Mumbai, Oct 3 (PTI) Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his deputies Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar on Thursday hailed the Centre’s decision to confer “classical language” tag on Marathi and thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Union Cabinet has approved conferring classical language status to Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali languages.
The move comes ahead of Maharashtra assembly elections, likely to be held next month.
Thanking the PM, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Union Culture Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, the CM said his government had constantly followed up on the issue.
“This is a golden letter day. On behalf of the 12 crore people of Maharashtra, I thank PM Modi for this decision,” Fadnavis said.
Fadnavis said when he was Maharashtra CM, the state government led by him had taken up the issue of according the classical language status to Marathi with the Centre.
The present government, led by Eknath Shinde, also continued efforts in the direction, Fadnavis said.
Deputy CM Ajit Pawar said the decision was “historic”, adding the struggle to ensure Marathi gets classical language status was going on for decades.
While NCP (SP) spokesperson Anish Gawande hailed the Centre’s decision, he questioned why the Shinde government had failed to promote Marathi across the state.
Maharashtra’s heritage is under threat as theatres, cultural centres and more than 700 public libraries have shut down in the last 10 years, he claimed.
The UPA government in 2012 had set up an expert committee under Rangnath Pathare for grant of classical language status to Marathi, and “after a long Brishaspati Paribhraman which lasts for 12 year”, the government has finally acted on the committee’s recommendations, Gawande said.
Hailing the move, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena MLA Pramod Patil said his party chief Raj Thackeray, while extending support to PM Modi in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, had demanded classical language status for Marathi.
Ahead of the state assembly polls, the demand for classical language status to Marathi had gained political momentum.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh had said that for the last ten years, the demand for declaring Marathi as a classical language had been pending with the Central government.
The Shiv Sena-BJP government in Maharashtra had formed a committee, led by former diplomat Dnyaneshwar Muley, earlier this year. The mandate of this committee was to pursue the matter with the Central government officials and give the feedback to the state government.
The Linguistics Expert Committee of the Union Culture Ministry had suggested some changes in the criteria for according classical status to any language.
Till now, India had six classical languages – Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia.
In 2014, then Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan had constituted a committee comprising Marathi experts under the chairmanship of Prof. Ranganath Pathare and the report was submitted to the Centre.
The Pathare committee had concluded that Marathi fulfils all the parameters to be recognised as a classical language. Chavan had also written to the Centre requesting that the demand be fulfilled.
The issue was raised on many occasions by MPs from Maharashtra in Parliament. Then Union Culture Minister G Kishen Reddy had informed Parliament in February 2022 that the proposal for according classical status to Marathi was under the active consideration of the ministry.
Among the criteria to determine declaration of a language as a classical language are that it should have high antiquity of its early texts/recorded history over a period of 1,500-2,000 years, a body of ancient literature or texts that is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers, the literary tradition should be original and not borrowed from another speech community.
After a language is notified a classical language, the Union Education Ministry provides certain benefits to promote it, which include two major annual international awards for scholars of eminence in the said languages.
A centre of excellence for studies in the classical language is also set up, and the University Grants Commission is requested to create a certain number of Professional Chairs in Central universities for the languages that get the classical tag. PTI VT PR BNM
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