On his visit to USA in the last week of this month Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to address the general assembly of United Nations, the significant feature being that this address shall be in Hindi. In fact he shall be the third dignitary from India to do so –the first being the then Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpai followed by Rajnath Singh the then a cabinet rank minister in the Indian Council of Ministers. Actually like every thing language too is a politics both at the level of the individual country and also globally. In India several of political leaders, many of them claiming to be academically well qualified, speak in their regional language because they are not fully conversant in English and there are many who do so as an honour to the national language Hindi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi too doesn’t command necessary fluency at speaking in English but this by itself is no reason for him to opt for speaking in Hindi at United Nations. His selection of language is fully based on a nationalistic approach holding Hindi banner high wherever he visits as was the approach of Atal Bihari Vajpai, the then Prime Minister. His decision as such is not to undermine English, most powerful and globally recognised a language, but just to go for a bigger boost up to the national language in true spirit of patriotism. This is quite in tune with the pride of India.
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