Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Thursday that simple and clear Hindi words should be used in office work, adding that the principle of language change says that “language moves from complexity to simplicity”.
The Minister said that the Hindi language had played an unprecedented role in uniting the country during the difficult days of the Independence movement, instilled a feeling of unity in a country divided into many languages and dialects, and played an important role in carrying the freedom struggle from east to west and north to south in the country.
‘Democratic language’
Releasing a video message on the occasion of Hindi Divas, Mr. Shah said that Hindi has been a democratic language and has honoured different Indian languages and dialects as well as many global languages, and adopted their vocabularies, sentences and grammar rules.
Considering the important role of Hindi in the freedom movement and after Independence, the architects of the Constitution had accepted Hindi as the official language on September 14, 1949, he said.
The Home Minister emphasised that the original and creative expression of any country is possible only through its own language. “Hindi neither ever has competed and nor will compete with any other Indian language. Only by strengthening all our languages, a strong nation will be created. I believe that Hindi will become a medium to empower all the local languages,” Mr. Shah said.
He noted that the Department of Official Language of the Ministry of Home Affairs is making continuous efforts, by leveraging modern technology, to enrich Indian languages and to establish them as languages of public administration, education, and scientific use.
Increasing Hindi use
The Parliamentary Committee on Official Language was constituted to periodically review the work done in the official language in the country. It was given the responsibility to review the progress made in the use of Hindi in government work across the country and prepare its report and present it to the President, the Home Minister said, adding that the 12th volume of the report has been presented to the President. Only nine volumes of the report were submitted till 2014, but three volumes have been submitted in the last four years.
Since 2019, Hindi Advisory Committees have been formed in all 59 Ministries and their meetings are also being organised regularly. From the point of view of increasing the use of the official language in various areas of the country, 528 Town Official Language Implementation Committees (TOLIC) have been formed so far. Even in foreign countries, such committees have been formed in London, Singapore, Fiji, Dubai, and Port-Louis. India has also taken initiatives to promote the use of the Hindi language in the United Nations.
Mr. Shah said that, in order to develop the official language using technology, the Department has created a memory-based translation system named ‘Kanthastha’, and a dictionary titled Hindi Shabd Sindhu. This dictionary is being continuously enriched by including words from Indian languages included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. The department has also made an ‘e-Mahashabdkosh’ mobile app comprising 90,000 words, and an ‘e-Saral’ dictionary with about 9,000 sentences.
