Dr  Vedapratap Vaidik

Until now the United Nations has officially recognized only six languages of the world-English, French, Chinese, Russian, Hispani and Arabic. Interestingly, the number of Hindi speaking people are many times more than those who speak these six languages.  Similarly, Hindi is above the six languages in her script, grammar, pronunciation and number of words.   I have explained this in detail in my book ‘How Hindi turned into a global landuage”

Here I wish to express my pain and concern on the injustice being done to Hindi not only in India but also in many world forums.

However, though belatedly,   there is good news for us. The General Assembly of the United Nations has now accepted the use of Hindi, Urdu and Bengali along with the above six official languages in all its ‘essential business’. All the above mentioned three languages are Indian. Pakistan and Bangladesh can also be happy because Bangla and Urdu are their national languages.

This is welcome news, but it is yet to be clear which of these three languages will be officially used in the  “essential” dealings of  the United Nations. Will all the speeches made in the UN forum, its reports, resolutions, documents and details of proceedings be translated into these three languages? Will it be allowed to deliver speeches and present documents in all three languages?  I am not sure such things will happen so easily.  Even then I feel in the long run the possibility of Hindi being accepted as the seventh official language of the UN is bright and I am expecting that to happen soon.

The dilemma with Hindi is that she remains a maid in own house, so who will make her a queen in New York?  We are celebrating the  Amrit Mahotsav of our freedom and Hindi is lying in the country.  Hindi is still not compulsory in law-making, higher research, science teaching and administration. I have raised this issue during the first World Hindi Conference held in Nagpur in 1975 and in 2003 at the World Hindi Conference in Suriname I had demanded that Hindi should be accepted as an official language in the UN. On My initiative a resolution was  also passed  in this respect at that conference.

In 1999, as an Indian representative, I tried to deliver my speech at the United Nations in Hindi but permission was not granted. Only Atalji and Narendra Modi got permission because our government had to sweat out for that.  As the External Affairs Minister of India Sushma Swaraj also tried her best to get Hindi  the status of an official language of the United Nations. But it is disheartening that not many of our Indian leaders or officers insist or even try to do their dealings in Hindi in the UN and other global forums.

When all the important governments’ dealings and documents (apart from seeking votes) are in English, then how can we expect our global assignments to be done in Hindi? It’s a fact, due to our undue obligation and obsession to English, India is unable to take advantage of many rich global languages.  Perhaps, this initiative of the United Nations could help India to unshackle herself from the current linguistic slavery!

*Dr Vaidik is the President of the Indian Language Conference

*Dr. Vaidik is a widely travelled scholar-journalist. He has visited more than 80 countries on diplomatic and educational missions. Dr. Vaidik has won more than a dozen National and International awards for academic and journalistic excellence. He has been a member of several Advisory Committees of Government of India.