Gandhinagar, Sep 14 (IANS) On the occasion of Hindi Diwas, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Sunday that Hindi should not just be a medium of communication and official work but also the cornerstone of technology, science, justice and police administration.

Addressing the Fifth All India Official Language Conference, HM Shah said, “When all the work is done in Indian languages, it automatically promotes a connect with the masses.”

He said Hindi should not just be limited to use as a language for official work and a medium of communication, but its scope should be widened. “Hindi should be the language of science, technology, law and justice and police.”

The Home Minister also invited Chief Ministers of all states to write to the Union Home Ministry in their mother tongue and promised that he would reply in their language itself.

He hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for calling for the use of technology for promoting regional languages.

“With the establishment of the Bharatiya Bhasha Anubhag (Indian Languages Section), the Department of Official Language has now become a complete department,” he said.

He reiterated that Hindi is not a competitor of other Indian languages but their friend and highlighted the Sarthi software for translation, which integrates Hindi with other Indian languages by translating other languages to Hindi and vice versa.

“The biggest example of cohesion between Hindi and other languages is Gujarat. Gujarat’s mother tongue is Gujarati, but the state has become a glowing example of co-existence and collective growth of Gujarati and Hindi.”

He said scholars from the state, including Dayanand Saraswati, Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel, have accepted Hindi and promoted it.

“These leaders had the foresight to unite Indian languages and promote Hindi in all the states. This has gone a long way in increasing the pan-nation reach of students from the state,” he said, highlighting that students in Gujarat study both Gujarati and Hindi.

He said Hindi has linguistically united the nation by playing an unprecedented role in promoting public communication and debate.

HM Shah said that Shivaji Maharaj had stressed on three crucial points: ‘Swaraj, Swadharm and Swabhasha’. “These three elements are linked to the country’s self-respect. A country cannot aspire to be independent unless it has its own language of communication,” he said.

He also urged parents to encourage their children to acquire knowledge in their mother tongue. “Children lose their learning capacity by 30 per cent if they are made to acquire knowledge in any other language,” he said.

He also hailed Sanskrit as the source of Indian knowledge and credited Hindi for taking this knowledge to every house and individual.

Earlier in a video message on X, HM Shah said that in the last decade, under the leadership of PM Modi, a golden era of renaissance for Indian languages and culture has emerged.

Whether it is the platform of the United Nations, the G-20 summit, or addressing the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, PM Modi has enhanced the pride of Indian languages by communicating in Hindi and other Indian languages, he said.

In the ‘Amrit Kaal’ of independence, PM Modi has taken the ‘Panch Pran’ (five pledges) to free the country from the symbols of slavery, in which languages have a significant role. We must adopt Indian languages as the medium of communication and interaction, he said.

The official language, Hindi, has completed 76 glorious years. The Department of Official Language, having completed 50 golden years of its establishment, has done remarkable work in making Hindi the language of the masses and public consciousness, HM Shah said.

–IANS

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