No language is any less than Hindi or English, said Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan at a conference of Education Ministers from across the country. He said the Centre would work with State governments to frame policies, like “five fingers coming together to form a fist”.
“For the past many days, there have been many doubts over the issue of languages. All languages are national languages, whether it is Gujarati or Tamil, Punjabi or Assamese, Bengali or Marathi. No language is less than Hindi or English,” the Minister said at the two-day National Education Ministers’ conference in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. The conference, which saw representations from 32 States and Union Territories, concluded on Thursday.
Dr. K. Kasturirangan, head of the drafting committee of the National Education Policy, consciously coined the term “local languages” or mother tongues such as tribal languages, and had discussed reviving them with the help of technology, Mr. Pradhan said.
