Hindi Diwas 2019: Amit Shah bats for 'one language to unite the nation'

Hindi is spoken by 250 million people as the original language and it is the fourth language of the world.

The Hindustani language originated from the Indo-Aryan division of the Indo-European language family. Mughals and Persian added their own flavour to Hindustani language, which eventually later developed into Urdu, while the Sanskrit flavour of the Hindustani language developed into Modern Standard Hindi.

After independence, one of the biggest questions that were raised in the country was regarding language, as the government set a goal to provide an idealised look to the mother tongue of the nation

In context to this, the Constituent Assembly was on December 6, 1946, elected to write the Constitution of India. The Assembly adopted the language of Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, as the official language of India. The decision was won over with one extra vote in favour of Hindi.

To propose the importance of this decision and to spread Hindi in every region, on the request of Rashtrabhasha Prachar Samiti, Wardha, from 1953 on 14 September, India is celebrating every year Hindi Diwas.

Apart from this, 14 September is also the birthday of Beohar Rajendra Simha, who along with Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, Kaka Kalelkar, Maithili Sharan Gupt and Seth Govind Das debated tirelessly in the Constituent Assembly and worked hard towards making Hindi the official language of India.

An interesting fact about Hindi is that the word "Hindi" is Persian in origin (meaning: of the hind). The first ever 'Hindi' poem was written by the eminent Persian poet Amir Khusro.

In 1977, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the first External Affairs minister addressed the United Nations General Assembly for the first time in Hindi, making it a landmark moment for the nation.

Further back, at the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan in 1918, Mahatma Gandhi for the first time talked about making Hindi as the national language of India. He had also called Hindi the language of the public.

Awards are commemorations are declared in the language, and even a Bhasha Samman award has been launched to inspire people in learning Hindi. The award is given out on this day, the Hindi Diwas.