My Letter to HRD Minister reg. use of Devanagari script over Sindhi script to spread the message of Mother Language Day

From
Dr. Mahesh Devnani
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx

To

Ms. Smriti Z Irani
Union Minister for Human Resource Development
Govt. of India
New Delhi

Sub: Use of Devanagari script over Sindhi script to spread the message of Mother Language Day

Dear Ms. Irani

The ‘International Mother Language Day’ is celebrated every year as proclaimed by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in November 1999 (30C/62). This year it was celebrated on Feb 21st, 2015.

On this occasion and keeping in view this year’s theme "Inclusion in and through education: Language counts" was related to HRD ministry, the ministry issued an infographic (attached) depicting the slogan “पहला भाव मातृभाव , पहली भाषा मातृभाषा" in 22 scheduled languages included in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India. The infographic is available on HRD ministry's home webpage and is being widely distributed in social media. In the infographic, in addition to Hindi, the slogan is written in the respective scripts of 21 other languages after translation except for one language (to the best of my knowledge). It is ironic and unfortunate that for Sindhi language HRD Ministry chose Devanagari script over Sindhi script to spread the message of Mother Language Day. Not only the HRD Ministry used Devanagari script instead of Sindhi script, the words used in translation of slogan in Sindhi language are far from commonly used words by Sindhi community.

I do not want to make inferences but this shows HRD ministry in a bad light. I also hope that this is not a deliberate attempt to promote Devanagari script over Sindhi script.

I request that HRD ministry looks into the matter to rectify this and prevent such mistakes in future. I look forward to your response.

Thank you

Sincerely

Mahesh