Hindi a 'friend' of regional languages: Union Home Minister Amit Shah

Union home minister Amit Shah on Wednesday stressed that Hindi is not a competitor but a 'friend' of all the other regional languages in the country and they are mutually dependent on each other for their growth. Shah denounced the 'disinformation' campaign to pit Hindi against native languages and underlined the need to strengthen local languages with Hindi.

Speaking at the All India Official Language Conference in Surat on Hindi Day, Shah said that accepting the co-existence of languages was needed and stressed the need to make Hindi flexible by taking words from other languages to expand its dictionary.




"I want to make one thing very clear. Some people are spreading disinformation that Hindi and Gujarati, Hindi and Tamil, Hindi and Marathi are competitors. Hindi cannot be a competitor to any other language in the country. You must understand that Hindi is the friend of all the languages of the country," Shah said.

Shah said that selecting the venue was based on two reasons. One: Surat being the land of Veer Narmad, who was the first in the nation to highlight the importance of languages from Surat and secondly Surat is the land of enthusiasm and land to fulfill desires. It may be mentioned here that Surat has the highest population of Hindi speakers in Gujarat which goes to polls later this year.