Expressing concern over the Hindi Salahkar Samiti (advisory committee) of the Rajya Sabha not meeting for the last three and half years, Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday directed that two meetings of this important committee shall be held every year henceforth, mandatorily. He said this while presiding here over the meeting of the committee meant for promotion of use of Hindi in the Rajya Sabha Secretariat.
After detailed review of implementation of the Official language Policy in the Secretariat, the members of the committee while noting the substantial use of Hindi in the Secretariat stressed on the need for total compliance with the provisions in this regard.
Naidu urged the members of Rajya Sabha, hailing from non-Hindi speaking areas, to speak in Hindi if they chose to do so without the fear of grammatical mistakes. Referring to his own experience, the Chairman recalled that he did not know Hindi when he first came to Delhi but soon picked up the language by speaking without any hesitation. He further said “King can do no wrong. You are Members of Parliament and can speak freely without the fear of committing mistakes.”
He said the best way of propagating Hindi is encouraging its use instead of forcing others to adopt it. Naidu further said knowing different languages is advantageous and urged North Indians to learn any South Indian language of their choice as it would promote national unity and integration.
The Chairman also called for simple translation of business related matters into Hindi so that more and more MPs are encouraged to use it. He urged the need for adopting widely popular words from other languages in Hindi for its easy acceptance.
During the discussion non-Hindi speaking Members called for permitting them to make grammatical corrections in their printed Hindi speeches so that they could speak without the fear of committing mistakes which in turn would be on record.
Besides Deputy Chairman P J Kurien, the Rajya Sabha Members who attended the meeting of the committee included Satyanarayan Jatiya, Harivansh, Vinay P Sahasrabuddhe, K Keshav Rao, Prabhat Jha, Ravi Prakash Verma, Prasanna Acharya and Jharna Das Baidya.