The adoption of इंग्रजी as official language along with हिंदी was heavily criticized by pro-हिंदी politicians like Jana Sangh's founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who demanded that हिंदी should be made National language. Soon after the Constitution was adopted on 26 January 1950, efforts were made to propagate हिंदी for official usage. In 1952, the Ministry of Education launched a voluntary हिंदी teaching scheme. On 27 May 1952, use of हिंदी was introduced in warrants for judicial appointments. In 1955, in-house हिंदी training was started for all ministries and departments of the central government. On 3 December 1955, the government started using हिंदी (along with इंग्रजी) for ""specific purposes of the Union""
As provided for by Article 343, Nehru appointed the First Official Language Commission under the chairmanship of B. G. Kher on 7 June 1955. The commission delivered its report on 31 July 1956. It recommended a number of steps to eventually replace इंग्रजी with हिंदी (The report had dissenting notes from two non-हिंदी members - P. Subbarayan from Tamil Nadu and Suniti Kumar Chatterji from West Bengal). The Parliamentary Committee on Official Language, chaired by Govind Ballabh Pant was constituted in September 1957 to review the Kher commission report. After two years of deliberations, the Pant Committeee submitted its recommendations to the President on 8 February 1959. It recommended that हिंदी should be made the primary official language with इंग्रजी as the subsidiary one. The Kher Commission and the Pant Committee recommendations were condemned and opposed by from non हिंदी politicians like Suniti Kumar Chatterji, Frank Anthony and P. Subbarayan. The Academy of Telugu opposed the switch from इंग्रजी to हिंदी in a convention held in 1956. Rajaji, once a staunch supporter of हिंदी, organised a All India Language Conference (attended by representatives of Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Assamese, Oriya, Marathi, Kannada and Bengali languages) on 8 March 1958 to oppose the switch and declared ""हिंदी is as much foreign to non-हिंदी speaking people as इंग्रजी is to the protagonists of हिंदी"."

As the opposition to हिंदी grew stronger, Nehru tried to reassure the concerns of non-हिंदी speakers. Speaking in the parliamentary debate on the Pant committee report Nehru gave an assurance to them (in September 1959):

For an indefinite period - I do not know how long - I should have, I would have इंग्रजी as an associate, additional language not because of facilities and all that but because I do not wish the people of Non-हिंदी areas to feel that certain doors of advance are closed to them because they are forced to correspond - the Government, I mean - in the हिंदी language. They can correspond in इंग्रजी. So I could have it as an alternate language as long as people require it and the decision for that - I would leave not to the हिंदी-knowing people, but to the non हिंदी-knowing people
This assurance momentarily allayed the fears of the South Indians.

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