Supreme Court Judge Justice B.V. Nagarathna
| Photo Credit: PTI
South Indians do not want to be isolated because they do not know Hindi, Supreme Court judge B.V. Nagarathna said on Wednesday (December 3, 2025).
Responding to a question on the use of Hindi in the judiciary, Justice Nagarathna clarified that she does not mean politics and said India is a subcontinent and one cannot be very exclusive in one’s language.
She said there are so many languages in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution, and in South India, there are at least six languages.
Justice Nagarathna said one cannot be very exclusive in their language and what connects different south Indian states is English.
She said if one goes to Tamil Nadu, nobody speaks English or Hindi and communication is an issue.
“How do I converse? You must understand India as a subcontinent. I am not on politics here. In district courts, we have our individual languages like Kannada, Tamil etc. In constitutional courts, English is the official language.”
“Otherwise, how do we transfer judges to different high courts? Please, have some kind of moderation in this. Moderation is required when we say this because we (south Indians) do not want to be isolated as we do not know Hindi. This is what I am saying, coming from the south,” she said.
Her response came after Chief Justice of India Surya Kant answered a question from a woman lawyer about the steps being taken by him for lawyers who are proficient in their local languages but do not know English.
Published – December 04, 2025 03:44 am IST
