Centre hands over notification to Maha govt conferring classical language status to Marathi

Mumbai, Jan 8 (IANS) Union Minister of Culture Gajendra Shekhawat, on Wednesday, handed over the gazette notification to Maharashtra Minister Uday Samant on the Centre’s move to award classical language status to the Marathi.

The Union cabinet on October 3 had approved to confer the status of classical language which serves as a custodian of Bharat’s profound and ancient cultural heritage, embodying the essence of each community’s historical and cultural milestone.

Samant, who is the Minister of the Marathi language, said, “Union Minister Gajendra Shekhawat gave me the government gazette notification awarding classical language status to Marathi. I thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister Gajendra Shekhawat. I will submit the necessary proposals to the Centre in the next eight to 15 days. A committee headed by a leading writer and the Maharashtra Rajya Sahitya and Sanskriti Mandal chief Sadanand More is studying how to proceed on the Centre’s decision conferring the classical language status to the Marathi language. The Union Minister has assured to provide funds for the ongoing study.” Minister Samant was in Delhi on Wednesday.

Samant further said that the Union Minister will inaugurate the two-day World Marathi Conference in Pune on January 31. “I thank the Union Minister on behalf of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Deputy Chief Ministers Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar for accepting the invitation to attend the proposed World Marathi Conference at Pune and also for the Centre’s decision to award classical language status to Marathi. The state government proposes to make efforts to preserve and promote the Marathi language at the international level. I also sincerely thank writers who made efforts to get classical language status to Marathi,” he added.

Minister Samant said the state government will take the writers into confidence for the development of the Marathi language. He added that the government had earlier decided to provide Rs 2 crore to the World Marathi Conference (Jagtik Marathi Sammelan). He said the state government will try to strengthen the Marathi schools which are functional in Delhi.

The Centre had received a proposal from the Maharashtra Government in 2013 requesting classical language status to Marathi, which was forwarded to the Linguistic Experts Committee that recommended Marathi as a classical language. During the inter-ministerial consultations on the draft note for cabinet in 2017 for conferring classical status to the Marathi language, the Ministry of Home Affairs advised revising the criteria and making it stricter. The Mahayuti government claimed that its efforts paid off and said that the inclusion of Marathi as a classical language would create significant employment opportunities, particularly in academic and research fields. Additionally, the preservation, documentation, and digitisation of ancient texts of these languages will generate jobs in archiving, translation, publishing, and digital media.

–IANS

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