Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma on Tuesday welcomed Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s push to make Hindi a compulsory subject in Northeastern states while adding that more focus should be given to promoting local languages as well. “I have seen the benefit of learning Hindi and English. I don’t see any reason why learning a new language whether it is Hindi, English or Japanese is a bad thing,” the CM said.
Stating that learning a language is something that gives accessibility, Sangma said, “…when it comes to the world market in terms of employment, English is very important, so one has to be professional in English. But when it comes to the national level, we need to realise that Hindi is the largest spoken language throughout the country, so it adds an advantage for our youngsters to be able to learn a new language like Hindi also.”
He, however, denied receiving any written instruction on this from the Centre.
Last Thursday, Shah while presiding over the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee had said Hindi should be accepted as an alternative language to English, but not to local languages.
Shah had said that the nine tribal communities of the Northeast have converted their dialects’ scripts to Devanagari while all the eight states in the Northeast have agreed to make Hindi compulsory in schools up to Class 10. “There is a need to give elementary knowledge of Hindi to students up to Class 9, and pay more attention to Hindi teaching examinations,” the Union home minister had said in the meeting.
CM Sangma said, “…what I would want to do and see is that while the Government of India may put this suggestion and the recommendations, we should put equal push from the Government of India side also that there should be learning research or institutes for our local languages also.”
“So, therefore, more push should be put on local languages as well… research should be done, documentation should be done and funds should be given by the central government to put up institutes to promote the local languages,” he added.
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