Hindi Diwas is one of the major events to be celebrated annually all over India. It is observed on the 14th of September every year to encourage the use of Hindi by Indians for most of the time and most of the daily tasks. This day is celebrated with great fanfare across India and many programs are also organized simultaneously. The sole purpose of celebrating this day is to maintain the importance of Hindi in India so that it will continue for years. So we can say that Hindi Diwas is not just an event but also a celebration of identity of India as well.
Hindi Diwas 2020
In the year 2020, Hindi Diwas is going to fall on Monday. On the day, there will be a great chance for us this time to emphasize the importance of Hindi language and its role in maintaining our cultural values and also the legacy of our nation. We would be celebrating the 68th anniversary of Hindi Diwas this year.
History
There is also an interesting historical reason behind celebrating the Hindi day.
India was completely under the control of the British Government for almost two centuries. It got independence on 15 August 1947 and became the Republic of India on 26 January 1950. After independence, there was a constituent assembly formed to make rules and regulations for the people of the nation. Some prominent members of this assembly were Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, C. Rajagopalachari, Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan and Kailash Nath Katju.
The Devanagari script of Hindi attained the status of the national language of the Union of India on 14 September 1949 after considerable deliberation of the Constituent Assembly. It is from where the idea of celebrating Hindi Diwas on the 14th of September originated. The first celebration of Hindi Diwas was made in the year 1953. Since then, the celebration of such a great event is going onward.
It is also the birth anniversary of the famous Hindi litterateur of Indian history, Beohar Rajendra Sinha who was born on 14 September 1900, so Hindi Diwas is also a celebration of the commemoration of his birth anniversary every year.
Celebration/Activities
Hindi Diwas is seen as a very honourable and important event all over India. The arrival of the day is to increase the importance of Hindi and motivate people to adopt it as their native and colloquial language.
There are many programmes to be organized on the day. All these programmes remain centred at motivating people towards the use of Hindi. The most prominent event of this day is held in schools for the student. The children, and especially students, are told to have respect for their native language Hindi and use it in their daily practices.
The institutions also organise some programmes for the students like Essay Competition, Quiz Competition, Debates, and Hindi Typing Tests, etc. The ‘Raj-Bhasha Award’ is also distributed by the Government of India on the eve of the day of the event. This award is given every year to those people who contribute in the field of Hindi language and spread its use and motivate people towards adopting it in the place of some other languages.
This is the day when the News Paper and Social Networking Platforms highlight the use of Hindi for us. There are many programmes also organised for it like Poetry Forums (Kavya Goshthi), Poet Conference (Kavi Sammelan), and Seminars, etc. Together with Hindi Diwas, Hindi Week (Hindi Saptah) is also organised to work on the propagation of Hindi from various perspectives for a whole week.
Objectives and Significance
Hindi Diwas in India is celebrated every year on the 14th of September to pay respect to the language Hindi. Hindi had always been the prime and the most important language in India. All the Indian languages have originated from Hindi, and every Indian should somewhere imbibe it. India is the only country in the world where Hindi is spoken on such a large scale. It is very important we should keep Hindi in our daily practices so that it can exist in Indian culture.
Through Hindi Day, we can tell the importance of Hindi to those people who are forgetting it completely.The main purpose of observing Hindi Diwas is to tell people that if we do not insist on the use of Hindi today, then Hindi will cease to exist.Therefore, to increase the importance of Hindi, all government work is done in the Hindi language on the day.
The present generation of the nation has the complete absence of basic knowledge of Hindi, so by celebrating Hindi Diwas, we can introduce them to the language that consists of their identity. So the overall objective and the significance of celebrating Hindi Diwas is to make people aware of the importance of Hindi language and make them use it as much as possible.
There have been significant efforts made by the Government of India in providing Hindi with not only local but global respect. The Prime Minister of India is delivering his speeches in Hindi in other countries so that it can get global recognition. We all should remember that Hindi is our cultural identity, and we should not be ashamed of speaking it. Though learning other languages like English and Spanish, etc. is also important, but no such language is supreme than Hindi for us.
Growth of Hindi Language after Independence of India
Hindi was previously rated as the 4th most spoken language in the world after Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and English on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd positions respectively during 2000. It had then around 341 million speakers in the world. But surprisingly this data has increased with a great margin and has reached around 615 million in the world in 2020. Now Hindi has become the 3rd biggest language in the world surpassing Spanish.
Though there have been several changes in the graph of many other languages in the list, the phenomenal growth that Hindi has shown is tremendous and different from the others. The more shocking than this growth of Hindi is that the most number of users of Hindi that has increased is found in other countries in the world, while the number of speakers of Hindi in India has reduced. The only reason for it is the increasing influence and use of the English language in India.
Our Efforts to Keep Hindi Alive
As we can see that the use of the English language has indiscriminately increased in the past several decades in India, we feel proud of speaking in English while a person who speaks in Hindi is seen with disgrace. Instead of using English much, we should prefer learning, speaking, and using the Hindi language as much as possible. We can work on promoting our native language Hindi because it is the one that we spoke earlier when we learned to speak. For it, we can learn from countries like China, Columbia, Argentina and Malawi, etc. which speak their national languages instead of English and they all are much developed than us. Their economy is not benefitted by English, and that is in the case of India too.
Hindi Diwas is made to promote Hindi on the national level. At least we can participate in various programmes to be organised on the day and learn something new from the legends who have made significant contributions to Hindi and have achieved many awards. We can also express our opinions on Hindi and how we can promote it on national and global languages.
Hindi Saptah (Hindi Week)
Along with Hindi Diwas, there is a Hindi Week or Hindi Saptah also organised in India. On Hindi Diwas, we work on spreading the use of Hindi for a whole day, during Hindi Saptah, we work for the same for a whole week. During this period, there are many efforts made to spread the use of Hindi through many cultural programmes and seminars.
Even many organisations conduct many competitions based on the theme ‘Hindi’ so that the children and students work on improving their Hindi knowledge. It can be a great step towards making Hindi popular among Indians, especially the young generation of India. The Hindi Saptah is celebrated starting from the Hindi Diwas for the next seven days.
World Hindi Day
The World Hindi Day (Vishwa Hindi Diwas) is celebrated on the 10th of January every year. This is a global event initiated by the 13th Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh. The event of Vishwa Hindi Diwas was first celebrated in the year 2006 and is different from the Hindi Diwas to be celebrated on 14 September. World Hindi Day was initiated with a purpose to promote Hindi on the global level. Representing Hindi as a global language and raising awareness among people regarding it, especially in India, is the objective of celebrating the day.
Conclusion
Hindi is the primary language that we use since our birth and that reflects our culture and civilization. Before laughing on someone else who speaks Hindi, think about his national spirit and compare it with yourself. Hindi Diwas should be a respectful event for us, and we should try our best for promoting and celebrating it. It is we on whom the future of the nation rests so always try to use Hindi and motivate others to do it. We should never forget that we are Indian and Hindi Diwas is for us.