Amit Shah bats for Hindi: 'It should be accepted as alternative to English'

New Delhi, Apr 8: Union Home Minister Amit Shah said when citizens of States who speak other languages communicate with each other, it should be in the language of India, stressing that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not as an alternative to local languages.

 

Presiding over the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee here, Shah said 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, according to a statement issued by the Union Home Ministry.

 

Shah, who is the chairman of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee, informed members that 70% of the agenda of the Union Cabinet was now prepared in Hindi. Shah said, "Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not to local languages. He noted that unless we made Hindi flexible by accepting words from other local languages, it would not be propagated."

 

Further, the Minister informed that 22,000 Hindi teachers had been recruited in the eight States of the North East. Also, nine tribal communities of the North East had converted their dialects’ scripts to Devanagari and all the eight States of the North East had agreed to make Hindi compulsory in schools up to Class X.