- Friday, October 04, 2024
The inclusion of Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali in the classical language category will create significant employment opportunities
By: Shajil Kumar
THE UNION CABINET has approved conferring classical language status to Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali languages.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the Union Cabinet on Thursday chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“This is a historical decision and it goes very well with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the NDA government’s philosophy of taking pride in our culture, taking pride in our heritage and taking pride in all the Indian languages and the rich heritage that we have,” Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at a cabinet briefing.
Assembly elections in Maharashtra are slated to take place soon and this is a major poll issue in the state.
The inclusion of Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali in the classical language category will create significant employment opportunities, particularly in academic and research fields, a government statement said.
The primary states involved are Maharashtra (Marathi), Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh (Pali and Prakrit), West Bengal (Bengali) and Assam (Assamese), while the broader cultural and academic impact will extend nationally and internationally, the statement added.
Reactions
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has expressed happiness over the Centre according classical language status to Bengali and said her government had been actively working over the past few years in submitting documents to back the claim.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his deputies Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar hailed the Centre’s decision to confer “classical language” tag on Marathi and thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Congress party asked why it took so long for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to accord classical language status to Marathi and claimed the BJP-led NDA government’s move has come in the face of an “imminent defeat” in the Maharashtra elections.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has said that for years, there were many controversies and movements regarding the Assamese language. He said the people of Assam will always be grateful to prime minister Narendra Modi.
Manipur Rajya Sabha MP Leishemba Sanajaoba on Friday expressed his disappointment over the non-inclusion of Manipuri language as a classical language in the recently declared list of classical languages.
Background
On October 12, 2004, the Government of India decided to create a new category of languages as “classical languages”, declared Tamil a classical language and set criteria for according the status.
These criteria were – high antiquity of its early texts or recorded history over a thousand years, a body of ancient literature or texts which is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers, and literary tradition must be original and not borrowed from another speech community.
Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia were later given classical language status. (PTI)
