‘Hindi should be alternative to English, not local languages’: Amit Shah
Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Amit Shah on Thursday discussed the importance of the Hindi language in the country and highlighted how it should be the appropriate alternative to the English language across the country.
While presiding over the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee on the premises of the parliament, Shah said that Hindi should be the alternative to the English language and not other local languages.
“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”.
Emphasizing the importance of Hindi, the home minister further said that now the time has come to make the Official Language an important part of the unity of the country. He also said that when citizens communicate with each other, they should always use Indian languages, whether regional or state-specific.
During the meeting, the Home Minister unanimously approved sending the 11th Volume of the Committee’s report to the President of India.
Noting that the pace at which the current Official Language Committee is working has rarely been seen before, the Minister said, added that sending three Reports to the President of India in the same tenure of the committee is a joint achievement of all.
Shah also talked about how the government is laying importance on the use of the language and noted that 70 percent of the agenda of the Cabinet is now prepared in Hindi.
The Union Home Minister 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.”
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.
Towards the end of the meeting, Amit Shah also said that the medium of running the government in India is the Official Language, as decided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and this will surely increase the importance of Hindi in India.