Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not to local languages: Amit Shah

Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah on Thursday emphasized on the need to accept Hindi as an alternative to English and not to local languages. The Home Minister’s remarks came when he was presiding over the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee here on the Parliament premises.

“Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not to local languages,” Shah said, adding, “unless we make Hindi flexible by accepting words from other local languages, it will not be propagated”. He said that now the time has come to make the Official Language an important part of the unity of the country.

Meanwhile, Shah said when citizens of states communicate with each other, it should be an Indian language whether it is regional or state-specific. During the meeting, the Home Minister unanimously approved sending of the 11th Volume of the Committee’s report to the President of India.

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Noting that the pace at which the current Official Language Committee is working has rarely been seen before, the Minister said, adding that sending of three Reports to the President of India in the same tenure of the committee is a joint achievement of all. The Union Home Minister informed the members of the committee that now 70 per cent of the agenda of the Cabinet is prepared in Hindi.

He said, “22,000 Hindi teachers have been recruited in the eight states of the North East. Also, nine tribal communities of the North East have converted their dialects’ scripts to Devanagari. Apart from this, all the eight states of the North East have agreed to make Hindi compulsory in schools up to Class X.” The Union Home Minister emphasized on three main points. One is that the Committee is requested to hold a meeting in July for implementation of the recommendations made from 1st to 11th Volume of the Report.

Shah said that the Secretary of the Official Language Committee should inform the members about the implementation of the volume-wise report in that meeting. Under the second point, he stressed the need to give elementary knowledge of Hindi to students up to Class 9 and pay more attention to Hindi teaching examinations.

Under the third point, the Union Home Minister suggested to republish the Hindi dictionary by revising it. Shah also said that after meeting with all concerned Secretaries, an Implementation Committee should be constituted to review the progress of implementing recommendations of the 1st to 11th volume of the Official Language Committee report.

The Chairperson of the Official Language Committee, Amit Shah said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decided that the medium of running the government is the Official Language and this will definitely increase the importance of Hindi. Union Ministers of State for Home Ajay Kumar Mishra and Nishith Pramanik, Vice-Chairman of the Official Language Parliamentary Committee Bhartruhari Mahtab and other members of the Committee were also present at the meeting.