WORLD HINDI CONFERENCE – INTERNATIONAL
News: Era
when progress was equated with westernization behind us: Jaishankar at World
Hindi Conference
What's in the news?
● External
Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said the era when progress was equated with westernization
is now behind us and many languages and traditions that were suppressed during
the colonial era are once again finding a voice on the global stage.
Key takeaways:
● Though
Hindi is not officially the national
language of India, it is the strongest link language besides being one of
the two official languages.
● According
to the 2011 census, 528 million Indians speak Hindi as against Bengali (97.2
million), Marathi (83 million) Telugu (81 million) and Tamil (69 million)
speakers.
World Hindi Conference:
● Period:
12th World Hindi Conference between
February 15 and 17.
● Location: Suva,
the capital of Fiji.
● Organized by
the Government of Fiji and the Ministry of External Affairs of India.
● About
1,200 Hindi scholars and writers from all over the world are participating in
this conference.
Go back to basics:
● The
first World Hindi Conference was organized in 1975 in Nagpur.
● Till
date, 11 World Hindi Conferences have been organized in different parts of the
world.
● The
last conference was held in Mauritius in 2018.
● Fiji
is probably the only country outside India that has Hindi as an official language. Hindi is being taught from primary
to secondary schools and offered as a language of study in university.