Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday ridiculed attempts "to create misinformation and divisions” in the society to pit Hindi against other regional languages in the country, stating that Hindi was a “friend” to all others and not a competitor.
Shah said the need was to celebrate the diversity in the country and stressed on the need to strengthen regional languages while keeping Hindi together. September 14 is celebrated as a Hindi Divas across India.
The Home Minister, who was addressing the All India Official Language Conference in Surat, Shah said the synergy that the co-existence of languages creates was necessary. Shah advocated the need for more flexibility in Hindi to adopt words from other languages and expand its dictionary.
“I want to make it clear. There are people spreading disinformation that Hindi and Gujarati, Hindi and Tamil or Hindi and Marathi are competitors. Hindi cannot be a competitor to any other language in the country. You must understand that Hindi is the friend of all the languages of the country,” Shah asserted.
He opined that all regional languages in the country would prosper when Hindi prospers and this would similarly work the other way round too.
“Let us accept and understand this. Until we don’t accept the co-existence of all languages, we won’t realise the dream of running the country in our own language,” he said.
Amit Shah went on, “And I want to say with sincerity that it should be our aim to keep all the languages and mother tongues alive and prosperous. Only with the prosperity of all these languages will Hindi prosper.”
