Hindi set to be a global language, is now 2nd language of 10 nations: Amit Shah
Hindi is on course to becoming a global language and is already the second language in ten countries, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Saturday while addressing an event on the occasion of Hindi Divas.
Hindi Divas is annually celebrated on September 14 to mark the adoption of the language as India's official language. This year the day has been made even more significant as it is the 75th anniversary of Hindi's journey as an official language.
Pledging to make Hindi more acceptable, flexible and behavioural, Shah asked all ministries to start corresponding in Hindi.
“It has taken me three years to ensure all home ministry related files come to be in Hindi. I have eventually succeeded. Today the entire official correspondence of both my ministries is happening in Hindi. I urge other ministries to do so too. Language is a means of expression. We express better when we express it in our own language,” Shah said on the occasion.
He reiterated that Hindi was not in competition to Indian languages but in a complementary role.
“Hindi takes nourishment from other Indian languages and vice versa. Both will grow by learning from each other," said Shah.
He said teachers across India should also start communicating with students in Hindi.
"There is no cause for anyone to push children to learn any other language. In the coming times Hindi will be the language of the world. We have to shed colonial legacy in languages too," said Shah, a day after his ministry renamed Port Blair as Sri Vijaya Puram.
The home minister also said that the first batch of Indian students who have taken MBBS instruction in Hindi had reached the fourth semester in Madhya Pradesh.
Efforts are on to translate technical, medical and legal education books in Hindi, he added.
Tracing the history of Hindi, Shah recalled how it was late prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee who first used Hindi to address the UNGA. "And the world was stunned. Today many years later Hindi is a UN language and a second language of ten countries," he said.
He also revealed on the occasion that some Hindi language experts had been phoning him to raise concerns on what they saw as a solution of Hindi.
"I told them Hindi is an all embracing language which can never lose its purity and which has indeed become richer by absorbing the various civilisational elements that touched our country," Shah said.
To mark 75 years of completion of Hindi as an official language department of posts today released a postal stamp and Finance ministry has released a commemorative coin.
Earlier on Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi greeted people on the occasion of Hindi Divas.
