Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Defending Amit Shah on his language remark, Union minister of education Dharmendra Pradhan here on Tuesday said the home minister had advocated for making Hindi a “bridge language” in the country.
“Currently, English by default, is the ‘link language’ in our country despite the fact that Hindi speaking people are more. So, Hindi should be our link language and not English,” he said while addressing a seminar organised to celebrate the birth centenary year of Kushabhau Thackeray at Amber Convention Center on Wednesday. The topic of the seminar was 'National Education Policy building a capable and prosperous India.'
Shah was quoted by the ministry of home affairs as having said at the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee, “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, however, later had 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.
Pradhan clarified further stating that the HM’s statement was misunderstood. “He (Shah) is a Gujarati, yet he advocated for Hindi as a bridge language as it is spoken by a larger population,” he said.
“For us all languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Gujarati are our national language,” he added.
Pradhan said that even in the National Education Policy, we have given importance to regional languages. Nobody can impose any language on anyone," he said.
He said that those who want to be ahead at the world level, they should also study English. “But he also said that Japan and China are such countries where the countrymen do not know English but they are ahead of us in technology and many other things,” he stated.
He said that NEP will bring Indianness among the youth.
Hailing Thackeray, the Union minister said that he had established a strong cadre in BJP of which the party is yielding fruits till date.
Students will become job creators
He said that the aim of NEP is Indianness. “Instead of making the students a job seeker, this policy makes them a job creator, changing the slavery mindset,” he stated.
The NEP gives a push for training to be given to the students so that their time is not wasted after the completion of studies. “Students can now study two degree programmes simultaneously. Due to all these major changes, students will have the power to change the world along with the country,” he added.
He also spoke about the importance of the ancient and rich education policy of India including that of ‘Vedas’ and contribution of Indian scholars in developing the country and civilization.
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