Marathi, Bengali among 5 languages to get classical tag

The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved conferring the status of classical language on Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali languages.

IMAGE: Kindly note that this image has been posted for representational purposes only. Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

The decision was taken at a meeting of the Union cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"This is a historical decision and this decision goes very well with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the NDA government's philosophy of taking ride in our culture, taking pride in our heritage and taking pride in all the Indian languages and the rich heritage that we have," Information and Broadcasting Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at a cabinet briefing.

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 government said.

The Government of India decided to create a new category of languages as "classical languages" on October 12, 2004 declaring Tamil as classical language and thereafter Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia languages were given classical language status.

A government statement said that in 2013 a proposal from the Maharashtra government was received in the ministry requesting classical language status for Marathi, which was forwarded to the Linguistics Experts Committee (LEC). The LEC recommended Marathi for classical language.

The assembly elections are due later this year in Maharashtra and this was a major poll issue in the state.

During the inter-ministerial consultations on the draft note for cabinet in 2017 for conferring classical status to the Marathi language, the MHA advised to revise the criteria and make it stricter. The PMO vide its comment stated that the ministry may conduct an exercise to find out how many other languages are likely to become eligible.

It said that in the meantime, proposals from Bihar, Assam and West Bengal were also received for conferring status of classical language to Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali.

Accordingly, the Linguistics Experts Committee (under Sahitya Akademi) in a meeting on July 25, 2024 unanimously revised the criteria as below. The Sahitya Akademi has been appointed as nodal agency for the LEC.

The inclusion of languages as classical language will create significant employment opportunities, particularly in academic and research fields, the government statement said.

Additionally, it said the preservation, documentation and digitisation of ancient texts of these languages will generate jobs in archiving, translation, publishing and digital media.

The primary states involved are Maharashtra (Marathi), Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh (Pali and Prakrit), West Bengal (Bengali) and Assam (Assamese), while the broader cultural and academic impact will extend nationally and internationally.

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the central government's decision to accord the classical language tag to Marathi.

The move comes ahead of Maharashtra assembly elections, likely to be held next month.

“This is a golden letter day. On behalf of the 12 crore people of Maharashtra, I thank PM Modi for this decision,” Fadnavis said.

Fadnavis said that when he was Maharashtra CM, the state government led by him had taken up the issue of according the classical language status to Marathi with the Centre.

The present government, led by Eknath Shinde, also continued efforts in the direction, Fadnavis said.

Likewise, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday expressed her delight over Bengali being conferred the status of classical language and said the state government had been actively working to secure this recognition from the Centre and had submitted extensive research to support their case.

"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. Union government has accepted our well-researched claim today evening and we finally reach the cultural apex in the body of languages in India," Banerjee said in a post on X.