National Hindi Divas: 14th September

National Hindi Divas (हिंदी दिवस) is observed every year on 14 September in Hindi speaking regions of India and other countries with Hindi speaking population. Observance of this day aims to propagate Hindi language and its cultural heritage and values. It also seeks to promote Hindi as matra bhasha (mother tongue) of India and show its importance as a language in country and world at large.
On this occasion, President Ram Nath Kovind presented Rajbhasha awards for Year 2016-17 at Rashtrapati Bhawan. These awards were instituted by Department of Official Language of Union Home Ministry to recognize excellent contribution of Ministries, Departments and Nationalized Banks in field of Hindi.

National Hindi Divas

Hindi Divas is celebrated to mark adaptation of Hindi language as the official language of India by the Constituent Assembly of India on 14 September 1949. The decision of using Hindi as official language was ratified by Constitution of India which came into effect on 26 January 1950. Under the Article 343 of Indian Constitution, Hindi written in Devanagri script was adopted as the official language. But presently, there are 2 official languages: Hindi and English.

Hindi Language

Hindi is one of the main languages of India and is spoken by around 40% of the Indian population. It belongs to Indo-Aryan branch of Indo-European language family. As per 2011 census, 43.63% of Indians speak Hindi as their mother tongue i.e. around 258 million people. It is native language for most people living in Hindi belt of North India comprising Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. It is also spoken in many countries of the world including Pakistan, Mauritius, Trinidad, Surinam etc. Outside Asia, Hindi is official language in Fiji along with other two official languages, namely English, Fijian. The dialect of Hindi spoken there is known as Fiji Hindi or Fiji Baat.

Month: Current Affairs - September, 2018