Hindi, and its role in the unified future of India

Today, Hindi has the fourth-largest speech community in the world. It is commonly spoken in ten states and three Union Territories. As per the 2011 Census, Hindi has 55 distinct varieties, and some of these may have their own dialects. The varieties differ mostly in the use of verb-forms — for example, kha rahi hai (Hindi), khawathe (Chhattisgarhi), khaiche (Bajjika), khatari (Bhojpuri), khane (Kumauni) and khave hai (Rajasthani-Jodhpuri). Hindi and its varieties have a preponderance of Sanskrit vocabulary in primary or derived forms. Mutual intelligibility across Hindi’s varieties and with other major languages of India stems from the fact that Indian languages have either evolved from Sanskrit or are heavily influenced by it. The Hindi-Urdu speech community is the third-largest globally (after Mandarin and English). Many countries now have sizeable Hindi-speaking populations, making it an international language.

This journey has not been without problems. In a culturally and linguistically diverse country, arriving at a consensus is not always easy. The Constituent Assembly showed remarkable vision in adopting Hindi with the Devanagari script as official language of the Union. This showed India’s true national character as many non-Hindi leaders supported Hindi for independent India. However, continuing with English as an official language indefinitely has not been without controversy. The 22 major languages listed in the Schedule VIII include languages from the Indo Aryan (15), Dravidian (4), Tibeto-Burman (2) and Austro Asiatic (1) families. A classification of our languages on the basis of five prakrits would have made more sense.

Since English posed tough competition, the government took several measures to enrich Hindi and promote its use in administration and education. The Central Hindi Directorate (CHD) was established in 1960 to promote Hindi in non-Hindi regions. The Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology (CSTT) was established in 1961 to develop technical terminologies and content so that education and administration could happen through Indian languages. In 1967, the Central Hindi Committee (CHC) was set up. In 1971, the Central Hindi Translation Bureau was set up, followed by the department of official language (DOL) in 1975 to coordinate efforts for the development of Hindi. The Committee of Parliament on Official Language (CPOL) was constituted in 1976. The Central Hindi Training Institute was set up in 1985 to continuously train and facilitate the government officials/staff in using Hindi.

The Centre’s efforts are coordinated by the DOL. Among the activities led by DOL, the meetings of the CPOL led by the home minister are perhaps the most important. This committee reviews the progress made in the use of Hindi in the official domain and recommends measures to the President for promotion and enrichment of Hindi. The DOL also coordinates the efforts of the Nagar Rajbhasha Karyanvan Samitis and implementation by the government offices/institutions, to monitor Hindi’s progress in official use. The development of necessary software tools like Kanthastha, a machine translation system, has been a remarkable achievement. Integration of Kanthastha with e-office is another initiative to facilitate the use of Hindi in government offices. LILA–Rajbhasha by CDAC facilitates Hindi-learning through 14 other Indian languages. The credit goes to the DOL for also leading the work on preparation of an online Hindi dictionary called Hindi Shabd Sindhu, an all-inclusive relational database of Hindi including words from various domains, dialects and other major Indian languages making it a truly sarva samaveshi Hindi kosha. This kosha has more than 400,000 headwords and is equipped with an automatic speech recognition. The DOL has been periodically equipping its officers and staff in using Hindi in offices using digital tools.

To popularise Hindi and recognise the efforts to promote Hindi, the DOL organises the annual Hindi Divas celebrations and has been organising the Akhil Bharatiya Rajbhasha Sammelan since 2021. Rajbhasha Gaurav and Rajbhasha Kirti Puraskar Yojanas by DOL are two popular schemes to promote writing in Hindi.

Hindi has been a popular language in the digital world. Though it ranks very low in its share of websites, it is the fourth most-used language on YouTube. The rise of Indian language users on the internet has also put pressure on software developers to develop tools. The tools from CDAC, Google (Google Assistant, Google Translate), Microsoft (Bing Translator), Microsoft-Swiftkey (mobile keyboard), and Amazon Alexa, among others, have facilitated Hindi, but more efforts are needed in the digital space. The online shabd-sindhu by DOL and searchable glossaries by CSTT are going to become more important in the future.

The forward march of Hindi has been impressive. It has to continue progressing with inclusiveness so that it is truly sarva samaveshi, for the unified and inclusive future of India. On the Artificial Intelligence (AI) front, there is a need to exercise some caution. Implementing AI solutions in a diverse nation as ours has been a challenge for various reasons. However, the current pace of efforts will go a long way in ensuring the suitable implementation of AI for Hindi and other languages.

Girish Nath Jha is chairman, Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology.The views expressed are personal

Get Current Updates on…

See more