Hindi Diwas 2018: History, Significance of The Day; Is Hindi Losing Its Relevance to English Today?

Every year, India celebrates Hindi Diwas across schools, colleges and government institutions to promote the use of the Hindi in the country. The idea is to celebrate the rich linguistic heritage of the language. Cultural activities centred on Hindi like elocutions, poetry recitals and skits are conducted to commemorate the day. But how many of us know the reason why it is celebrated on this date and what is history and the significance behind it?

The answer to that question is that on September 14, 1949, the Hindi language was finally bestowed with the official language status in the country. The Constituent Assembly of India had adopted Hindi written in Devanagari script as the official language of India. Hindi Mother Tongue of 44% Indians, Bangla in the Second Place & Sanskrit Becomes the Least Spoken Language.

History & Significance

After India got their freedom, having an official language of the country became an important issue. It was not an easy decision and many stalwarts had to rally and champion in favour of Hindi language. Some of the notable people included in the list are- Beohar Rajendra Simha along with Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, Kaka Kalelkar, Maithili Sharan Gupt and Seth Govind Das who even debated in Parliament on this issue.

Under the Article 343 of the Indian Constitution, Hindi written in Devanagari script was adopted as the official language. Finally, on September 14, 1953, Hindi Diwas was first celebrated. Thus to promote the use of Hindi language, this day is celebrated across the nation.

Is Hindi Losing its Relevance to English?

'Hindi hain hum watan hai Hindustan hamara', but how many of us use Hindi in schools, colleges, offices and at homes? With the growing popularity of the English language, the usage of Hindi in the day-to-day communication is drastically reducing. Many of us are of the opinion that Hindi is going through a slow death.

To save the language, we all need to play our role. From teachers to parents, we should all encourage children to use Hindi and read the works of the great Hindi novelists and poets like Munshi Premchand, Mahadevi Verma, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, and many others.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an event recently stressed on the use of Hindi language for official purposes and even suggested to government officials that they avoid complex terms to make the communication simple.

An encouraging sign is that, according to a data on language released earlier this year, as part of Census 2011, the percentage of Indian population with Hindi as their mother tongue has increased to 43.63 per cent as compared to 41.03 per cent in 2001. Therefore, on this Hindi Diwas let us take a pledge to contribute our bit in promoting the rich language.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 11, 2018 12:22 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).