New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said that people belonging to different states should communicate in the Hindi language and not in English.
Amit Shah said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided that the medium for running the government is the nation’s official language. This will increase the importance of the Hindi language. He said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided that the medium of running the government is the Official Language, and this will increase the importance of Hindi. Now the time has come to make the Official Language an important part of the unity of the country. When citizens of States who speak other languages communicate with each other, it should be in the language of India,” Shah was quoted by the Ministry of Home Affairs as having said at the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee.
He also clarified that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative language to English, and not the local language. He also suggested that Hindi should be made more flexible by accepting words from local languages.
Shah is the chairperson of the Official Language Committee, and BJD’s B Mahtab is its vice-chairperson.
He also pointed out that there is a need to give elementary knowledge of Hindi to students up to Class 9 and should pay more attention to teaching Hindi at schools and should take examinations as well.
According to MHA, Shah informed members that 70 percent of the agenda of the Cabinet is now prepared in Hindi. He said 22,000 Hindi teachers have been recruited in the eight states of the Northeast, and nine tribal communities of the region have converted scripts of their dialects to Devanagari.
All these states have agreed on making the Hindi language compulsory in schools up to Class 10.
The ministry said the committee had unanimously approved sending the 11th volume of the committee’s report to the President.
Amit Shah said, “India’s culture and value systems had remained protected primarily because of the language.”
In 2019, delivering his first speech on the occasion of Hindi Diwas, he had pushed for the idea of “One Nation, One Language”. He had said, “India is a country of different languages. Every language has its importance. But it is essential that the entire country has one language that becomes the identity of the nation in the world. If there is any language that can tie the whole country in one thread, it is the most spoken language of Hindi.”
The Opposition had reacted very angrily to the remarks. The CPI(M) had called it an attack on the core principles of India’s diversity, Congress leader Rajeev Gowda reminded BJP that Article 29 of the Constitution honored multiple languages.
Since then, Shah has toned down his advocacy of Hindi language. He has repeatedly clarified that Hindi is not competing with any other regional language and is merely complementing them.
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