Sept. 14, is every year
celebrated as the Hindi Day in India and its offices elsewhere. The celebration
starts a week earlier which concludes on the 14th day of the month.
Seminars, lectures, debates etc are organized to popularize the language and
impress upon the people to take pride in talking in their national language. On
this great occasion, let us take a bird’s eyeview of the progress made in this
regard over the years.
On the international
plane, depending on the number of speakers, Hindi stands on the fourth
position. The Chinese Mandarin with 955
million people, accounting for over 14% of the world population is on the top
as per a survey of 2010. It is followed by the Spanish with 405 million
speakers, grabbing the second position. You will be surprised to know that the
worldwide known English, being spoken by 360 m. people (5.4% of the world
population) occupies the third position. Since several regional dialects were
recently given language status, the number of Hindi speakers dwindled. The above language census accords fourth
position to Hindi with 310 m. speakers (4.7%). Thus every time a regional
dialect is recognized as a language, Hindi loses the number of its speakers.
Unfortunately, under- vote bank politics, on election eves, some dialect is
included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution, though it may not qualify
the parameters set for transforming a dialect into language status.
The
official annual functions are completed just as a formality. So it could not
carve any nitche till ten years ago. However, some other reasons have sent
Hindi sky rocketing. The first place in this regard goes to Bollywood. Due to
highly entertaining and sensuous Hindi films, the language started becoming
globally popular. Already popular in West Asia, Hindi is grabbing space in
farflung USA, UK, Russia and South East Asian countries. The second reason is
India having emerged as a huge market. Corporates over the world are
encouraging their executives to learn Hindi. Thirdly, Indian garments, food and
other aspects of culture are being imbibed even in developed countries. Our
competitive education system is also attracting students from developing countries
as it is costly in the West. Due to high costing medical facilities in Europe
and America, patients from Afro-Asian countries are flocking to Indian
hospitals. These new trends are not only generating added forex from these
tourists but also giving them opportunities to pick up working knowledge of Hindi.
Our present PM, having
spoken in Hindi in some foreign countries, has popularized Hindi beyond the
precincts of India. We hope, he will do so even in course of his upcoming US visit.
The sumtotal of all these developments is bound to procure the desired official
status to Hindi in the UNO.
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