‘Linguistic diversity must strengthen national unity’
New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday called for setting aside political differences over languages, asserting that India’s linguistic diversity should be a source of strength and that the country’s many languages must remain united by a common Indian identity.
Addressing the Hindi Diwas 2026 and sixth All India Official Language Conference in Mumbai, Shah said political differences should not come in the way of efforts to promote Indian languages.
“I would like to tell those who try to create disputes between languages” that children can truly understand India through their mother tongue, Shah said, urging all sections to focus on strengthening Indian languages.
He said India could have many languages and dialects but its “voice must remain one”, arguing that linguistic diversity and national unity were not contradictory.
“There may be many languages, but the sentiment must remain Indian,” Shah said.
The Home Minister also invoked Rabindranath Tagore’s vision of India’s regional languages as different petals of a single lotus, with Hindi serving as a connecting element. He said there was no objection to having multiple languages as long as the larger sentiment of Indian identity remained intact.
Shah said the government’s objective was to make Indian languages languages of governance and science, enrich literature and connect them with one another to create a wider linguistic resource.
He highlighted the government’s efforts to expand the use of Indian languages in education, saying examinations such as JEE and NEET were now conducted in 13 languages. He also said the National Education Policy had made learning the mother tongue in primary education mandatory and encouraged children to learn another Indian language.
“Learning a second Indian language” would help children connect with the goal of “Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat”, he said.
Shah said the government was also expanding Hindi through contributions from other Indian languages. The ‘Hindi Shabd-Sindhu’ dictionary, which began with 51,000 words, has now grown to eight lakh words, with more than 50,000 words from local languages incorporated into it. He expressed confidence that it would become the world’s largest dictionary by 2029.
He said more than five lakh Central government employees had been trained in Hindi, while AI-based language platforms, including ‘Kanthasth 2.0’, ‘LILA Rajbhasha’ and ‘LILA Pravah’, were being used to expand language learning and translation.
Shah also said the Centre had developed ‘Bharti – Bahubhashi Anuvad Sarathi’ and launched an Indian Languages Section to further strengthen multilingual communication.
The Home Minister also highlighted the role of ‘Vande Mataram’ in India’s freedom movement, saying it had helped awaken national consciousness during British rule. He credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi with taking the initiative to have the complete song sung again at official functions.
The conference also saw Shah confer the Rajbhasha Kirti and Rajbhasha Gaurav Awards and inaugurate training programmes in Hindi word processing, typing and shorthand.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Deputy Chief Ministers Eknath Shinde and Sunetra Pawar, Union Ministers of State for Home Nityanand Rai and Bandi Sanjay Kumar and senior officials attended the event.
