Kolkata, Oct 4 (PTI) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday expressed happiness over the Centre according classical language status to Bengali and said her government had been actively working over the past few years in submitting documents to back the claim.
Bengali, Assamese, Marathi, Pali and Prakrit were declared classical languages on Thursday by the Union Cabinet during a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Banerjee, while inaugurating the Ekdalia Evergreen Durga Puja in Kolkata, said, “Bengali is the fifth most-spoken language in the world. We are happy that our language has been given the recognition it deserves.” “Bengali had been neglected for years but it was me who took the initiative to take up the issue (of according classical language status to Bengali) with the Centre, by writing a letter. Our government sent large volumes of documents to back our claim,” she said.
Immediately after the Centre’s announcement on Thursday, the CM had posted on X handle, “Most happy to share that Bengali/Bangla has been finally accorded the status of a classical language by Government of India. We had been trying to snatch this recognition from Ministry of Culture, GOI and we had submitted three volumes of research findings in favour of our contention.” “The Union government has accepted our well-researched claim today evening and we finally reach the cultural apex in the body of languages in India,” she said.
Classical languages serve as a custodian of Bharat’s profound and ancient cultural heritage, embodying the essence of each community’s historical and cultural milestone, the central government said.
In a statement, the Centre said the inclusion of Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali in the classical language category will create significant employment opportunities, particularly in academic and research fields.
Additionally, the preservation, documentation and digitisation of ancient texts of these languages will generate jobs in archiving, translation, publishing and digital media, the government said.
On October 12, 2004, the Government of India decided to create a new category of languages as “classical languages”, declared Tamil a classical language and set criteria for according the status.
These criteria were — high antiquity of its early texts or recorded history over a thousand years, a body of ancient literature or texts which is considered a valuable heritage by generations of speakers, and literary tradition must be original and not borrowed from another speech community.
Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia were later given the classical language status. PTI SUS ACD
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