Amit Shah was elected for the first time as the chairperson of the committee in 2019. (File)
New Delhi:
Union Home Minister Amit Shah was unanimously re-elected as the Chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee on Official Language, Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said in a statement on Monday.
The decision was taken in a meeting of the committee, which was held in New Delhi. After the formation of the new government, the meeting of the committee was held here on Monday to reconstitute the Parliamentary Committee on Official Language.
Amit Shah was elected for the first time as the chairperson of the committee in 2019.
The Home Minister expressed his gratitude to all the members of the Parliamentary Committee on Official Language for unanimously re-electing him as the Chairperson.
In his address, Union Home Minister said that for the last 75 years we have been working to promote the official language, but in the last 10 years there has been a slight change in its method. He said that KM Munshi and NG Iyengar had decided after consultation with many people that in order to accept Hindi as the official language and to promote it in government work, Hindi should not compete with any local language.
Amit Shah further said that in the last 10 years, after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, the committee has continuously tried to make Hindi a friend of all local languages, and it does not compete with anyone. He said that “we should take care that the speakers of any local language do not have an inferiority complex” and Hindi should be generally accepted as the language of work with consensus and agreement.
The Home Minister underlined that after 75 years of independence, it is very important that the country is governed in the language of the country, and the government has made many efforts in this regard. He added that “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 particular language and Hindi,” he said.
Amit Shah said that the Department of Official Language is developing a software that will automatically translate all the languages of the 8th Schedule on a technical basis. Once this work is completed, Hindi will gain acceptance and evolve in our work at a very fast pace. He said that in the last 5 years, we have worked very hard and have given three large volumes of the committee’s report to the President, which has never happened before. Home Minister said that we should maintain this pace.
The Home Minister also said that cooperation and acceptance should be the two basic foundations of our work. He said that “we have to move forward with such a goal that on Independence Day in 2047, our country’s entire work will be done in Indian languages with pride.”
He said, “We have to give a new life to the 1000-year-old Hindi language, make it accepted, and try to complete the task left before us by the freedom fighters.”
The Home Minister said that by giving new life to a language that is thousands of years old and increasing its acceptance, we must fulfil the dream of the visionaries of the freedom movement.
He added that none of the freedom fighters like Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Lokmanya Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi, Lala Lajpat Rai, C Rajagopalachari, KM Munshi, and Sardar Patel, etc., came from the Hindi speaking states, but all of them had realised that the country should have a language that works as a medium of communication between the states. That is why, in the new education policy brought by Prime Minister Modi, “we have emphasised that the primary education of the child should be in his mother tongue. When the child learns his mother tongue, he gets connected with many languages of the country.
Amit Shah said that under the Munshi-Iyengar Committee, one thing was decided that a language commission would be formed every 5 years that would consider linguistic diversity, but it was forgotten. He said that without competing with any Indian language, we need to increase the acceptance of Hindi.
The Home Minister said that Hindi is now in a way associated with employment, and technology, and the Government of India is also making special efforts to integrate all the new age technologies with the Hindi language.
In the new education policy, a resolution has been taken to give importance to all mother tongues, this committee will take it much further.
Amit Shah said that this is the 75th year since Hindi was accepted as the official language, and on this occasion, a very big conference is being organised at Bharat Mandapam in Delhi. The Parliamentary Committee on Official Language was constituted under the provisions of Section 4 of the Official Languages Act, 1963, in the year 1976. The committee comprises 30 members of Parliament, out of which 20 are from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha.
The newly appointed MPs from the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha were also present in the meeting. Officers from the Department of Official Language, led by Secretary Anshuli Arya, also attended the meeting, along with officials of the Parliamentary Committee.
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