“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. 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.
Shah, however, clarified that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English, and not local languages. He also suggested that Hindi should be made more flexible by accepting words from other local languages.
Shah is chairperson of the Official Language Committee, and BJD’s B Mahtab its vice chairperson.
The Home Minister stressed the need to give elementary knowledge of Hindi to students up to Class IX and pay more attention to Hindi teaching examinations.
According to MHA, Shah informed members that 70 per cent 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.
