Home Ministry hires language experts to teach Hindi to 30 MPs from non-Hindi speaking states

NEW DELHI: The Narendra Modi government’s emphasis on Hindi has found 30 non-Hindi speaking MPs, mostly from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and the North East, who are willing to learn the language. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has roped in experts from the Central Hindi Training Institute (CHTI) who will teach these MPs at the Parliament House between April 24 and 27.

These MPs have expressed their inability to understand the language when either PM Modi or home minister Rajnath Singh speaks in the House despite the translation facility available to them on headphones, said an official.

“The module has been especially tailored for MPs, which will help them speak and understand the language. Each lecture will be for an hour and we will conduct classes on Saturdays and Sundays,” CHTI director Jai Prakash Kadam told ET.

Some of the MPs who have agreed to join the classes are senior Congress leader KV Thomas, BJD MP Rita Tarai, TMC MP Tapas Mandal, CPI(M) MP Shankar Dutta and TRS MP B Vinod Kumar. But DMK MP from Rajya Sabha KP Ramalingam, however, doesn’t agree and thinks it’s wrong for the government to try and promote only one language. “We (MPs from South) will also organise language classes for MPs from the North and teach them languages like Tamil, Telugu and Malyalam. This is a sheer waste of public money. PM Modi should not promote only Hindi,” he told ET over phone.

Raghunandan Sharma, a BJP leader and a former member of Rajya Sabha, who now acts as advisor to Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, has a different take, “It was only after the MPs felt that there’s a need for such a programme that we decided to seek professional expertise.”

Trinamool Congress MP Mandal, however, admits that he finds it difficult to understand what’s going on in the House since most of it is in Hindi. “It is important to understand the language since most of the work is done in Hindi,” he said. After taking over in May last, the BJP-led NDA government has been stressing on the importance of Hindi and has instructed all government departments to promote the language.

Besides observing a Hindi week, there are plans to reward employees and departments for practising Hindi in their day-to-day work.