Hindi Diwas

Hindi Diwas

India adopted Hindi written in Devanagari script as the official language of the Republic of India in 1949. Hindi was adopted as the official language under the Article 343 of the Indian Constitution. The decision of Constituent assembly was authorized on January 26, 1950, the day when the Constitution of India came into effect. The first Hindi Diwas was celebrated in 1953.

Since 1950, Hindi has been used as the primary official language of communication of Union government of India. It is also the primary official language of communication between Union government and State governments. However, State governments were given liberty to choose their own official languages for their respective states. Hence, Indian Constitution recognizes 22 languages as official languages along with Hindi and English.

History

India being a nation of great diversities posed a huge dilemma in front of the drafting committee of the constitution regarding the language that could represent the whole nation. Many significant personalities of that time rallied for Hindi to be chosen as the national language because it was the single largest spoken language of India. Mahatma Gandhi also professed his wish for Hindustani to be adopted as the national language of India as it was spoken by both the Hindus and the Muslims of the northern part of India.

However, it was hard to ignore other significant languages of India and chose Hindi as the national language; consequently, the drafting committee instead adopted Hindi as an official language of India. It is also imperative to apprise that Indian constitution recognizes no language as the national language of India and Hindi along with 21 others is an official language of India.