Should India push for Hindi to be added to Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish as an official language of the United Nations? Shashi Tharoor, who was once in the running to be the Secretary General of the UN, believes not.
The Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram gave his reasons in a speech in the Lok Sabha. Citing the specific purposes of UN’s six official languages and two working languages (English and French), Tharoor pointed out that, contrary to Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj’s statement, “Bharat has no raj bhasha (national language)”.
He quickly got to the crux of his speech:
“The question that comes up is, what purpose is being served by this? If, indeed, we have a prime minister or a foreign minister who prefer to speak Hindi, they can do so and we can pay for that speech to be translated. Why should we put our future foreign ministers and prime ministers, who may be from Tamil Nadu or Bengal, in a position where they are condemned to be speaking a language that we’re paying for?”
However, ensuring that he hurt no one’s sentiments, the diplomatic Congress MP wrapped up his speech saying, “I understand the pride of Hindi speakers in this country, but people in this country who do not speak Hindi also have pride in being Indian.”
Tharoor made his remark after two Bharatiya Janata Party MPs asked Swaraj in Parliament about the steps being taken to make Hindi an official language at the UN.
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