Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali approved classical language status by Modi govt

Centre on Thursday approved conferring classical language status to five Indian languages and said that government is taking steps to ‘preserve their rich heritage’

At an event, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said, "Today, 5 languages Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali have been approved as classical languages..."

"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."

 "By now, we had Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia were the notified classical languages... The government is taking many steps to conserve and promote the classical languages and to preserve the rich heritage of these languages..."

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.

What did the government statement say?

A government statement, in this regard, said, The 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.

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

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

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