Amit Shah tells Hindi Diwas that a child learns the country only in a mother tongue

Union home minister Amit Shah told the sixth All India Official Language Conference in Navi Mumbai on 14 September that a child can understand India only through a mother tongue and that parties should set political fights aside when the subject is Indian languages.

The speech was a video message for Hindi Diwas. Shah said the progress of Hindi is useful only when it moves with the dignity and protection of other Indian languages, and that Hindi should not be treated as their rival. He pointed to Maharashtra as the country’s largest multilingual state, listing Konkani, Gujarati, Sindhi, Hindi, Kannada and Warli as languages that have standing there, and noted that the Modi government gave Marathi classical-language status.

He tied language policy to the National Education Policy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, made primary teaching in the mother tongue mandatory. The NEP clause that asks students to learn another Indian language besides the mother tongue is, in Shah’s words, a way for Indians to know one another’s speech. He called opposition to that clause a “sin.” Critics of the NEP have argued that a second Indian language, in practice, becomes a Hindi requirement in non-Hindi states. Shah rejected the imposition frame and stayed with the mother-tongue line.

The other half of the speech was Vande Mataram. Shah said the song is not only a lyric but an effort to wake Indian consciousness during the freedom movement, and that it took 80 years to restore what he called its full glory. He referred to the old official practice of singing only the first two stanzas. Full recitation at government functions, he said, returned because India has Modi as prime minister. Publications released on the day included a Vande Mataram special issue of Rajbhasha Bharati and a volume titled Vande Mataram Ke 150 Adhyay. A digital resource, Hindi Shabd Sindhu, and Hindi typing and shorthand training were launched. Rajbhasha Kirti and Gaurav awards were given.

Cultural nationalism, as Shah defined it in the message, means creating awareness of culture and history. Languages can have different voices, he said, but the national sentiment should be one. That formula is how the home ministry now talks about Hindi Diwas in a non-Hindi capital of a multilingual state. The venue is the point. Navi Mumbai is not Lucknow. Praising Marathi’s classical tag and listing Warli next to Hindi is the concession the speech makes before it defends the NEP and the full song.

The political audience is double. In Maharashtra the BJP needs language peace with Marathi pride. In the Hindi belt it needs the Vande Mataram anniversary and the slavery-mindset phrase Shah also used, linking language work to Modi’s pledge to drop what he calls a colonial head. Both lines were in the same video.

What the conference actually changed is smaller. A typing course, a dictionary site, two award lists, two books. The durable claim is the NEP sentence: primary school in the mother tongue, plus one more Indian language. States that already teach that way will shrug. States that hear Hindi in the second slot will keep the argument Shah called a sin. Hindi Diwas in Navi Mumbai did not close that argument. It restated the government’s side of it, with Marathi named first.