
The Linguistic Divide
Modi speaks shuddh Hindi (often Sanskritized vocabulary). Bhartia responds in Urdu (Persianized/Arabicized register). Though both may use Devanagari script, they represent different vocabularies and different cultural universes.
The Current Status and Future Trajectory
What we’re witnessing is a staged surrender:
- Political alignment: Shifting toward BJP accommodation
- Cultural-linguistic identity: Still holding some Congress-secular ground
Hindustan Times is saying: “We’ll bend to political reality, but we won’t break our cultural identity completely. We’re still the secular-elite establishment, even if we must accommodate BJP power.”
The Broader Implications
This linguistic drama at HTLS represents more than language politics. It’s about:
- Institutional hegemony: Congress has lost not just elections but control of the power structure itself
- Cultural legitimacy: Even claims of “neutrality” now require accommodating BJP’s linguistic-cultural framework
- Access to power: Corporate funding, advertising, and influence now flow through BJP channels
- Generational assessment: Institutions are making long-term bets on continued BJP dominance
Conclusion: Decolonization in Real-Time
The claim that after independence, Hindustan Times became vocal in building a “new, strong and democratic India” and represented “a wave of change, away from colonial past” now takes on new meaning. Perhaps the real break from the colonial past, from Macaulay’s English-speaking elites is happening now. It is happening decades later, in ways the original founders didn’t anticipate.
The next milestone to watch is when Bhartia’s speech shifts from Urdu to actual Sanskritized Hindi matching Modi’s register. That’s when even the last cultural-linguistic redoubt will have fallen, and the transformation will be complete.
We’re watching institutional India’s power structure transform in real-time, one speech at a time.
Watch full speech of