Hindi will be made a friend to local languages: Amit Shah

NEW DELHI: Home minister Amit Shah on Monday said the Modi govt was working to ensure that by 2047, all government systems in the country operated in Indian languages and Hindi would be made a friend to all regional languages.

Shah, who was unanimously re-elected chairperson of the parliamentary committee on official language, said while promotion of Hindi had been the objective of govt since independence, the pursuit underwent a change since 2014 under the Modi govt which has, following the approach of K M Munshi and N G Iyengar, veterans of the freedom struggle who played a key role in framing of the Constitution, resolved that Hindi needed to grow in cooperation and not competition with other Indian languages.

"The committee has continuously endeavoured that Hindi becomes a friend of all local languages and it does not compete with anyone. We should take care that speakers of no regional language is made to feel inferior and Hindi is gradually accepted as the language of work with consensus and agreement," Shah said in remarks which appear significant in the context of the charge of Hindi chauvinism levelled against BJP.

The minister said after 75 years of independence, it was very important that the country was governed in the language of the country and that the govt had made many efforts in this regard. "We created a Shabdkosh, and, in collaboration with the education department, added thousands of words from local languages to Hindi.

"There were many words whose synonyms were not available in Hindi, but by accepting many words from other languages, we not only enriched Hindi and made it flexible but also strengthened the relationship between that language and Hindi," he said.

Shah said the department of official language was developing a software that would automatically translate all languages in the 8th Schedule on a technical basis. The parliamentary committee on official language was constituted under the provisions of Section 4 of the Official Languages Act, 1963, in 1976.


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