GANDHINAGAR: Hindi must move beyond being a spoken or administrative tongue and take root in science, technology, judiciary and police to deepen public connection, home minister Amit Shah said Sunday at the fifth Akhil Bharatiya Rajbhasha Sammelan.”Hindi is not just a spoken language or a language of administration. Hindi should also be the language of science, technology, justice and police. When all these works are done in Indian languages, then connection with the public is automatically established,” he said.Shah insisted that there is no clash between Hindi and other Indian languages and urged parents to preserve their mother tongues by teaching them to children. He said children think in their mother tongue. “As soon as you impose a language other than mother tongue on a child, 25-30% of his mind’s capacity gets spent translating it,” he said. Naming figures such as Dayanand Saraswati, Mahatma Gandhi, KM Munshi, and SardarPatel, who promoted Hindi while nurturing their own tongues. Gujarat, where Gujarati and Hindi have coexisted, showed both could thrive, he said. Shah credited Gandhi and Saraswati for ensuring Hindi found space in Gujarat’s education system, helping children from the state gain acceptance nationwide. Shah also highlighted advances in language technology, pointing to Bahubhashi Anuvad Sarthi translation tool and the expanding Hindi Shabd Sindhu dictionary.
