The BJP government's endeavor to promote Indian languages will get a new boost with the human resource development ministry's Bharatvani project. The ministry will release multimedia content and study material for school and professional courses in 22 Indian scheduled languages on this International Mother Language Day on February 21.
Backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ministry has assigned the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore the task for gathering and compiling the content for the portal. The project is also a part of Prime Minister's Digital India initiative to create a knowledge society.
School and college textbooks, dictionaries, grammar books in 22 languages will be digitised and made available on the portal. Institutions including the University Grant Commission, Central Board of Secondary Education, National Book Trust, Indira Gandhi National Open University, National Council of Educational Research and Training and its 16 state partners are compiling content for the website.
"Besides the school textbooks, Bharatvani will also have books on anthropology, history, books on medical science and text books for engineering courses, available in all possible regional languages," informed Professor Awadesh Kumar Mishra, director, CIIL.
Sangh affiliated education bodies have been lobbying with the government to make study material for professional courses available in regional languages. Bharatvani has also roped in the Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology and Central Hindi Directorate for creating glossaries and dictionaries for scientific and technical terminology in Hindi and other regional languages.
Besides short audio, video clips and images glorifying the Indian culture will also be available on the portal.
In the first phase, Bhatavani is targeting 22 scheduled languages. "There are some 234 mother languages recognised in India. As we go along we will try to cover more languages. These languages need to be protected, studied and promoted," added Mishra.
