“India is a country of different languages and every language has its own importance but it is very important to have a language of the whole country which should become the identity of India globally,” he posted on his twitter handle, writing in Hindi. “Today, if one language can do the work of uniting the country, then it is the most spoken language, Hindi,” he added.
He emphasized on the fact that Hindi was the one-off dream of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel and we should make it our responsibility to make it the one language for the country.
At a Hindi Divas event in Delhi, he said, “Today if you ask a Hindi-medium student to speak for 40 minutes in Hindi, he won’t be able to do so.”
“There is so much influence of English on us that we cannot talk in Hindi without its help. School students should be asked to speak in Hindi and whoever uses an English word should be given one mark,” Mr. Shah said.
Pointing to the fact that the nation is home to 122 languages and more than 19,500 dialects, Home minister said that, “There are 18 words to refer to a relationship in Hindi, whereas the word “Uncle” is used uniformly to explain all relations in English. We shouldn’t surrender to the slave mentality. Promoting Hindi should be our national responsibility. Had (Bal Gangadhar) Tilak and Gandhi not stressed on using Hindi, we would have lost it to the British,” he said.
According to him, if Hindi can be spread to the field of law, science, and technology than half of the job can be assumed to be done. Hindi should be made to reach every household of the country in the words of Mr. Shah.
