Mumbai, Oct 3 (PTI) Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the Central government’s decision to accord the “classical language” tag to Marathi.
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.
“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 that 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.
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 VT
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